The uprising on Ferrix, or battle on Ferrix, was a spontaneous riot and citizen uprising against the Galactic Empire that occurred on Rix Road of the planet Ferrix during former Daughters of Ferrix president Maarva Carassi Andor's funeral procession, in 5 BBY. After the planet came under Imperial occupation following the ambush on Ferrix and the annexation of the Morlani system Ferrix belonged in, Ferrixians including Maarva Andor became increasingly weary and restless against their reign.
Inspired by the recent attack on the Imperial base on Aldhani, Andor decided to take action against the Empire, using her farewell speech to condemn the Empire and to urge her people towards action against them. As contempt and anger towards the Empire had been building for weeks, her speech was the spark that ignited a full on riot against the Imperial forces led by Imperial Security Bureau Supervisor Dedra Meero and Prefect Vanis Tigo.
When the latter tried to interrupt and cut off her recorded anti-Imperial speech, the denizens of Ferrix attacked the Imperial Army trooper units guarding the Hotel Rix headquarters attempting to storm the hotel and lynch Tigo. During the uprising, the son of a recently executed Ferrix denizen threw a homemade bomb against the troopers, killing and injuring many. In response, Tigo ordered the stormtrooper forces stationed in the facility to open fire against the protestors, resulting in heavy casualties.
In 5 BBY, Ferrix resident Cassian Jeron Andor travelled to Morlana One to search for his lost Kenari sister. During this endeavour, Andor killed two Preox-Morlana law enforcement officers, a crime which attracted the attention of Pre-Mor Enforcement. A Pre-Mor team under Deputy Inspector Syril Karn and Sergeant Linus Mosk then arrived in Ferrix to apprehend Andor, who at that time was trying to sell stolen Imperial equipment to Luthen Rael, a man underpinning a rebel network. The Pre-Mor mission failed and both Andor and Rael escaped.
In light of this incident, the Galactic Empire decided to seize control of the Morlani system, with ISB Supervisor Blevin heading the occupation of Ferrix with a garrison of Imperial soldiers. Meanwhile, Luthen assigned Andor to a rebel team on Aldhani that was about to rob the vault of the Aldhani dam. The rebel mission was a success; the rebels who survived, including Andor, escaped with eighty million credits.
Bix Caleen was arrested by the Ferrix garrison and interrogated by Supervisor Meero
Tightening its grip on its subjects, the Empire then passed the Public Order Resentencing Directive and the Imperial Emergency Act. Ferrix was transferred from Blevin's portfolio to that of Supervisor Dedra Meero, since Major Partagaz believed that Meero was more strenuously pursuing links between crimes against the Empire. Cassian Andor, who was attempting to avoid any further rebel actions, opposing his mother Maarva's wish to resist the Empire, was falsely arrested on Niamos for anti-Imperial activity and imprisoned in the Narkina 5 Imperial Prison Complex. The Imperial Security Bureau searched for Cassian; Meero interviewed Karn, whilst the Ferrix garrison detained in the hotel Salman Paak and Bix Caleen, two of Cassian's contacts. At the same time, Vel Sartha and Cinta Kaz, two of Cassian's compatriots on Aldhani, had been posted in his hometown to kill him when he returned to prevent him from exposing any information about the rebel network.
Supervisor Meero later believed that she had a link between Cassian's fight with Pre-Mor and the rebel attack on Aldhani, and the Empire was performing constant surveillance on Maarva, bait for Cassian. Karn, who was engrossed in the Imperial hunt for Cassian, clandestinely met with Meero outside the ISB Central Office. While Cassian served his sentence, Maarva's health deteriorated. Cassian eventually helped to incite an uprising in the prison, during which he escaped detention. Before he could return to Ferrix, Maarva died, news of which he heard once he was back on Niamos. Since Maarva had been a president of the Daughters of Ferrix, the townspeople scheduled a large funeral for her. Karn also gleaned from Mosk that Maarva had perished and that Cassian might attend her funeral.
Officers from the Ferrix prefecture and Supervisor Meero monitor the preparations for the funeral
After his father Salman's death at the hands of the Empire, Wilmon Paak manufactured an improvised explosive, which he would later use to bomb the Imperial troops. Meero arrived on Ferrix on the night before the funeral; on the next day she coordinated the Imperial plan to capture Cassian alive at the funeral, which would pass through Rix Road. Sartha and Kaz, as well as the ISB, continued to spy on the Andor household. On that night, Cassian had reached the town and spoke to his friend Pegla, and Rael himself was on the planet before he joined his operatives during daytime. On the day of the funeral, Cassian had a secret reunion with his friend Brasso, announcing his wish to rescue Caleen from the hotel, before he climbed into an obscured space under the roof of one of the buildings on Rix Road, though Nurchi was spying on him for the Empire. Aboard a flight to the town, Karn and Mosk travelled together in the hopes of intercepting Cassian.
A band dressed in ceremonial outfits led the procession, followed by Daughters of Ferrix and honor guards
At the top of the bell tower, the "Time Grappler" began to strike his beskar anvil, attracting the attention of Sartha, Rael, and the Imperials, whilst locals started to congregate at the tower's base. The funeral procession's marching band warmed up by playing their instruments, with one group of musicians practicing on their horns and another group on their woodwind instruments, leaving Meero and Captain Vanis Tigo in confusion. The Daughters of Ferrix, including Jezzi, were assembled outside of the Andor residence, while Rael proceeded down Rix Road to the hotel and Karn and Mosk navigated the streets. A drummer then led the brass section into parade formation. Flanked by mourners on both sides and followed by honor guards, they marched and played "Forming Up".
The citizens filed in behind the band, growing the parade as it moved through the bazaars of the merchant streets. Meanwhile, Jezzi led the Daughters of Ferrix from the area near the Andor home Paak exited Repaak Salyard wearing a satchel, inside which he had concealed his bomb, and joined the procession. The undercover ISB Attendant Corv marched with the parade from the woodwind section, but Kaz, who knew his true affiliation, tailed him. Monitoring the audible clamor from the hotel, Tigo spoke to Lieutenant Keysax, requesting his troops to be brought outside in an immediate show of force. Keysax returned to the hotel lobby and ordered his Imperial Army troopers to hurry in preparing their riot equipment. The brass section, playing "Unto Stone We Are" marched past the wall where Grapplers hung their work gloves.
The two blocks of the procession assembled in the base of the Ferrix bell tower
Caleen observed the gathering from her cell window and Cassian used a telescope to spy on the Imperial troops. After Keysax gave orders marshaling team one, team two, and team three to his soldiers, the two processions approached the intersection between the two diagonal offshoots that diverged around the bell tower building. Captain Tigo supervised his troopers carting tactical gear into the street. From his elevated position, Cassian recognised the cloaked Rael by his face, whilst Karn and Mosk watched the locals hurrying to join the procession. Having found Corv, Nurchi confided that he knew Cassian's location and, after instructing the ISB attendant to pretend to arrest him, he was heaved by the attendant to the hotel lobby as Kaz observed.
Maarva Andor addresses the crowd
Upon being informed by Nurchi about Andor's potential whereabouts, Meero immediately mobilized her death trooper escort and ignoring Tigo's suggestions to assemble a full squad and surround the location she left the hotel, exiting the safe zone around it and entering the crowd. Karn noticed her and attempted to make a move towards her, but was stopped by Mosk. Reaching the building in which Andor was supposedly hiding, a death trooper and Corv entered to search it but were unsuccessful, as Andor had already left through the tunnel as he had seen them approaching through openings in the roof where he was hiding. Meanwhile, the two blocks of the procession had been joined into one and marching into Rix Road, led by the honor guard band and the Daughters of Ferrix.
Simultaneously to the entire parade having assembled into the street, the mournful music piece the band was playing ended and the procession was halted. Seeing them stopping caused the officers watching from the hotel to panic and hurriedly assemble additional riot troopers as well as stormtroopers from inside the hotel into a defensive perimeter in the end of Rix Road by Fountain Square. Suddenly, the band started playing "To The Sky" and the procession marched towards the assembled blockade of troopers following the pace of the music. Ignoring the trooper line, they entered and assembled around the Square, at which point they stopped again and made way for Brasso who was carrying Maarva's funerary stone followed by Maarva's B2 groundmech salvage assist unit B2EMO. As the crowd was chanting "Stone and Sky", B2EMO activated his holoprojector and played Maarva Andor's farewell speech.
Vanis Tigo entered the procession and attempted to shut B2EMO down, prompting a response from the crowd
In her speech, Maarva appealed to her fellow Ferrixians, expressing her love to the planet and pride in belonging to its people. She thanked them for giving her the honor of being "lifted" by the words of those who in the past had been "bricked" and of allowing her to lift them with her own message as well. She then openly accused the citizens of Ferrix, including herself, of "sleeping", not watching the evil of the Empire spreading around them and infecting the galaxy little by little. The speech brought tears to those who heard it, including Paak and Xanwan, while Rael visibly reacted. Tigo, however, became enraged with the openly anti-Imperial message of the speech. Just as Maarva was calling to her fellow Ferrixians to "fight the Empire!", he entered the procession, covered B2EMO's projector with his cape and furiously kicked the droid to the ground. This action sent the crowd to a frenzy.
Ferrixians attacked the Imperials as Army troopers rushed to hold the line
Brasso immediately responded by kicking Tigo in the stomach, sending him flying back, and breaking Maarva's stone in an Army trooper's head while wrestling another to the ground. Around him, fellow residents started punching and kicking the troopers who had attempted to rescue their Captain, while Keysax was powerlessly screaming for them to hold the line. Terrified, Tigo crawled back to the safety of the hotel under the feet of the fighting crowd. At this point, the funeral had escalated into a full scale riot. The troopers formed a wall with their shields which protestors pointlessly rammed, occasionally being grabbed through purposeful openings of the wall by snatch squads waiting on the other side to arrest and detain them. The troopers were using zap rods in addition to batons to injure the protestors, who responded by banging on the troopers' shields and throwing rocks at them. Realizing that the situation had become hopeless, Paak pulled out the bomb from his satchel.
With Keysax powerless to stop him, he threw it towards the hotel. The massive explosion ignited a crate of baradium-core thermal detonators which was lying on the patio. The result was a barrage of consecutive explosions which shattered the glass on the hotel windows, instantly killing Nurchi and the two troopers guarding him, as well as damaging two speeders and demolishing a support column on the hotel's patio. Alerted by the noise, Cinta came running towards the hotel, while protesters and troopers were starting to cautiously stand back up. As the smoke cleared, Rael slowly started to back up from the square as a shaken Tigo ordered the stormtroopers to fire at will against the protestors and Ferrixians were running away from the Square towards the smaller streets around it.
A stormtrooper opens fire at the crowd using a speeder cannon.
Immediately after receiving the order, the stormtrooper squads who were standing by the ceremony opened fire on the civilians from the rooftops and balconies around the square. Some climbed on the remaining speeders and fired their on board cannons, instantly killing many civilians as they were trying to get to cover. Needless, some continued to fight, injuring two stormtroopers and several Army troopers. Xanwan was killed by a stormtrooper as he was trying to stop another from finishing off an injured Daughter of Ferrix whom the trooper had previously shot. Keysax noticed Paak among the crowd still on the scene and ordered two troopers to arrest him. As they were throwing him on the ground, Brasso attacked them with a severed droid's arm, grabbed Paak and dragged him away while Keysax was still shouting commands to the rest of the troopers. B2EMO was also dragged away by Pegla, as it was too damaged to move on its own.
Amidst the chaos, Cassian snuck out of the unguarded hotel with Caleen, whom he had freed from her holding cell, killing a trooper and one of Supervisor Meero's death trooper escorts in the process. Outside, the uprising still continued even as injured Ferrixians were filling the streets trying to get away from the chaos; among them was Corv who was cornered and killed by Cinta Kaz as he noticed her following him. Meero, separated from her escort by the blast tried to fight the crowd with her Power 5 blaster but was assaulted by Ferrixians who noticed her Imperial officer's uniform and thrown to the ground. Struggling desperately to escape, she was taken by a man who grabbed her weapon and led her to an abandoned warehouse; as he shut the door, she grabbed a tool to fight back against him only to realize it was actually Syril Karn who had rushed to her rescue as Paak was throwing the bomb and managed to save her. Shaken, she admitted that she should have thanked him.
Stormtrooper squads killed many Ferrixians during the riot
The riot and subsequent explosions left the Ferrix garrison extremely weakened; their primary base of operations in the Rix Road hotel was severely damaged, most of the support speeders were destroyed and many officers and troopers were dead or severely injured. Additionally, their primary target, Cassian Andor, and his Rebel contact Axis had escaped the scene and the plan to apprehend them had failed.
Many Ferrixians were killed by the Imperial forces in the protest, and many Ferrixian men and women, such as Xanwan. Prominent Ferrixians Brasso, Jezzi and Bix Caleen were forced to abandon the planet along with Maarva's B2 groundmech salvage assist unit B2EMO.
Cassian Jeron Andor, motivated by his adoptive mother's speech and the Imperial's brutality officially joined Luthen Rael's spy network, having motivated the man not to kill him.
The uprising on Ferrix first appeared in "Rix Road."