After getting my AgriCorps Jedi impression mostly ironed out last year, I started kicking around the idea of picking up a second persona, something Rebel Alliance-related during the Galactic Civil War period (because that’s Where It’s At, of course!). Eventually, after some quality research time and a bit of creative synthesis, I came up with something that I think works just fine.
Earlier this spring, I discovered the world of pirated SW audiobooks available on youtube. I was especially interested to see one called Battlefront: Twilight Company, apparently roughly based around the 2015 DICE game. Despite being New!Canon, I didn’t think it was that bad, and it made for above-average background noise while I was busy painting propaganda posters!
However, the focus on a specific unit (the ‘61st Mobile Infantry’) of the Rebel Alliance military was somewhat inspiring for my purposes…it’s been a long time since we’ve had a pure, Jedi-free, frontline war story—I feel like the Republic Commando game might be the last example. (the game was fun, but as the special-est of the special forces, Delta Squad isn’t exactly the ‘commoner’s perspective’ I try to portray).
I don’t think we’ve ever seen a unit like Twilight Company depicted before—or at least I can’t think of any. The mobile part of Mobile Infantry implies that such troops go where Alliance High Command’s generals send them, ‘on campaign’ as it were, traveling far and wide to fight the Empire. However, such actual front-line troops only seem to be so much cannon fodder for the proverbial meatgrinder, and to me feel less ‘rebel alliance’ and more ‘nation-state’s standing army’.
As I came to realize during a relaxing barefoot trail run (most of my best thinking happens when my body is in motion and my mind is free to defrag), what I really wanted to portray would be some sort of military-adjacent impression, during the GCW period, but without being limited to gear assemblages that are known onscreen (such as the Ep IV Rebel fleet trooper, Ep V Hoth trooper, or Ep VI Endor trooper) and have therefore been costumed to death. In other words, I want an impression where I can shoot stormtroopers from rooftops and from behind trees, without having to put together yet another Endor jungle commando kit!
“Perhaps”, I wondered, “something akin to the relationship during the Second World War between an otriad and the Soviet Army proper; or like when the US sends in aid or ‘advisors’ to train and/or arm local resistance, such as with the Mujahadeen in the 1980s, or the Kurds currently.”
As I wrote in my notes following that trail run, “Were there any ‘partizan’ rebel units? Hodgepodge gear, some material support from RA HQ, but somewhat outside the chain of command?”
Naturally, as soon as I got home to search the Wook for ‘partisan’, I learned that in Disney!canon, Forest Whittaker’s crew in Rogue One are called Saw Guerra’s Partisans….which suddenly made researching prior EU material extremely tedious, because now I had to wade through pages and pages of his folks.
However, some deft Google-fu turned up a most unlikely source (which I may have previously been wary of, but have since become much more friendly towards): mid-‘90s RPG sourcebooks to the rescue!
As I read in the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook (West End Games, 2nd Ed., 1994, p.21), ‘Sector Forces’ were units of local resistance that were semi-autonomous, restricted to their own sector, and in charge of their own organization and assets. These groups would ideally receive rudimentary guerilla-warfare training from Alliance SpecForces (which, if the advisors included Wilderness Fighters, could conceivably include survival training, which means I could also use this persona to teach/demo survival skills, as I had done with my AgriCorps impression). Perfect!
I was on the right track!
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 