The Covenant (Halo) vs Imperial Warlords (Star wars legends)

[Thelastranger]

This is very much wanted to scenario of mine

In 2540, 15 years after the harvest the entirety of the covenant from ships to stars systems are moved to star wars verse smack in the middle of galactic map, the covenant stretch from outer rim to nearly the core systems.

The timing couldn't have been worse for both sides, it's six years after endor the years of the warlord era as every Moff and grand admiral has scrambled to carve out their own mini empire from Warlord Zsinj, The Brothers Teradoc and the Crimson Command and Grand Moff Ardus Kaine and the Pentastar Alignment. Things go to hell as the covenant recover from the event that has damaged their ships from mild to severe and proceed to declare a crusade on the humans and aliens surrounding them.
The Imperial Warlords surprised, retaliate.


NOTE This is star wars legends

The Covenant Navy have suffered from the Isot 40% of their ships require repair the remainder have minor damage at best

The event and the new star systems have practically severed the hyperspace lanes meaning the imperials can't simply charge into covenant space and their current maps are thrown out.

Scenario 1 The Imperial Warlords just by themselves vs the covenant
Scenario 2 Thrawn takes control of the imperials and get them into a unified force into attacking the new enemy
Scenario 3 The returned emperor initiates operation shadow hand with the first targets being the covenant bringing the super weapons like the world devastators and the eclipse.
This covers both space and ground battles
Bonus scenario: The eclipse 1 and 2 vs the forerunner key ship (The huge ship seen in halo 2)
in a long range engagement.

[Solauren]

Scenario 1 - The Covenant takes the Warlords apart one at a time. They never get over their infighting and are destroyed. Followed by the New Republic. (This is essentially the Vong invasion, but with the Warlords taking the role of the N/R Politics)

Scenario 2 - If Thrawn has what he had at the Start of the Heir to the Empire (high speed cloning), the Empire might be able to check make the Covenant long enough to build up to defeat them.

Scenario 3 - The Empire annihilates the Covenant. Seriously, the Emperor at that point was a Planet Killer by himself. He was creating wormholes and using them for kidnapping (i.e Luke), and Force Storms to to annihilate enemy fleets.

Toss on the Eclipse class (I believe he had 2), Sovereign Class (4), and World Devestators (no idea), and that massive, massive fleet he had, and him potentially calling the Maw Installation and going 'Admiral Daala, it's been 10 years, what have you got for me?' and the Suncrusher getting involved, plus all the Warlords and Thrawn bending the knee, the Covenant is going to get pounded into the ground.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Solauren, I have to disagree. As this is explicitly SW-Legends, then all the old firepower/energy calcs/statements are valid. The Covenant are gonna get flattened. This is a setting where their 600-ish metre "frigates" can have their shields drained completely by a proximity detonation of a 30 Mt Shiva nuke. Those same frigates (or destroyers, or even cruisers) can have their shields drained completely by two MAC hits (which was why the UNSC Pillar of Autumn's burst-fire MAC was so effective), and those are expressly stated as being 600-ton slugs moving at a certain speed (12,000 m/s IIRC), giving a 60-ish kiloton per slug impact energy.

Thrawn, with just his armada during the Heir to the Empire trilogy, can happily squash them. Kaine and his Pentastar Alignment can do likewise with his SSD Reaper and IIRC the dreadnought Dominon and Megador. Even Teradoc, later in the conflict when he's got 70 Victory class can give them a good fight, and can probably out-manouvre them if nothing else.

The Keyship complicates matters a bit, but not much. It's only running at 10% capacity or so, and while it (and the Covenant Supercarriers for that matter) are big, the Empire aren't exactly short on big ships of their own - one Executor quite possibly out-masses the Keyship, and there's a whole bunch of Executors running around.

Scenario 3 is just cruel. Scenario 2 results in the Covenant getting squashed. Scenario 1 might allow them to last a bit longer, but given they enjoy glassing human worlds eventually they're gonna run up against a planet shield that can stop them long enough for Harrsk to go "Hey Teradoc/Zsinj/Kaine, these guys really hate us, maybe we should go fight them." The Covenant simply can't win a straight up fight, and SW hyperdrive is a good bit faster than Covenant slipspace drives, especially if the SW bunch are defending their own territory.

[Solauren]

With Scenario 1 and 2 -
I'm assuming that the Covenant leadership is smart enough, (after realizing the firepower advantage the Empire has), to concentrate all their resources on one Warlord at a time (hoping to capture technology to reverse engineer or otherwise use).
With the Warlords busy fighting each other, any Covenant activity could be written off as 'fortunes of war/bad luck', and not a serious intergalactic/dimensional invasion.

It would be a hard fought war for the Covenant, but if they're lucky, they might be able to pull it off.

Scenario 2 is basically Scenario 1 with a unifying leader, and like I said, the Empire should be able to succeed.

It really depends on how smart the Covenant leadership chooses to be. Remember, they have all their worlds and resources and are unified, so while they are going to crusade, they can afford to be patient for a bit.

The second Sidious shows up, however, it's all over no matter what they do.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ok, I can see your reasoning there. However, this Covenant territory stretches "from the Core to the Outer Rim." I don't think Covenant territory was that big in the games (circa 2540 or otherwise) and with that massive a disruption, plenty of people are going to notice. Maybe they could take out one Warlord if that Warlord's territory happened to be in the middle of the galactic slice the Covenant have just replaced.

It does raise a question though - what happens to the SW worlds and forces that were in the territory the Covenant now occupy? Are they just suddenly fighting, or are they replaced outright? If that was, say, Corellia that vanishes, everyone is gonna notice that!

Covenant stuff is so vastly different to SW norms, and the species themselves unique, that people are gonna stick up and take notice.

Given that the Covenant is an entire, powerful alliance of non-human races, I could see the various Warlords actually uniting to face that threat. Hell, enough of them agreed to a meeting that Daala and Pellaeon were able to murder them all, so they have some semblance of common interest.

EDIT: The reverse-engineering Imperial tech bit also sounds dubious, given that the Covenant are devoted to the Forerunners and ignore everything else, and are "imitative not innovative." If it's not Forerunner, they don't want to know (rather like the AdMech from 40K, if it's not an STC design it's heresy).

[Solauren]

All true.

I'm not saying the Covenant is going to win. I'm saying they have a small chance if they are smart and patient and think the situation through carefully.

[Jub]

All true.

I'm not saying the Covenant is going to win. I'm saying they have a small chance if they are smart and patient and think the situation through carefully.

Intelligent action hasn't exactly been the Covenant's MO. Religious fanatics are rarely the sorts who are patient and cunning enough to exploit and even more fractured enemy's weakness.

[Solauren]

All true.

I'm not saying the Covenant is going to win. I'm saying they have a small chance if they are smart and patient and think the situation through carefully.

Intelligent action hasn't exactly been the Covenant's MO. Religious fanatics are rarely the sorts who are patient and cunning enough to exploit and even more fractured enemy's weakness.

Again, true.

Realistically, the only hope the Covenant has is their leadership changing tactics due to the impossibility of the situation.

I agree, that it's not likely to happen, but it's worth a brief consideration.

[Composeure]

The initial scenario is frankly already a concession of sorts to a certain side over the other (but I digress)

I suspect the initial scenario also gets some details about the Covenant wrong, since I don't think both the UNSC and Covenant combined even made up a large-ish fraction of the galaxy. They would be practically the definition of ""petty empires."" This is not counting some truly abysmal showings in terms of fleets and industry, etc.

Also SW Legends and not the Disney sellout version?? Not even a consideration (other posters here addressed the specifics better already).