Correction and apology:
Concord is a habitable world in the Mandalore sector, commonly rendered as Concord Dawn. Concordia is the moon of Mandalore, commonly rendered as Concordia. I mixed up Concord (Concord Dawn) and Concordia—so the "Concord" mentioned earlier should actually have been Concordia.
The mistake in the free chapters has already been corrected. Edits to paid chapters require editor approval, and will be corrected on Monday as well.
I sincerely apologize to all readers. I'm sorry. Going forward, I'll update more and make fewer mistakes—please keep holding me to it.
"In a lot of people's eyes, Death Watch feels more like our kind than the New Mandalorians do," Max said to the room. "Right?"
A lot of heads nodded. One bounty hunter summed it up neatly: "Death Watch are gangster Mandalorians. New Mandalorians aren't even Mandalorians anymore."
"Exactly!" / "That's right!" / "That's it!" / …
"No, no, no." Max waved a hand, correcting him. "Death Watch has an organized structure, and they do enforce internal discipline. Calling them 'gangsters' isn't quite accurate. Death Watch is an extremist militarist terrorist organization."
"Lord Vizsla, so you prefer the New Mandalorians?"
"It's not about liking one side or the other." Max smiled. "I just think Death Watch is far more dangerous. Take our Bespin Mandalorian Protectorate, for example—we can do business with the New Mandalorians, but we have to stay on guard against Death Watch coming to rob us."
At that, a merc shook his head. "Bespin isn't Mandalore under New Mandalorian control. If Death Watch tried to rob you here, they wouldn't end well. Just the battleship we're standing on could wipe out Death Watch—along with Concordia."
Some nodded. Others looked unconvinced. The merc's statement didn't get broad agreement. The long stretch of relative peace across the galaxy had left a lot of people—some of the Mandalorian bounty hunters here included—without any concrete sense of what a true battleship could actually do.
"We will not bombard our own people from orbit. Never." Max's tone hardened. "Mandalorian history is a history of war—either conquering outsiders, or tearing ourselves apart in factional civil war. The last large-scale civil war hurt Mandalorians too badly. I don't want that tragedy—Mandalorians killing Mandalorians—to happen again."
"You might think that way, but Death Watch won't. On Concordia, their rule has always been: join them, or die. When we evacuated Concordia, they even sent starfighters to hunt us down. In my view, Death Watch is a cancer—you should cut them out."
"Yeah!" / "Exactly!" / …
"The New Mandalorians are the ones who sold out our people to the Jedi and the Republic. They're the ones who should be dealt with first!"
"Yeah!" / "Exactly!" / …
The dining hall erupted into argument. Some people were so worked up they slapped the table. Max didn't react—he just kept eating. Only when the arguing sides finally realized it was getting out of hand, stopped, and looked to him as the host did he swallow, lift his gaze, and say:
"Hey, don't mind me. Keep going."
"Lord Vizsla, forgive us." A few higher-status bounty hunters and mercs spoke first; the rest followed with slight bows of apology.
"Nothing to forgive. This is good." Max wiped his mouth and stood, serious now. "All of you gathering like this—different views, said openly, exchanged honestly, learning from each other, finding common ground while respecting differences—that's a good thing."
"If I get the chance, I'd like to bring Duchess Satine and Pre Vizsla here too—New Mandalorians and Death Watch—to sit down and talk. If both sides could drop the prejudice for once… if the Mandalore sector could develop like we've done on Bespin, with civilian life and the military growing together—New Mandalorians focusing on building and development, Death Watch focusing on defense—then why wouldn't Mandalore rise again?"
"Lord Vizsla," the merc leader who'd just apologized earlier asked, "if Satine Kryze and Pre Vizsla won't listen… what will you do?"
"I'll try to persuade them a few more times."
"And if they still refuse to listen?"
"Then we fight." Max said it softly, without emphasis, without gesture. "We keep the option of force on the table when it comes to Mandalore."
At around 17:00 on June 21, Galactic Standard Year 5, the Golden Dragon carrier-battleship dropped out of hyperspace near the edge of the Anoat system, close to the asteroid belt.
"Commander, we've arrived in the operation zone. All preparations are complete. Begin drills on your order!"
"Begin the drills!"
"Yes, Commander!"
"Wait—hold on." Max stopped Captain William Halsey of Garland. "Captain, treat me as a spectator for this. How you run the drills from here is your call. No need to clear it with me."
"Yes, Commander!"
After Halsey left, that same merc leader—who'd been interacting with Max a lot—asked, "Lord Vizsla… it seems like from captain to crew, a lot of the people on the Golden Dragon are veterans like me?"
"The young ones are new recruits. The older ones are older crew, but they're still new recruits too. The captain and the Garland crew in their fifties and sixties—this time last year, they were hostages taken by cultists. From the day our Navy rescued them to the day they joined up—it's only been about half a year."
The merc leader chuckled. "Shouldn't you be keeping that kind of sensitive information from us?"
"Open and honest, right? Nothing to hide." Max didn't bother trying to cover what was obvious—he just leaned into it. "The Bespin Mandalorian Protectorate is short on people. When we first arrived in Sky City we had, what, twenty-something starfighters and everyone was bored. Today? A battleship, a heavy cruiser, four Navy fleets, dozens of Army air squadrons—everywhere you look, we're short. Now that you people are joining, we don't have to deliberately slow Bespin's growth anymore."
"So how do you plan to place us 'Old Mandalorians'?" the merc leader asked.
"Old Mandalorians?" Max repeated, curious. "Is that what you called yourselves?"
"Some called themselves True Mandalorians, but… what kind of 'true' Mandalorian can't go home and has to drift the galaxy?" the merc leader said. "Old Mandalorians is the label most accepted among those of us who kept the warrior tradition but refused to join Death Watch—whether as mercs or bounty hunters."
Then he added, "What you've built here… this is what a real Mandalorian core looks like."
"There's no 'true' or 'false' here." Max waved it off. "We're all Mandalorians. New, old, every faction—if you accept our principles and you're willing to join us to rebuild Mandalore, we welcome you with open arms. I'm planning to set up a private military company. Whatever you used to do, you can keep doing. Escort work, security work for Protectorate companies—hand it all to the PMC. How does that sound?"
"Can we join the military?" the merc leader pressed. "Join your Mandalorian armed forces—Army and Navy."
"We can, of course." Max didn't refuse outright; he just laid it out. "But the military is strict. Rules for everything. The kind of place where even taking a piss needs paperwork. You've lived free as bounty hunters and mercs—could you really get used to the uniform life?"
The merc leader's voice tightened.
"There should be at least a hundred thousand Old Mandalorians scattered across the galaxy. For years, we've either hunted bounties or sold our guns—because fighting is all we know. Since we were kids, it was training or the road to training. The whole point was to become Mandalorian warriors—to defend Mandalore. Then one day the civil war hit. We lost. The winners told us warrior Mandalorians were the disease of Mandalorian society—and exiled us."
His eyes reddened.
"Some people probably adapted to the bounty hunter or merc life. Those might like your PMC plan. But others—like me—are tired of fighting only for credits. Lord Vizsla, if you allow it, I want to be part of the Mandalorian armed forces. Put me wherever you're short. I want to follow you—take Mandalore back—and go home the right way."
"Wooo—wooo—"
A combat alert blared. The Golden Dragon's first-voyage drill was about to begin.
"We're short everywhere," Max said. "We'll see what you're best at and where you want to go, then decide. The drill's starting. Come on—let's watch. After it's over, we'll talk in detail."
-
-
-
-
-
-
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🛡️ STAR WARS: THE RISE OF MANDALORE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🛡️ MANDALORE WILL RISE AGAIN.
A warrior culture divided.
Clans fighting for survival.
A galaxy slowly moving toward war.
And someone determined to ensure that Mandalore will never again bow its head.
Star Wars: The Rise of Mandalore has 100+ chapters ahead available now.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚔️ THIS IS THE WAY OF WARRIORS
🛡️ Mandalorians
⚔️ Clan warfare
🚀 Galactic conflict
🏛️ Politics & strategy
💥 Fleet battles
🔥 Mandalorian expansion
🌌 A changing galaxy
Mandalore has fallen before.
It has been divided before.
But warriors remember.
🔥 100+ CHAPTERS AHEAD.
👉 Witness the rise before everyone else.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌐 SrMagnusCorp: https://srmagnuscorp.com/
🔥 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus
🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/SrMagnuscorp
⚠️ Power Stones help determine future release priority!
🛡️ For Mandalore.