Chapter Text
They started calling him Mand’alor as a joke.
Ten years ago, on Nar Shaddaa, Jaster was but a humble beroya with a modestly sized mercenary company of seven, and they were celebrating. The closing of a big job meant funds for food, fuel, indulgence, and Jaster found generous room in the budget for a night of drinking and celebration. Mid-celebration, some hapless fool poked fun at him for playing white knight, and Jaster would take absolutely any excuse to launch into a lecture about the Canons of Honor and the Resol’nare. Walon Vau had known Jaster since Concord Dawn and knew from experience that Jaster, when started, would not shut up about it for the following four hours. To avert this, Vau had shoved one big fucking paw around his shoulder and proclaimed him Mand’alor, to riotous laughter.
Ha! Ha! How funny! Jaster Mereel, Mand’alor, sole king of seven!
The day that Jaster looked around and realized that the people who called themselves the Haat’ade could populate a small town, he began to realize that shitty joke had started to become a reality.
If he'd known, he would've strangled Vau a decade ago before he could open his fool mouth.
The whole idea spirals far beyond Jaster’s control immediately. Word-of-mouth is powerful among bounty hunters, and suddenly everybody seems to know his Codex, embarrassing as it is. More and more people recognize him and follow his words—a pleasant medium between outright terrorism and the complete rejection of their culture.
It seems that everybody knows who he is and what he wrote.
Kyr'tsad sits up and takes notice.
Suddenly, incidences of random attacks against people who call themselves Haat’ade flood the news channels. Bombings, shootings, the destruction of homes and compounds—his party of bounty hunters swells to a group then a fleet, and before he knows what he's doing, he's amassed a small army of people who heard some idiot running his mouth and decided that was exactly what they wanted to do with their lives.
Okay.
Okay.
Fine.
But they need to eat. Sleep. They need a place to live that isn't also a cargo hold, no matter what these idiots say. Jaster can't sustain this many people with just mercenary work, and they have families and loved ones to take care of.
So, many years later, when Jaster is chasing down Tor Viszla through the halls of his compound on Concordia, he does sort of look around the structure like a man looking to buy a house.
He loses Tor because this building was clearly built by a psychopath. The halls veer off in odd angles, a maze without any clear order or sense. Strange little half-size staircases leading up to rooms seemingly between-floors generously dot his path. He stumbles into what would make sense to be an armory, except it looks like someone's bedroom? Apparently designed to maximize paranoia.
With his bucket flattening his intonation, he thinks he hides his opinion of the place pretty well when he suggests they repurpose it into a terrestrial base. Even a temporary one. Please. He's pretty sure there's a threshold for a certain amount of combat spacecraft to gather and travel together in a group that qualifies them as a paramilitary unit even by Mandalorian standards, and they reached it long ago. Please, Mij, there are so many children traveling with them. They need like. Socialization. Entertainment. Education. Something that isn't just hiding out in a ship playing with firearms while their parents go off to kill someone every other planet.
He proposes the idea to a stock-still Mij, who was not part of the assault and should have no idea what kind of nightmare the place is. Mij looks him as dead in the eye as a man wearing a helmet can and asks what form of creepy sex dungeon he's uncovered in the base.
Jaster’s nervous laughter convinces nobody.
They blow the Death Watch base into slag, make a celebration of it, and move into the Skirata clan compound. Temporarily. Probably.
The obvious thing to do would be to settle near Jaster’s hometown. Somewhere he has a strong base of support. Somewhere reasonably safe, where he can actually think about this thing for a full contiguous hour without getting shot at or having to shoot someone. Unfortunately, Clan Mereel and its accompanying compound is about six people and based on Concord Dawn, where Jaster is technically a 'felon' and 'wanted for first-degree murder.'
So when Jaster puts his foot down and says that they need a terrestrial home base—somewhere safe and defensible for kids to grow and people to practice their crafts, whatever they may be—he has no idea how to go about acquiring such a place.
He and his army sort of end up couch-surfing for a while. They wander around, staying near friendly clans and pitching camp here and there. They don't try to behave like an occupying force, but the sheer volume of them is a lot. Incidentally, they pick up a lot of people on the way, which is probably not what he should be doing before they have, like, housing.
Truthfully, they come across decent enough locations, but Death Watch complicates the venture wherever they go in the Mandalorian system. The Haat’ade can take care of themselves, but he'd rather not build a place that will be insta-bombed the moment they settle in.
They're still semi-nomadic when someone leaks footage of Tor Viszla wielding the Dha'kad.
Suddenly, a home base isn’t really a big concern.
It isn't for quite a while.
Their base, when they finally, finally, get one, after a grueling war and acquiring a foundling and finally killing Tor-fucking-Viszla, is in Keldabe. Jaster hadn't really considered Manda’yaim proper because Evaar’tad would surely kick up a fuss, but it turns out a lot can be accomplished by having a great deal of guns and explosives. Especially after a war like this one.
Keldabe is excellent. It’s central. Populous. Rich enough to sustain the numbers the Haat'ade have grown to. It makes a good port throughout the Mandalorian system. It's a city steeped in history and a great deal of discontent with Evaar’tad, presiding over them from a distance. When the Haat’ade come, they're welcomed. The nominal governor steps down without a word. Which is actually a bit troublesome because they just wanted a home base, not a whole government.
They set up base in the old capitol building—rendered defunct when the capital was moved to Sundari—and it seems that this is enough for the galaxy to consider him a contender for planetary leader, which is actually not really on Jaster’s list of priorities.
For Adonai, his word on this was enough. For Adonai’s newly-crowned daughter, his word means nothing.
They're suddenly inundated with requests for ambassador visits, negotiations, furious, fearful Evaar’tade shaking in their sandals or whatever and demanding to know his intentions, then not believing him when he tells them.
Evaar’tad keeps switching out ambassadors, like having someone different do the exact same thing will make any difference in the outcome. It's like they want him to declare himself a tyrant with the way they carry themselves.
Jaster is in the midst of one of these meetings with the most recent diplomat when Jango walks in with a holopad.
He sees the ambassador and tries to walk right the fuck back out.
“Jango,” Jaster calls. Jango turns his head in a way which conveys murder without even needing to see his face. “The pad?”
“It's not that urgent.”
“Give me the pad.”
“I just realized I can just deal with it myself—”
“Jan’ika.”
He turns back to Jaster with the air of a sulking teenager. The envoy—Jerec or whatever—looks like he might faint, though frankly, he’s spent the whole visit terrified of anything that moves or shines.
Jango hands over the pad.
It seems only fitting that it has footage of a jetii beating the shit out of a patrolman timestamped from earlier that day.