The History of Zhyrr Interstellar

The Zhyrr Family
Zhyrr Interstellar started life as the corporate face of the Zhyrr family, a pureblood line originating allegedly from Korriban refugees following the Great Hyperspace War. The company existed largely to legitimise the trade licences and estates of the Zhyrrs and was maintained as a logistics firm operating a small number of lightweight frigate cargo conversions. In these early years the firm served chiefly at the back and call of the Imperial Navy, operating in support of the Empire’s first wave of expansion, moving bulk cargoes of prefabricated colony buildings and construction materials alongside a secondary role of low priority troop transport. Zhyrr Interstellar made a modest if steady profit ferrying the lifeblood of the Emperor’s colonial ambition and Zhyrr prefabricated colonial hab buildings were a common sight on many newly acquired worlds.

As the Empire slowly began to change, the power of the Sith challenged by the emergent Imperial bureaucracy, the day to day workings of the Empire increasingly fell to the council of Moffs and the various other non-sith government departments that increasingly sought to manage their own affairs. Zhyrr found itself slowly marginalised in its roll of Navy logistical support. The new Navy was larger, more integrated, more capable. Its own officer cadre and fleet support arm increasingly flexed its will for independence from direct Sith oversight and the fortunes of the Zhyrr family steadily declined. Zhyrr Interstellar therefore turned it’s eyes outwards from the Empire and sought to operate more unilaterally within the wider galaxy. The newly diversified attitude was only just starting to bear fruit when the company hit its second crisis, this time from within the Zhyrr family itself.

Being an old and modestly wealthy family, many of its sires had often found their ambitions stifled by what came to be seen as the yoke of business. The company made the family powerful in ways that navy or council connections did not, but it also placed a great many restraints upon power. The company must be profitable in order to survive, this simple rule in and of itself ranked against many of the more traditionally minded and conservative Sith, and the necessity of maintaining profitability forced decisions to be made, which some within the bloodline found ideologically unsound.

The Darkside was power without restraint. How could any true Sith accept the mundane pragmatism of corporate reality and expect to gain respect amongst their peers? The malcontents increasingly railed against the ‘shop keepers’ on whom they blamed the family’s steady marginalisation. Finally coming to a head around 3,980 BBY in a spate of fratricidal wars.

Familial War
Aantyr Zhyrr, the then director of the company and second eldest of the bloodline vanished whilst flying his personal starship in a recreational excursion. Aantyr, reputedly a pilot of no small skill, took regular and wholly secret ‘holidays’ to fly his own customised light corvette, exploring uncharted systems and meditating away from the demands of the corporation and imperial politics. Widely disliked by the traditional faction of the family headed by Darth Illythri "Maledict” Zhyrr this conveniently timed disappearance was widely viewed as assassination and both sides began a steady, if covert, escalation of hostilities. The pseudo-war only ending following the intervention of the dark council directly in the person of Kraster Vhar-lohken, Darth Manus.

Taking personal charge of the Zhyrr family assets, Darth Manus put a violent end to the fighting and restored order amongst the bickering Zhyrrs with an iron fist. Zhyrr Interstellar was sold off to pay for damages to Imperial property and to assuage the not inconsiderable disruption caused by what had become an increasingly open and widespread conflict and a large number of the bloodline sentenced to be executed by incineration. The survivors, mostly traditionalists, numbered some dozen or so Sith, a mere fraction of the extended family that had existed as little as a decade earlier.

Zhyrr Interstellar, renamed Imperial Kaas Logistics continued to grow under the management of the newly created Imperial transport bureau, and it’s newly appointed director Sepp Jaeger. The company slowly clawing its way back to profitability. Benefitting from closer working relationships with the wider imperial bureaucracy and newly opened trade routes in the outer rim and hutt space, IKL went from strength to strength, finally surpassing its high watermark just after the events of the Jedi Civil War. IKL merged with another shipping firm and expanded again, diversifying into bulk trade and private military contracting before being acquired by Lord Nazarian Ultaki, adding the company to his already impressive array of assets nominally on the orders of his master, one "Darth Maledict”. Once again Zhyrr Interstellar the company downsized, selling off it’s planetary warehousing interests in favour of expanding its fleet of star ships.