Blackstar Squad was a squad of commandos in the Republic Army's Special Forces Division during the Cold War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire. Specializing in covert operations, the Blackstars undertook missions in hostile environments such as Hutta during the Cold War, and the squad was led by Sergeant Donbar until Larin Moxla reported her superior's corruption in 3643 BBY. Both Moxla and Donbar were dismissed from the army as a result, though the squad itself remained in service. General Elin Garza, the head of the Special Forces Division, later lent the Blackstars to General Var Suthra for a cover mission on Nar Shaddaa to repay a favor.
A commando squad in the Special Forces Division of the Republic Army, Blackstar Squad was formed sometime before the year 3645 BBY. That year, during the Cold War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire, the Blackstars were deployed to the planet Hutta, the homeworld of the neutral criminal syndicate known as the Hutt Cartel, on a covert mission. Another mission sent the squad into an urban guerrilla firefight that went bad when intelligence was leaked, and four members of the squad—including a Kiffar named Larin Moxla—were caught in a trap. They managed to escape the fighting with only minor injuries, and bacta treatments brought them back to full readiness. Moxla eventually decided to report her commanding officer Sergeant Donbar's corruption in 3643 BBY and Donbar was dismissed from service, but Moxla earned the nickname "Toxic Moxla" and was soon dismissed from the army as well.
That same year, General Var Suthra of the Republic Military was involved in a military crisis involving superweapons stolen by the Sith Lord Darth Angral. When he learned that Angral's apprentice Sadic had wiped out the branch of the Republic Strategic Information Service—the Republic's intelligence agency—that was stationed on the moon Nar Shaddaa, Suthra contacted the Special Forces' leader General Elin Garza for aid. Repaying a favor to the Mon Calamari general, Garza dispatched the Blackstars to the moon in order to reinforce the young Jedi Knight who was pursuing Sadic and the stolen Power Guard supersoldier project. The Blackstars were placed under the command of SIS Special Agent Korol Tander, who tailed the Jedi Knight to Sadic's laboratory and brought the squad in to reinforce the Jedi.
Finding that Sadic had already been defeated, the squad followed the Knight's orders and destroyed the facility with explosives, permanently destroying the Power Guard project and ensuring that it would never be resurrected.
A Special Forces squad, the members of Blackstar Squad wore light combat armor of a dark grey color with orange and white markings. The Blackstars also wore helmets with black visors and built-in breath masks, and carried blaster rifles in combat. The squad was trained extensively in covert operations, extractions, slicing, and demolitions.
Blackstar Squad was first introduced in Sean Williams' 2008 novel The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance, the first in a series of tie-in novels for the BioWare video game Star Wars: The Old Republic. The squad's appearance in the Jedi Knight class mission "Showdown with Lord Sadic" marked one of the first times that content from Fatal Alliance was referenced in the rest of the The Old Republic metaseries, as the novel's characters and events have largely been ignored in the game and other material. Agent Tander identifies the commandos as Blackstar Squad, but the commando NPCs themselves are named "Black Star Commandos". The squad can be ordered to either destroy the Power Guard project for light side alignment points, copy the files for dark side points, or sabotage it for dark side points. However, as the Jedi Knight is a Republic class and is therefore assumed to make only the moral light side choices, this article assumes that the Power Guard project was destroyed.