Daro was a terrestrial planet located in the Outer Rim Territories. It was covered primarily in forests that enveloped its mountainous terrain, and the available galactic information on Daro implied that the planet was uninhabited, housing no settlements or installations. Daro was therefore perfect for housing secrets, and in 19 BBY, the Galactic Empire occupied the planet and established a top-secret military base inside a mountain as part of Project War-Mantle, aiming to replace its clone trooper army with conscripted soldiers. The facility was populated by a team of fifty clone commandos who trained the Empire's next generation of Imperial troopers, the TK stormtrooper.
Early into training his recruits, the clone commando Gregor attempted to leave the base and desert the Empire. While he was caught and imprisoned, he planted a distress beacon outside the facility, and its signal reached the former Clone Captain Rex. Unable to retrieve Gregor himself, Rex instead sent the rogue commandos of Clone Force 99 to Daro. When the squad arrived, they discovered and entered the Empire's facility, freeing Gregor from prison. The clones were detected by Imperial forces, with squads of stormtroopers and commandos trying to stop them. The team eventually departed Daro with the exception of their leader, Hunter, who was captured by the Empire.
Daro's verdant and mountainous landscape
Daro was a terrestrial planet located in the New Territories portion of the Outer Rim Territories, situated in grid-square N-6 on the Standard Galactic Grid. Featuring a Type I atmosphere that was breathable to humans, Daro orbited a star. The planet's surface was covered in vast verdant forests and jungles of pine trees, ferns, and other plants, which were home to carrier butterflies and massiffs. The thousands of trees engulfed Daro's landscape, which was peppered with towering rocky mountains and buttes, the cliffs of which were in turn enveloped by the trees' expansive roots. The planet featured snow-covered portions at its topmost regions as well as numerous bodies of water of variable sizes that were scattered throughout the forested areas.
Gregor attempted to leave Imperial training on Daro.
In the early days of the Galactic Empire's reign in 19 BBY, the planet Daro was officially classified by galactic files as uninhabited, with no recorded installations or settlements. Since the data on Daro made it suitable for secret operations, the Empire occupied the planet and established a top-secret military base inside one of its mountains, in the process fortifying it to nearly unimpregnable levels. The facility was used as part of a high-priority training program codenamed Project War-Mantle, aimed at replacing and retiring the Galactic Republic's grandfathered clone trooper army with a more cost-effective military of conscripted soldiers brought in from across the galaxy. To carry out the strategy, a contingent of fifty clone commandos and clone officers was sent to Daro to train the first one thousand recruits, destined to become the next generation of Imperial soldiers—the TK stormtrooper.
Shortly into training, the Imperial clone commando CC-5576, named Gregor, attempted to desert. After breaking out of the base, Gregor was chased by stormtroopers who used massiffs to track him. In the nighttime pursuit, the commando was incapacitated by the Imperials and dragged away into a shuttle, to be summarily imprisoned at the facility. Before being taken away, Gregor planted a distress beacon that relayed a signal to the former Clone Captain Rex, who had been leading a resistance network against the Imperial regime. Occupied by more pressing matters, Rex contacted the rogue clone commandos of Clone Force 99, nicknamed the Bad Batch, tasking them with taking his place in rescuing his old friend. The former captain provided the Bad Batch, aboard their shuttle, the Marauder, with the signal beacon before signing off. The group pinpointed the beacon's location on Daro and briefly argued about whether to carry out the mission due to the limited information, with Daro reported to be uninhabited. The clones ultimately decided to go to the planet.
Clone Force 99 took Rex's place in rescuing Gregor.
The Marauder subsequently exited hyperspace and descended into Daro's atmosphere, flying low over the surface to avoid any potential tracking scanners. Landing in the planet's forests, the Bad Batch disembarked from the shuttle and began searching for the beacon, with the young female clone Omega eventually finding it while Wrecker wondered where the missing trooper was. Using his tracking capabilities, the squad's leader, Hunter, surveyed the area and discovered the trooper had been taken captive after a pursuit, heading in the direction the latter had been dragged away in. As the squad followed him, Hunter further used his enhanced senses and realized something had been built into the mountain, leaving the clones confused due to Daro supposedly being uninhabited. Since their scanners were being jammed, Omega and Wrecker were ordered back to the Marauder while Hunter, Tech, and Echo proceeded to scale the mountain, where they discovered the Imperial base.
Moving in closer, the squad spotted a number of clone commandos leading groups of what they believed were clone troopers with updated armor. Hunter nearly called off the mission as the Bad Batch was unsure whether CC-5576 was even alive and they would have to infiltrate the base without information or reinforcements. However, he recalled how they had rescued Echo in a similar manner before. The squad then entered the base via turbolift and lost communication with their shuttle, sneaking through corridors to avoid Imperial troopers. They reached a control terminal, where Echo breached the new Imperial encryption and found the muster report listing the base's personnel. Further probing the base's network, Echo was able to locate CC-5576 at a holding cell in Cellblock 25, four levels down from the infiltrators' position.
Clone Force 99 attempting to leave the Imperial base with Gregor
The Bad Batch entered the cell block and knocked the on-duty guard unconscious, proceeding to deactivate the ray-shielded entrance to the cell and then return with CC-5576—learning his name in the process—to the turbolift. In an attempt to avoid other Imperial squads that he discovered were gathering for an inspection, Tech staged a diversion to redirect them; he issued a Code-16 across the facility from a central computer, but since Republic codes no longer worked, it also triggered a security alert that drew stormtroopers to their location. Chased across the sixth level, the Bad Batch incapacitated several stormtroopers and realized their attackers were non-clone soldiers, who Gregor explained had been recruited to replace the clone army.
Hunter was taken prisoner by the Galactic Empire in the rescue.
Fleeing more Imperial units, the Bad Batch traded blaster fire with their pursuers until they entered the turbolift. While heading up to the main level, Gregor explained that the Empire wanted to replace the clone troopers of the Republic with an endless supply of less effective conscripted soldiers. At the topmost level, the turbolift exposed the Bad Batch to another squad of stormtroopers that was led by the clone commando Scorch, forcing them to retreat downward and take an alternate route while being chased by Scorch's squad. Scorch briefly stopped the Bad Batch as he blasted Gregor before being stunned unconscious himself. Met by yet another squad, the Bad Batch fled into a control room that they realized was connected to the outside via reactor vents, and the clones proceeded to the exhaust port where they could contact the Marauder for an extraction.
At the exhaust port, the squad hailed Omega and Wrecker to be retrieved. While the infiltrators waited for the shuttle, a group of stormtroopers breached the control room and notified Imperial forces of their target's location, pursuing them as Low Altitude Assault Transport/infantry gunships and V-wing starfighters were mobilized to intercept. Wrecker provided cover fire from aboard the Marauder to hold off the stormtroopers, giving Gregor and Tech time to board the shuttle, with the latter taking the ship's controls as aerial forces descended upon them.
Crosshair comes to Daro for Hunter.
Tech then steered the Marauder away in order to draw the Imperial starfighters away from the mountain, leaving Hunter and Echo to fend off the stormtroopers and engage a clone commando in hand-to-hand combat that sent the latter off the cliff. The shuttle dispatched multiple Imperial fighters in pursuit but suffered heavy damage to its engines and began losing power and its deflector shields. Eliminating the other fighters, the Marauder pulled back to the exhaust port, where Echo boarded the ship, but Hunter slipped and fell into the forests below after the shuttle shook from the blaster fire of another starfighter unit. After Imperial troopers took Hunter prisoner, he ordered the Bad Batch to depart Daro for hyperspace, which the group initially refused. Hunter was then brought inside the Imperial facility. Not long afterward, the Imperial Clone Commander and former Bad Batch member Crosshair received word of the capture and traveled to Daro. Although he had hoped that the whole squad had been captured, Crosshair nevertheless took Hunter into his custody as part of a plan to lure the other clones. Around 18 BBY, Rex brought the Clone X trooper CX-1 to his network's base in the B'omarr Monastery on the planet Teth and questioned the latter on where other troopers of his type was based, including whether it was on Daro.
Daro was inhabited by humans. The Galactic Empire's military facility on the planet was populated by a force of fifty clone commandos and one thousand non-clone soldiers, as well as other clone officers.
While Daro was officially listed as uninhabited, the Galactic Empire established a secret military training facility inside one of its mountains early into its reign. The mountain's natural composition significantly fortified the base and made it difficult to escape, with the facility only having two exits: one upward and one through the reactor exhaust port.
Concept art of Daro's surface
Daro was introduced in "War-Mantle," the fourteenth episode of the Star Wars: The Bad Batch animated series' first season, which was written by Damani Johnson and aired on Disney+ on July 30, 2021, serving as the episode's primary setting. Lucasfilm Animation's Jim Moore made concept art of Daro's full planetary overview titled "planetballDaro," as well as three concept illustrations of mountain buttes, dated to May 5, 2020. Fellow Lucasfilm Animation artists Jason Pichon, Matthew Mossman, and Colas Gauthier created concept illustrations of the buttes and forests of the planet in addition to the mountain butte base, respectively dated to May 4 and May 6 of the same year.