Giles Durane

During the Clone Wars, Giles Durane was a good-hearted idealist. He served with Bail Organa, who saved his life on more than one occasion. Accompanying the senator on a mission to Virgillia 7 during the first week of the war, Durane teamed with Jedi Master Ashka Boda to rescue Jedi Padawan Halagad Ventor and his master, Everen Ettene, from the conflict on the ground. While Ettene did not return from that mission, Durane and Boda successfully extracted Jedi Ventor. Durane even trained Organa's bodyguard, Sateen Vestswe. When the galactic conflict came to an end, Durane was left so poor that when a plague swept his homeworld, he had no money to transport his family off-planet. By the time he made contact with his friend Bail Organa, it was too late. At that point, Durane vowed to himself that he would never be poor or in anyone else's debt again.

Many years later, Organa hired Durane to teach his daughter, Leia, who was serving her first term as an Imperial senator, how to use weapons to be able to defend herself. Though there was little money in it for Durane, he agreed because he owed it to his friend Organa. When Leia arrived on the planet Challon, she met Giles and his partner, Gimlet, and the pair soon saved Leia from an assassination attempt. As Durane explained to her why he was hired, Leia was initially somewhat reluctant, being from the pacifist world of Alderaan. Yet her life was obviously in danger, and as Durane told her, "not all matters can be settled by senatorial debate." During his service to the senator, Durane was given the title of Royal Weapons Master.

Durane took Leia aboard his ship and trained her for a variety of weapons, from a handheld blaster to a ship's laser cannons. After a period of time, Durane spoke with Bail, and both felt that Leia was skilled enough to defend herself, even though Giles thought she could use a bit more "speed and accuracy." As Leia continued with her senatorial business on Challon, General Emir, the man behind the failed assassination attempts on Leia's life, realized that he had hired the wrong assassins; the man who had been killing his assassins was the only man who could kill the senator. With this in mind, he hired Durane to kill Torgas, the head of the Assassins Guild, and to finish his job by killing the senator.

Though Durane warned Gimlet not to alert Leia, his partner tried anyway. However, Torgas arrived first and killed Gimlet just as he approached Leia. Because of this, when Durane showed up to kill Torgas, Leia thought that she was safe—but then Durane told her of his new job. His debt to Bail Organa was paid off, and now he was pure mercenary; he was going to carry out his job, no matter what. However, when Durane fired his blaster at Leia, she spun out of the way and fired back, delivering a fatal blast with the speed and accuracy she had never achieved before. Durane dropped his blaster and fell to the ground. With his dying breath, Durane told Leia that he always knew that someday, in the right circumstances, she'd get it perfect.

Giles Durane was a jovial man. An idealist during the Clone Wars, Durane became more of a cynic after a plague hit his homeworld, killing his family and leaving him poor. Durane vowed to become self-reliant and be indebted to no one. As a mercenary, Durane was incorruptible, always putting his job first.

Still owing Bail Organa for saving his life decades prior, Durane agreed to train Leia Organa to defend herself with weaponry. The skills he taught her served her well—after his debt was paid off, the mercenary Durane took on a job to kill Leia, only to be killed by her own quick blast. He died a man proud of the skilled young woman he had trained.

True to his name, the Weapons Master carried a veritable arsenal of diverse weaponry. The most obvious of these were two light blasters, one at his right hip, the other in a cross-draw rig under his left arm. As well, Durane wore an unobtrusive, wrist-mounted dart launcher on his right wrist capable of firing explosive or poison-tipped darts silently with a wave of his hand. Along the left sleeve of his nondescript hooded jumpsuit was a row of small throwing discs, which Durane could wield with equally deadly accuracy. In a boot sheath Durane kept an imposingly large throwing dagger that he could draw with blinding speed thanks to a magnetic attractor hidden in his gauntlet.

The Weapons Master also carried a multipurpose scanner that could detect the presence of hidden explosives as well as monitoring the remote systems aboard his private ship.

Giles Durane was created by writer Archie Goodwin and artists Carmine Infantino and Steve Mitchell for the story The Weapons Master!, which was published in Marvel UK's Star Wars Weekly 104–106 and later reprinted in Marvel Illustrated Books' Star Wars. Durane also appears in the comic story "The Princess Leia Diaries" in Star Wars Tales 11, but instead of being a huge man as portrayed in The Weapons Master!, he is a much smaller man with darker skin.

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• Star Wars Chronicles: The Prequels
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