I-5YQ (pronounced Eye-Fivewhycue), or I-Five, was a modified 5YQ-series protocol droid that had his creative dampeners disabled by information broker Lorn Pavan. Finding a kindred spirit in I-Five, Lorn made him his business partner and treated the droid as an equal.
Their partnership would not last, however, as Lorn was murdered by the Sith Lord Darth Maul after the duo became involved in Trade Federation officer Hath Monchar's plot to sell details of the impending Trade Federation blockade of Naboo. Knowing that he would not survive the ordeal, Lorn entrusted I-Five to Sakiyan restaurant owner and small-time criminal Tuden Sal before his death, but was betrayed, as Sal had long coveted the droid. Sal immediately wiped I-Five's memory and set about reprogramming him. But before the reprogramming could occur, Sal was destroyed financially and consequently he sold the droid to a spice smuggler.
During the Clone Wars, I-Five worked as a medical assistant at RMSU-7, where he met Sullustan reporter Den Dhur and Jedi Padawan Barriss Offee. By the end of the Battle of Drongar, I-Five had regained his wiped memories. After the battle, he set for Coruscant to deliver a vial of bota to the Jedi Temple and to fulfill his promise to Lorn Pavan - to watch over his son who had been taken for training by the Jedi Order.
Around 19 BBY, I-Five and his friend Den Dhur were searching the undercity of Imperial Center for the young Jedi. After they found Jax at Rokko the Hutt's stronghold, I-5 convinced Jax to allow him and Den to help him. I-Five and his friend then joined the Whiplash and helped transport beings off of Coruscant. While arranging for safe passage of a light sculptor Ves Volette and his lover Dejah Duare, they got involved in the investigation of Volette's murder. Some time later, Tuden Sal contacted Jax Pavan and his team, hoping to enlist I-Five's help in a plot to assassinate Emperor Palpatine. I-Five agreed after an initial conflict with the other members of the team, hoping to avenge his friend. At the same time, Darth Vader sent the Inquisitor Probus Tesla after Jax Pavan and I-Five. During the Duel at Rainbow Parkway and Gallery Row, Pavan discovered that I-Five had a Force-signature. Аlthough this meant that he could be sensed through the Force, I-Five and Pavan decided to go through with the assassination attempt. However, when their friend Gray Paladin Laranth Tarak and young Force-adept Kajin Savaros were captured by Tesla and Vader, it became a rescue mission. During the following confrontation, I-Five was damaged, but was later repaired by Whiplash mechanics.
I-5YQ was at first owned by a family that assigned him as the guardian of its spoiled children, who would often ask I-Five to jump from the roof to see how high he would bounce. Later I-Five was purchased by information broker Lorn Pavan, who was hoping to find information he could sell. After purchasing I-Five, Lorn made several modifications to the droid, like the ability to shoot lasers from his fingertips, to emitting a high frequency sound that could either cure a hangover or cause debilitating pain. Lorn treated him less like a droid and more like a business partner.
In 32 BBY, Lorn and I-Five came into the possession of a holocron that detailed the planned blockade of Naboo from the Neimoidian Hath Monchar. As a result, Lorn and I-Five were hunted by the Sith Lord Darth Maul, who wanted to recover the holocron. Along with the Jedi Padawan Darsha Assant, the trio escaped to the city's underlevels with the Sith on their trail. After being cornered by the Sith, Assant sacrificed herself to give Lorn and I-Five a chance to escape. Devastated by the Jedi's death, Lorn deactivated I-Five to prevent the droid from accompanying him to avenge Assant. He entrusted I-Five to one of his contacts, Tuden Sal, with instructions to bring I-Five to the Jedi Temple, before going after the Sith. But Sal, who had long coveted I-Five, wiped his memory instead for his own personal use. I-5YQ ended up in the employ of spice smugglers on the Kessel Run, and after authorities seized and sold the droid, he wound up in the employ of a noble family of Naboo.
I-5YQ observes a Sabacc game on Drongar.
Years later, during the Clone Wars, I-Five showed up on the planet Drongar, working as a medical assistant at RMSU-7. There he befriended Sullustan reporter Den Dhur, surgeons Jos Vondar and Zan Yant, nurse Tolk le Trene, and Jedi Padawan Barriss Offee. Under the tutelage of the hard-drinking Dhur, I-Five successfully got himself electronically drunk one night at the Rimsoo's cantina and managed to have one of his arms pulled out of its socket by a Wookiee.
Slowly but surely, I-Five was regaining his lost memories, and by the end of the Battle of Drongar, he remembered nearly everything about his past, including a promise he had made to Lorn, which was to watch over his son, Jax Pavan, who was in training as a Padawan at the Jedi Temple. Upon hearing of this, Offee gave a sample of the wonder drug bota to I-Five and ordered him to deliver it to the Temple for examination so that the droid would have a plausible excuse for shirking his medical duties. I-Five then left Drongar for Coruscant with his new friend Dhur by his side.
I-Five met Jax at Rokko the Hutt's stronghold in the Yaam Sector of Coruscant after impressing Rokko with his sabacc skills. I-Five eventually convinced Jax to allow him to join him, after saving Jax's life several times in an effort to locate the rogue droid 10-4TO, who had been obtained by Prince Xizor, an operative of Black Sun. I-Five, Dhur, Jax, and a Twi'lek Gray Paladin named Laranth Tarak joined the Whiplash resistance group in an effort to assist people who wished to escape Coruscant. I-Five also assisted Jax in the hunt for the killer of Ves Volette, a famed Caamasi light sculptor. The murderer eventually turned out to be the protocol droid of the , in response to the family fortune plummeting due to the purchase of several Volette sculptures.
I-5YQ with Jax Pavan
Around that time Sal learned of I-Five's survival and formulated a plan to use him as an assassin in a plot against Palpatine. At first I-Five was hostile towards Sal, and held him at laserpoint. Dejah, Den and Rhinann were against. Den pointed out that I-Five was an older model than those at Palpatine's court, Rhinann said that the plan was too risky and Dejah told them that if the plan failed, Palpatine's attention would fall on the Whiplash. As Sal presented his plan, I-Five said that he would hear out everyone's opinions before deciding whether he would participate or not, however he would favor Jax's view. Jax said that he doesn't know what his answer will be. After a meeting with Whiplash's leader Thi Xon Yimmon, Pavan decides against. When he told this to I-Five, Jax triggered a message from his father. After listening to the message, he made up his mind and told I-Five that they would go ahead with the assassination attempt.
Meanwhile, Dejah and Rhinann had taken the young Force-adept Kajin Savaros, who Pavan has been training, for a walk, and were attacked by three Inquisitors - Yral Chael, Mas Sirrah, and Probus Tesla. Soon after the battle between the Inquisitors, Kaj and Laranth begun, Jax and I-Five arrived on the scene on Police prefect Pol Haus's airspeeder. I-Five killed one of the Inquisitors with his fingertip lasers. During the battle, both Pavan and Tesla sensed a strange Force-echo coming from I-Five. This made Jax rethink his approval of Sal's plan, since I-Five could be sensed through the Force, and thus was not the perfect assassin Sal thought him to be.
However, Sal still wanted to proceed with his plan and tried to think of a way for I-Five to kill Palpatine, regardless of what Pavan and Tesla thought. He decided the only way to accomplish this would be to strip I-Five of his programming to his basic level, which would have also made it impossible for him to harm an organic being. The only way around that would be for I-Five to have a handler who would reinstate his programing when he was close to the Emperor, thus killing Palpatine. However, when I-Five's sentience is restored, Palpatine would easily be able to sense and destroy him. Jax is concerned for I-Five's soul, and is reluctant to have I-Five's programing removed. While Pavan and Sal argued, I-Five cut in and asked how Sal was planning to get him past the Senate's security. Sal proposes to disguise I-Five as a part of a delegation. Since Pavan insisted on being I-Five's handler, they decided to disguise Pavan as an Inquisitor.
Meanwhile, Laranth took Kaj to a gallery which would serve as a safe house for the young adept. Along the way they were ambushed by Inquisitors and captured. Unknown to anyone, Dejah was the one who had betrayed Kaj and Laranth to Vader. When Pavan found out that Laranth and Kaj were captured, together with I-Five, he went to speak with Yimmon, and Rhinann was left to inform Sal about the change in the plan - from a assassination plot to a rescue mission. While they were planning the operation, I-Five pointed out that Laranth and Kaj were bait for him and Pavan, and proposes a trade - himself for the Gray Paladin and the boy.
They knew that Vader would set some kind of a trap, so they decided to consider it in their plan. When Sal asked to include the Emperor's presence on the site so the droid could kill him, I-Five suggested to leak information about the bota to Palpatine, thus making sure he would be there. In the end, the idea of trade was accepted and they contacted the Dark Lord. It was decided that Dejah would escort the droid, since she had the best chance of keeping Kaj calm and Rhinann. They were escorted by Inquisitors to an abandoned docking chamber control room, where Vader, Tesla, Kaj, Laranth and Palpatine were waiting. Rhinann had wondered why I-Five wasn't firing, before he realized that the Emperor was only a hologram, which promptly disappeared. Vader then asked Dejah who has the bota, and reveals that she was the traitor. While Vader tortures Laranth, Pavan, who had been disguised as one of the escorting Inquisitors, reactivated I-Five's personality. When Vader demanded that Pavan would tell the droid to give him the bota, I-Five said that he did not have it. Vader was interested in the fact that he could read I-Five's intentions as emotions, and that he was very protective of what he holds dear. The Sith Lord then threatened to make I-Five watch as he destroys the droid's friends, unless he told him who has the bota. I-Five had given the bota to Laranth for safekeeping, and after a mental touch by Pavan, she surrendered it to Vader.
When Vader demanded to be given a pyronium crystal Anakin Skywalker had given Jax Pavan years earlier, and the Sith Holocron, I-Five informed him that they don't have it. Although he didn't have the holocron, which contained the information on how to combine the effects the bota and the pyronium, Vader injected himself with the bota. The effect made Vader toss out Force energy in random directions. One of his shots sent a durasteel frame down on I-Five, trapping the droid. Another shattered the window and one hit the EMP field that had been scrambling Laranth's Force-senses, and the other had killed Dejah.
While Pavan battled away Vader's Force blasts, I-Five used the laser in his one remaining arm to work his way free. The arrival of Den Dhur and a Whiplash team led by Yimmon distracted the Dark Lord, and the surprise attack of the enraged Rhinann sent the Sith Lord over the edge of the broken window. The damages inflicted on I-Five were repaired by Whiplash's mechanics, and I-Five received some new modifications - monofilament line, a small automatic slugthrower and the ability to shoot streams of non-lethal gases.
- Power of the Jedi Sourcebook
- The New Essential Chronology
- The New Essential Guide to Droids
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
- The Essential Reader's Companion
- "Blaster" — Star Wars Insider 139