Kimmund

Kimmund was the fourth commander of his particular unit within the 1st Legion. Two of the previous commanders had been demoted and retransferred back into the 501st Legion, while the third was executed. As a commander, Kimmund often thought the bulk of his job was to smooth things over with his troops when they received unpleasant orders from the superior officers. He felt that being able to do so was what kept him alive under Darth Vader's command.

After the Battle of Atollon, Emperor Palpatine sensed a disturbance in the Force that was centered on an Outer Rim Territories planet called Batuu. Palpatine ordered Grand Admiral Thrawn and Darth Vader to take the Chimaera there to investigate. Kimmund's unit accompanied Vader on board the Imperial-class Star Destroyer along with the unit's own transport, the Darkhawk, and Vader's personal Lambda-class shuttle. During the early part of their trip Kimmund and his unit had to evict Thrawn's Noghri bodyguard Rukh from their ship, and Kimmund ordered one of his troopers to rig intrusion alarms to the hatches of the ship to keep the Noghri out. On the second time Rukh entered the ship, the alarms were triggered as planned and the Noghri was kicked out much faster.

Along the way Commander Kimmund also met with Commodore Karyn Faro and informed her that the Chimaeras Chief Hangar Master Xoxtin had been less than co-operative in moving Vader's Lambda and First Legion's Darkhawk to landing slots numbers one and two. Faro believed that Kimmund knew that such an arrangement violated the usual navy protocols as the number one slot would have normally belonged to Thrawn's personal Lambda, but she agreed to the commander's demand because Thrawn had instructed his officers to co-operate with their guests and Faro didn't want to let a subordinate to get away with ignoring orders. After the meeting, Kimmund returned to the quarters that had been reserved for him and his unit near the hangar.

He was later alerted by the intrusion alarm rigged to the Darkhawk. When he got to the ship he found two of his unit, Drav and Morrtic, guarding the Noghri outside their ship, where they had found him waiting for the stormtroopers. Rukh had used another trooper's helmet to trigger the alarm after making his way into the Darkhawk and its electronics shop where the helmet had been waiting for a comm upgrade. Kimmund was furious to find out that the Noghri had found a secret way into their ship and swore that, next time it happened, Vader would kill either Rukh or whoever let him slip aboard.

When the Chimaera finally reached Batuu it was only Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn who traveled to the surface of the planet, a decision that created mild confusion in both Kimmund and Rukh, but the two of them were tasked with supervising together the preparation of Thrawn's civilian transport. While the two leaders of the expedition were down on the planet, a group of unidentified vessels appeared in the star system, and after Thrawn refused to reveal Chimaras presence, Vader ordered the First Legion to attack the largest of the incoming ships. Their orders were to capture the ship and its cargo with as little damage as possible, a task in which they were helped by four TIE/d "Defender" Multi-Role Starfighters led by Vult Skerris.

After the Defenders disabled the enemy ship's hyperdrive Kimmund and his troops boarded the vessel. Kimmund himself led the group that targeted the enemy's cargo hold, as their orders were to capture the cargo intact. The stormtroopers were unable to do so, however, as the enemy rigged explosives to their cargo and detonated them before Kimmund's group could breach the hatch of the hold, destroying the cargo as well as themselves. Kimmund noticed that their opponents in general preferred death in battle to the capture, and the only reason they managed to get any prisoners during the battle was because they found three Grysks still working on electronics wipe and were able to stun them before they could get to their weapons.

Kimmund's unit brought the captured freighter and their prisoners to Chimaera, observing their prisoners' reaction when they first saw the Star Destroyer, because Thrawn believed that could be informative. Later Kimmund joined Skerris and Faro for a debriefing with Vader and Thrawn to discuss the things they had learned during the encounter with the Grysks. During the meeting Kimmund questioned the grand admiral about his decision to involve Imperial troops in a battle against the Grysks that didn't seem to bother the Empire in any way—a question Commodore Faro suspected Vader had ordered Kimmund to ask—but the Chiss merely stressed the point that he had the Emperor's trust and that the Grysks indeed were a threat to the Empire.

The Chimaera then returned to the hyperlane where they had earlier encountered a mysterious disturbance that had forced the ship out of hyperspace. After Thrawn had been able to locate one of the gravity generators scattered along the lane, they left the Chimaera to collect more of them while the grand admiral and Vader accompanied Kimmund and his unit to the other end of the hyperlane in Thrawn's freighter. They expected to find Grysk ships waiting there and presented themselves as an inviting target. When the Grysks attacked, the stormtroopers boarded one of their ships with Vader's lead and captured seventeen more Grysk warriors and managed to do so before they could destroy the records of their ship.

When they returned to the Chimaera, Thrawn placed the captured Grysks into personal quarters usually reserved for TIE pilots, who moved to the quarters used by Kimmund's unit. In response Kimmund, Darkhawks pilot Tephan and Sergeant Aksind decided to sleep in their ship, because they felt uncomfortable about leaving the Darkhawk unguarded while the prisoners were so close to it. Kimmund and his two companions were still settling in, when a soft thud warned them that they had company. They discovered that the Grysks had broken out from their makeshift prison and made their way on board the Darkhawk. A brief but intense battle followed, during which Sergeant Aksind died despite of Rukh's timely assistance. The Noghri had noticed the battle and sneaked in through the Darkhawks outside weapons locker, which enabled him to surprise the Grysks from behind and join Kimmund and Tephan in clearing them out of the ship. Despite his previous reservations of Rukh, Kimmund was glad of the Noghri's help in dealing with the Grysks. Only four of the aliens were re-captured during the skirmish, the others were killed.

Only after the battle Kimmund learned that Grand Admiral Thrawn and Darth Vader had intended to let the Grysks escape with one of their ships, which had been rigged with a homing beacon. They had planned to follow the prisoners to their local base of operations, but as he had been unaware of the plan, Kimmund had unintentionally ruined it by preventing the aliens from stealing the Darkhawk. If Thrawn had not spoken in Kimmund's defense, he might have become the second commander of the unit who had been executed for failure. From the Grysks' decision to steal the Darkhawk Thrawn deduced that they also had a base on Mokivj in an old separatist factory, where they could study old Clone Wars era ship like the Darkhawk.

When the Chimaera arrived to Mokivj, they discovered that the Grysks were moving one of the moons out of its orbit. At first Thrawn requested to have the First Legion's troopers assigned to him for a ground assault on the old factory, but Vader insisted that the grand admiral would remain on the Star Destroyer while he would lead the ground operation himself. They entered the building through a crack in the sub-level wall, and continued toward the east wing of the factory. There Vader used his lightsaber to cut open a trapdoor that led up to the factory proper, then used the Force to throw Kimmund and several others from his unit up through the opening. After the stormtroopers, a figure of Darth Vader himself rose through the trapdoor, but it was only an empty spare armor Vader had brought along to spring Grysks' liquid stone attack he expected them to use to trap him. Vader's ruse worked perfectly, the Grysks spent all of their stone carrying insects on the hollow suit of armor, that enabled the stormtroopers to locate and mark the Grysks that were using cloaking devices. When the liquid stone trick had been played out, Darth Vader came up through the trapdoor for real and joined the battle.

Together with Viq and Elebe Kimmund headed to the side from the main battle to find the prisoners they had been sent to rescue. Kimmund drew the attention of the two Grysks who were guarding the prisoners while his troopers approached from the opposite direction, allowing the stormtroopers take out the Grysks without endangering the prisoners. The prisoners themselves were a surprise to Kimmund; they were a group of young Chiss girls, three of who were inside hibernation chambers while five more had been guarded by the Grysks Viq and Elebe had taken out. Kimmund moved the children to the safest spot he could find while his troopers cleared the courtyard of the factory from the enemies, which enabled the Darkhawk to land there safely because Vader didn't want to take the rescued prisoners out the same way the stormtroopers had come in. When Kimmund noticed that there were a number of unfinished gravity projectors lying on a conveyer belt at the side of the room, he hid the girls there and requested that Thrawn would sent down another transport in order to bring all the equipment up to the Chimaera for study. Thrawn denied the request, however, as it was enough for the moment that they had released the prisoners that had been kept in the factory.

During Kimmund's unit's attack on the factory, Thrawn had led the Chimaera in an attack against the Grysks ships that had been moving the moon out of its orbit. Before leaving the Star Destroyer with the stormtroopers, Vader had revealed that while the majority of the Chiss prisoners had been on the surface, a small number of them had also been on the Grysk ships. The ship carrying the prisoners managed to escape into hyperspace before TIE Defenders were able to intercept and disable it, but the rest of the Grysk ships were destroyed by the Imperials. After the battle Thrawn persuaded Vader to use the Force to navigate Chimaera through hyperspace to where the main Grysk force was hiding and where they were taking their remaining prisoners.

The Chimaera reached the unnamed system the Grysks were using as a base ahead of the Grysk vessel that had escaped them in Mokivj. The Imperials planned to ambush the Grysk ship when it arrived using the Darkhawk and one of the TIE Defenders flown by Darth Vader, while the Chimaera prepared to battle against the two main Grysk ships that had been waiting in the system. The ambush worked and Vader was able to destroy the engines of the Grysk ship before the enemy knew what had hit them, and then the stormtroopers brought the Darkhawk in for a boarding.

Despite his earlier anger toward Rukh, this time Kimmund welcomed the Noghri as a part of the boarding party. Rukh's keen sense of smell would help the stormtroopers to locate the captive Chiss faster and the personal cloacking device would make the Noghri an effective surprise weapon they could throw at the Grysks. Kimmund left two stormtroopers to guard the Darkhawk while the others and Rukh entered the enemy vessel. Before they found the main Grysk force and their captives, Kimmund lost two of his troopers to enemy fire and Jid was incapacitated by a direct hit from the Grysks' lightning gun and the commander was forced to leave him behind.

Soon after that the stormtroopers reached the passage that led to the compartment where the Grysks kept the Chiss girls. The passage itself offered no cover for the troopers and Kimmund was convinced that the Grysks were waiting at the end of the passage, ready to launch their trap. Kimmund was not happy with the situation, but they had been ordered to recover the prisoners, so he arranged his remaining stormtroopers to a formation and they got ready to breach the door. Before they got that far, the Grysks opened the door from the other side, revealing six of them, ready to fire against Kimmund's group. All the enemy shots, however, went wide because Rukh had made sure his cloacking device still had a few moments worth of energy left, and attacked the Grysks unseen using his electrostaff. When Kimmund realized what the Noghri had done, he ordered his troops to take only head shots in order to keep their alien ally out of the harms way. His attempt to protect Rukh wasn't completely successful, because the Noghri's right leg took some damage from the blaster fire, but Rukh was still functional enough to travel.

In the room behind the Grysk defense line they found the two prisoners, scared but unharmed. As Kimmund was trying to convince the girls to leave with the stormtroopers—the children couldn't understand Basic—when one of them pointed to a hidden gunport that opened to reveal a Grysk weapon. Knowing now that the girls were sensitive to the Force and could see to the future, Kimmund reorganized his troops for the way back to the Darkhawk, placing Drav and Morrtic in front, the girls behind them and Sampa and Elebe behind the girls, while he and Rukh would guard the rear of the formation. As the girls warned the troopers of any incoming Grysks attacks, Kimmund found himself thinking he might actually get used to that kind of fighting.

When the unit returned to the Darkhawk Kimmund reported their success to Grand Admiral Thrawn, who didn't think it worth the trouble to destroy the Grysk ship as it was disabled and would not be able to join the battle. Their main mission completed with the rescue of the girls, the Darkhawk joined the space battle following Vader's TIE Defender squadron and other TIE fighters in battle against Bogey Two.

Commander Kimmund was a human male. He was loyal to the Galactic Empire and the First Legion he served, as well as to the stormtroopers who served under his command. He believed that being incapacitated by Grysks' lightning guns and see his entire unit cut down would be worse than being killed outright. In general, Kimmund wasn't entirely happy that Thrawn used Imperial resources to rescue the members of his own species, but when the Force sensitive girls proved useful in battle, he soon got used to working with them, just as he had earlier learned to work with Rukh after the Noghri helped the stormtroopers to defend the Darkhawk. He was quick to recover from surprises and didn't let unexpected events to distract him from his mission and duty. He was also very observant, noticing how different the general atmosphere on Chimaera was compared to most of the other ships he had served on, and deducing that the difference was due to Thrawn's unique style of leadership.

Kimmund first appeared in the 2018 novel Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn.