An Impostor of Odan was an Imperial commander on Akuria II during and around the time following the Battle of Yavin. He was the head of Polar Base, the Imperial garrison on Akuria II, and impersonated the local Rebel group leader, Colonel Odan, in order to deceive Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa into giving away the Rebel Alliance's plans. The pair of Rebels eventually realized that he was an impostor, but the man kept Organa prisoner while setting the War Sled on a course to the Geyser Sea with Skywalker tied up inside. The real Rebels rescued Skywalker and helped him save Organa, capturing the impostor in the process. He managed to get away from them when the group attacked Polar Base but was later killed by Skywalker, who was using a captured TIE/LN starfighter.
The officer commanded the Imperial garrison on Akuria II, an ice world in the Outer Rim Territories, where he fought against Colonel Odan and his Rebel cell. At some point prior to the arrival of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, his forces captured the War Sled that was used by the Rebels.
Colonel Odan and Skywalker pursuing the impostor and Organa.
When Skywalker and Organa arrived on Akuria II to meet with Colonel Odan, the Imperial officer had a robotic TIE/LN starfighter shoot down their ship. When a group of native Akurians (also called "Snow Demons") allied with the Akurian Rebels sought to help them, his forces then arrived in the War Sled and "rescued" the two Rebels from their "enemies". Posing as Colonel Odan, the Imperial tried to get the Rebels to give away information on the war plans of the Rebel Alliance. However, the two Rebels noticed that there were signs of a battle having taken place aboard the Sled, and Organa realized that "Odan" never used the proper Alliance recognition codes. The impostor entered the room at that moment, finding out that they know the truth. He had them abandon the War Sled, but locked Skywalker inside, and then set the mobile fortress on a course to the Geyser Sea. He told Organa that he would have the Imperial garrison's strato-hopper stop the Sled from driving into the sea if she told him the Rebel plans. She refused to do so
Meanwhile, Skywalker was rescued by the real Colonel Odan and his Akurian allies. The group then directed an ice worm to attack the imposter and his stormtroopers. The imposter's stormtroopers were defeated, but he sped away inside a snow flyer with Organa. The Rebels chased the flyer and flew alongside it on power skis, allowing Skywalker to jump aboard and open the canopy by shooting its locks with a blaster. The automatic safety system caused the speeder to stop when the canopy opened, at which point the Imperial officer was captured by the Rebels.
The Imperial leader was slain when Luke Skywalker opened fire from his hijacked TIE fighter.
Putting a blaster up to the back of his head, the Rebels were able to get the man to give them the access codes to get into the Polar Base. The Rebels wedged a snow flyer into the open gates of Polar Base and detonated it with explosives, deactivating the energy gates and providing an entryway for a Rebel attack. As the native Akurians swarmed the Imperial stronghold, the impostor was able to escape from his captors into the base to lead his men. However, the base was unable to hold against the the Rebel onslaught and it eventually fell to the attacking Ice Demons. The Imperial commander himself was killed when Skywalker commandeered a TIE/LN starfighter and used it to destroy the blaster cannon emplacement that was housing the commander. With the Imperial officer dead, the Rebels quickly mopped up any further resistance, claiming Akuria II for the Rebel Alliance.
The impostor in Rebel captivity.
The officer was a deceitful man, using manipulation in an attempt to get the Rebels to reveal their plans, and was willing to use threats and intimidation when that did not work. He and his forces were also willing to kill Skywalker in the event that Organa did not cooperate (although he was later rescued by the local Rebels before that could happen). Once captured, he succumbed to threats from the Rebels to use his codes in order to open the gates of the Imperial garrison facility.
The man had fair skin, brown hair, and wore a thick fur coat in the place of a regular Imperial officer's uniform due to the cold climate of Akuria II.
The impostor of Odan appeared in the eight-part comic series The Kingdom of Ice, the writer of which was Archie Goodwin, published from April 1978 until January 1979. His real name was never given, as he was always referred to as "Odan" or, later, as "commander." The impostor was initially introduced in the second installment of the comic series, The Snow Demons, as the local Rebel leader, and was revealed to be an Imperial in the third part, Treachery.