"Or Die Trying" is a short story by Sean Williams and Shane Dix that features the Jedi Knight Jaina Solo infiltrating the headquarters of Onadax Droid Technologies on the planet Onadax. The company has manufactured a Human replica droid (HRD) that betrayed the citizens of Bakura, and Solo hopes to bring them to justice for the crimes committed by their clients. She confronts an HRD named Stanton Rendar and engages him in a discussion regarding the moral implications of immortality and near-invincibility, but ultimately remains firm in her convictions and prepares to apprehend him. Rendar looses a group of battle droids on Solo and sets the compound to self-destruct, but she defeats the droids and escapes while Rendar flees the planet.
"Or Die Trying" included a full-page illustration by Leanne Buckley in its publication in the seventy-fifth issue of Star Wars Insider. The issue was made available to subscribers on March 19, 2004, followed by a release to newsstands on April 6. In 2003, Williams and Dix had written the Force Heretic trilogy, three volumes of The New Jedi Order book series; "Or Die Trying" is set between the trilogy's second and third installments. The six-page story builds on the continuity of Force Heretic and additionally ties up several loose ends of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, such as the fates of Dash Rendar and Guri from 1996's Shadows of the Empire multimedia project. "Or Die Trying" was also published in the fifty-ninth issue of Star Wars: The Official Magazine, and later went on to be archived online as part of StarWars.com's Hyperspace fan club. Its characters and events have since been mentioned in several reference guides.
Jaina Solo destroys Stanton Rendar's battle droids.
In the year 28 ABY, Jaina Solo—a Jedi Knight of the New Jedi Order—is on the planet Onadax on a mission to infiltrate the headquarters of a company called ODT. She is part of a group of representatives from the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances that has come to Onadax from Bakura after helping foil an invasion of that world by the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium—the invasion was made possible by a Human replica droid (HRD) that was in league with the Ssi-ruuk, and Solo hopes to confront the creators of the droid. After using the Force to alter the compound's security guards' perception of her, she enters the main building with a stolen security pass and follows the Force presence of an HRD to a room. The HRD calmly greets her, and Solo asserts that he is responsible for endangering the people of Bakura. The HRD counters that his company cannot be held accountable for what its clients do after receiving HRD bodies and deflects Solo's claims that the HRD procedure allows criminals to indefinitely put the galaxy at risk.
The HRD introduces himself as Stanton Rendar, a formerly dead Human who was resurrected into an HRD body, and tells Solo the history and mission objectives of ODT, also known as Onadax Droid Technologies. Believing that every sapient being has the right to life, they create HRDs for wealthy clients with wishes of immortality and use the Ssi-ruuk's entechment process to transfer their souls into the droid bodies. Nonetheless, they operate in secrecy, believing that the galaxy would not understand. Rendar offers Solo an HRD of her own, but she envisions an army of invincible dark side–using HRDs and steadfastly refuses. She prepares to apprehend him, but Rendar has anticipated her refusal and sends a group of battle droids after her as he flees the planet in a prepared shuttle. Solo swiftly destroys them with her lightsaber and is forced to also flee from the exploding building that Rendar has programmed to self-destruct.
"Or Die Trying" takes place between the events of Force Heretic II: Refugee and Force Heretic III: Reunion.
In 2003, authors Sean Williams and Shane Dix wrote the Force Heretic trilogy, three novels that respectively served as the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth volumes in The New Jedi Order book series. Refugee, the trilogy's middle installment, features a plot that takes place on Bakura, in which Galactic Alliance representatives Han Solo, Leia Organa Solo, Jaina Solo, and several others discover that the planet's Prime Minister, Molierre Cundertol, has been promised immortality and undergone the Ssi-Ruuvi entechment process in order to have his soul transferred into a Human replica droid. After helping foil his plans, the Solo family are told by an ally, the Ryn Goure Conor, to proceed to Onadax and meet with another member of the information-gathering Ryn Network. The Force Heretic Trilogy's concluding novel, Reunion, opens with the Solos already on Onadax. In a 2003 interview with TheForce.Net, Williams and Dix indicated that they were interested in writing a short story based on a small section of Reunion, but that there had been no official discussion on the subject.
The New Jedi Order wrapped up in November of 2003 with James Luceno's novel The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force. Nevertheless, Williams and Dix wrote "Or Die Trying," a short story that took place in the New Jedi Order era between Refugee and Reunion but was not officially part of The New Jedi Order series. The story was published in the seventy-fifth issue of the Lucasfilm Ltd. magazine Star Wars Insider, which was released for subscribers on March 19, 2004 and to newsstands on April 6. Including a full-page illustration by Leanne Buckley, "Or Die Trying" is a six-page tale that introduces an additional reason for the Solos to have traveled to Onadax: they are following a trail of credits that Cundertol laundered off of Bakura in order to have his Human replica droid built. Onadax Droid Technologies, the company that built the droid, is known only as "ODT" during the opening pages of the story, an acronym that also applies to "Or Die Trying"'s title. The story was also included in Star Wars: The Official Magazine 59, and it was later published online for members of StarWars.com's Hyperspace fan club.
While they were writing the Force Heretic Trilogy, Sean Williams and Shane Dix were eager to reintroduce characters and elements from past stories of the Star Wars Expanded Universe that had not appeared in some time and whose fates were unresolved. Williams thus spent time researching dangling story arcs that he felt were ripe for being further explored. "Or Die Trying" addresses the fates of Guri and Dash Rendar, major characters from the 1996 Shadows of the Empire multimedia project. The 1998 comic series Shadows of the Empire: Evolution had previously established a partnership between Dash and Guri, and "Or Die Trying" reveals the fruits of their labors by resurrecting Stanton Rendar in the form of an HRD. Dash had been believed dead by Jaina Solo's parents and uncle after the events of Shadows of the Empire, and "Or Die Trying" marks the first time that a member of their family learns of his survival and subsequent work done in HRD development.
Stanton Rendar had himself been mentioned in several previous Star Wars works, such as the Shadows of the Empire novelization and the Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook. "Or Die Trying" was the first appearance of his Human replica droid, who went on to be mentioned in such works as 2006's The New Essential Guide to Droids, 2008's The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, and 2012's The Essential Reader's Companion, the latter of which briefly summarizes all of "Or Die Trying". The story also references Project Decoy, an HRD-related project undertaken by the New Republic in the 1993 young reader novels Mission from Mount Yoda and Queen of the Empire.
In Force Heretic II: Refugee, the Solos are told to go to Onadax by Goure Conor in order to meet another member of the Ryn Network. However, "Or Die Trying" states that Jaina Solo has picked Onadax as her target by telepathically learning of the world from an associate of Rufarr, Molierre Cundertol's former pilot.
- Star Wars Insider 75
- Star Wars: The Official Magazine 59
- "Or Die Trying" on Hyperspace
- The Essential Reader's Companion