As a captain of the Galactic Empire, the loyalist Sodarra commanded a unit of elite stormtroopers, including Lieutenant Birdloe and trooper CV-481. Although Sodarra trusted Birdloe, his second-in-command, for his impeccable record, the lieutenant was in reality a spy for the treacherous Governor-General Nox Vellam.
After the Battle of Yavin, Sodarra accompanied Darth Vader to Vaal to recover the Dark Lord of the Sith's damaged TIE fighter, left there in the battle's aftermath. They soon retrieved the starfighter, but through the machinations of Vellam, a spiteful renegade Imperial governor envious of Vader's influence with the Emperor, the Dark Lord was rendered unconscious within its cockpit. With its wings and support pylons severed, the cockpit was loaded into a black plasteel crate. With Vader's body in his possession, Sodarra and his men fled from Vellam's forces in an Imperial-marked corvette. With Vellam's Star Destroyer Eradicator upon them in the Aldo Spachian system, Sodarra's ship crash-landed on the nucleus of the Aldo Spachian Comet, broadcasting a distress signal.
The signal reached Han Solo, captain of the freighter Millennium Falcon, who was embroiled in a race to rescue Rebel leader Princess Leia Organa from the bounty hunter Alfreda Goot. Pursued by Eradicators TIE fighter complement, Solo landed on the comet's surface, believing Organa's ship to be source of the distress call. Donning a vac-suit, Sodarra and three of his men made contact with the surprised Solo, and, in a ploy to secure Solo's aid, Sodarra passed himself and his men off as Imperial deserters, hunted by their former compatriots for attempting to sell a prototype cloaking device to a double-crossing Ploovo Two-For-One rather than transport it to secret Imperial Production Laboratories on Rigoron. Solo agreed to help in exchange for four shares in the sale of the supposed device, and Sodarra, his six troopers, and Vader's crate—ostensibly containing the cloaking device—were brought aboard the Falcon as Vellam's TIEs arrived. With Sodarra's stormtroopers manning the ship's guns, Solo took the Falcon into the shelter of the comet's gaseous tail, escaping the Star Destroyer and its TIEs only to encounter Alfreda Goot, who reiterated the terms of the race, and made a hyperspace jump towards its destination of Tatooine.
While Sodarra was familiar with Alfreda Goot from her work for Vader, he did not dissuade Solo of his illusions that Goot was in fact Organa in disguise, instead trivializing the race and encouraging Solo to bring him, his men, and their cargo to the planet Shador, where he hoped to make contact with Darth Vader's Togorian agent Taslo Deville. As Vellam's forces had been discovered to be following the Falcon via its faulty transmission unit, Sodarra suggested that diverting from the race to deliver his group would free Solo from the governor's pursuit. However, Han was unwilling to risk Leia further, and followed Goot into hyperspace. Sodarra resisted his suggestion that the cloaking device be employed to hide them from Vellam, claiming that the Falcons reactor lacked the necessary strength, only for Solo to discover the crate's true contents, and Vader's presence. His ruse revealed, Sodarra forced Solo to bring the party to Shador, though Solo and his Wookiee copilot Chewbacca were able to plant a bomb on Vader's cockpit.
However, the Falcons movements had been reported to Vellam by the traitorous Lieutenant Birdloe, and the governor's forces assassinated Taslo Deville in his Fink's Hole residence prior to the ship's arrival. Berthing at Shador's Mud Station, Sodarra received to no communications from the agent, and set out with Solo to Fink's Hole, ordering his men to kill Solo if he returned alone. In Zeboron Gamma, Deville's residence, Solo and Sodarra engaged and killed his assassins, a group of human and Gamorrean mercenaries. Hours later, after a thorough and fruitless search for answers, Sodarra was lead by Solo back to the Falcon, stealing a boat to evade a group of Vellam's stormtroopers. Leaving the planet just as Eradicator arrived, Solo revealed the bomb on Vader's cockpit, threatening to evacuate the Falcons cargo hold and activate it, killing the Dark Lord. Sodarra countered with a revelation of his own—that Alfreda Goot was in fact a bounty hunter and ruthless killer, and not Princess Leia in disguise. Solo agreed to spare Vader's life in exchange for Sodarra's support in the princess' rescue, before tricking Birdloe into revealing himself as a traitor, launching an escape pod which Solo then destroyed, having already deduced that one of Sodarra's men had arranged for the events on Shador.
Travelling through hyperspace, the Falcon arrived at Tatooine, while Sodarra expressed his surprise that Birdloe had been an agent of Vellam. Landing at Bay 32 in Mos Eisley, Sodarra volunteered to investigate the Dockside Cafe, the destination provided by Alfreda Goot. As Solo and Chewbacca entered the cantina, Sodarra and his stormtroopers waited outside, hoping to take Goot by surprise. After spotting a group of aliens recruited by the bounty hunter as backup, Solo gave Sodarra the signal to enter, triggering a blaster fight with Goot's men and other aggressive patrons. Sodarra and his men cornered the aliens as Solo pursued Alfreda Goot—with a captive Princess Leia in tow—into a stockroom. With Goot dead and Leia free, the outraged princess questioned Solo's alliance with Imperial forces, prompting Sodarra to claim that the conditions of their agreement prohibited its discussion and to remark privately to Solo that the pair would suffer equally from the affair's discovery. Despite Sodarra's developed respect for Solo, he, Organa, and Chewbacca were forced to flee in the Millennium Falcon as the captain betrayed him and summoned Imperial reinforcements.
A short and stocky human male, Sodarra was a loyal Imperial, unflinching towards the deaths of traitors and reluctant to forego his officer's uniform, even on such Empire-unfriendly worlds as Shador. Sodarra was out of place on Shador, where he was susceptible to losing his sense of direction in its labyrinthine canals, and was perturbed by the planet's unusual odors and creatures. While he regarded Han Solo as a worthy ally, offering to petition his pardon from Darth Vader, he was well-versed in deception and willing to lie to and betray Solo to secure his cooperation.
Sodarra first appeared in the choose-your-own adventure book Scoundrel's Luck, written by Troy Denning and published by West End Games.
Scoundrel's Luck presents many branching paths with a variety of outcomes, some of which result in the death of Sodarra. However, the Star Wars Insider article The History of the Mandalorians establishes that Goot was able to lure Solo to the Dockside Cafe, but was ultimately unsuccessful in her hunt, an outcome contingent on Sodarra's survival.
Other potential paths involve Sodarra's corvette being boarded by Eradicator or crashing on the planet Mon Torri, then working with Solo to escape snowtroopers and AT-AT walkers. These events occur only if Solo takes a shortcut through the Mon Torri system, while Kendal Ozzel's entry in the The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia establishes that the canonical path is that in which he takes a longer route through the Black Widow Nebula.
- Vader: The Ultimate Guide
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia