Vill was a clone of the deceased bounty hunter Jango Fett. Originally a clone trooper of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars, Vill became one of the first stormtroopers after the Galactic Republic was reorganized into the Galactic Empire. As a clone programmed with absolute loyalty, Vill was an obedient soldier who executed orders without moral or ethical restraint.
A month after Emperor Palpatine's Declaration of a New Order, Vill served as commander of a regiment of stormtroopers from the 501st Legion, an elite unit of clone soldiers who served directly under the command of the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Vill and his regiment were dispatched on a mission to New Plympto with orders to eradicate the last remaining pockets of Separatist resistance.
In 19 BBY, a month after Emperor Palpatine abolished the Galactic Republic in order to create the Galactic Empire, Vill was one of millions of clone troopers who continued his service as a stormtrooper. By this time, he was a regiment commander in the elite 501st Legion, and thus he answered directly to the Emperor's second-in-command, the Sith Lord Darth Vader.
Commander Vill delivers news of the massacre of the Nosaurians to Darth Vader.
Around the same time, the Imperial subjugation of New Plympto proceeded at a slow pace with great difficulty. The native Nosaurians, former members of the Separatist Alliance, created their own resistance cell after the Clone Wars was concluded. Ironically, they found a new ally in a former enemy. General Dass Jennir, a Jedi survivor of Order 66, joined the Nosaurians' fight against the Empire.
As a result of the Nosaurians' ongoing rebellion, Emperor Palpatine dispatched a stormtrooper regiment of the 501st Legion, under the leadership of Commander Vill, to New Plympto with orders to bring the planet under Imperial control by annihilating the rebels. After their arrival, Vill and his soldiers steadily pushed the Nosaurians back until the rebels were forced to make a final stand at Half-Axe Pass.
The Battle of Half-Axes Pass was a complete massacre in which the Nosaurian army was almost utterly destroyed. Those who surrendered after the battle were summarily executed by the 501st Legion. Their families were captured and, by order of Emperor Palpatine, Commander Vill had them all processed into slave market on Orvax IV. Afterward, the clone commander reported the details of the battle to Darth Vader via holocomm.
As the 501st prepared to depart the conquered planet of New Plympto, Commander Vill returned to Vader's flagship, the Imperator-class Star Destroyer Exactor. He reported directly to Commander Appo, Vader's second-in-command in the 501st Legion, who wanted to know about an infiltration incident that occurred after the battle. Vill, unaware that the infiltrator was the Jedi Dass Jennir, said that an Alpha-3 Nimbus-class V-wing starfighter was stolen from the 203rd Division and used to create a distraction that enabled most of the grounded civilian ships to escape from New Plympto.
Commanders Appo and Vill of the Imperial 501st Legion
Three months later, Commander Vill and the 501st Legion participated in the Imperial conquest of the planet Bandomeer, an operation that was personally overseen by Darth Vader. In the aftermath of the campaign, which was easily won against a group of lightly-armed rebellious miners, Vill provided a casualty report to the Sith Lord. Vader then took the opportunity to ask Vill if the clones were indoctrinated with a contingency order to kill him; an order that they would carry out without question if it came from Emperor Palpatine. Vill's hesitation to answer the question confirmed Vader's suspicion. He then Force pushed the clone commander off of a cliff to ensure that his inquiry did not reach the Emperor.
Commander Vill and his 501st stormtroopers executed their Nosaurian prisoners without hesitation.
Like virtually all clones who were grown to serve the Galactic Republic, Vill was programmed with absolute loyalty to the command hierarchy. As such, his full allegiance belonged to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. When Palpatine declared himself emperor of the first Galactic Empire, Vill dedicated his existence to enforcing Palpatine's New Order over the galaxy.
As typical of a clone of Jango Fett, Vill's programmed loyalty made him susceptible to following any order without question or moral regard. He was neither conflicted by the ethical dilemma of executing unarmed prisoners, nor bothered by the transporting of civilian families into slavery. On the contrary, he adapted quickly to his new life as a stormtrooper. During the Clone Wars, Vill was concerned that the clones would be diminished as "glorified policemen" after the Separatists were defeated. Since the rise of the Empire necessitated further military operations, Vill was very pleased by the fact that the clones were still being used as soldiers. Furthermore, Vill fully accepted the purpose and role of all cloned stormtroopers; they existed only to serve the Emperor until death. He felt empathy for his fellow clones to a certain extent, and believed that soldiers had to feel relevant—if only for the sake of troop morale.
In terms of physical appearance, Vill bore a basic resemblance to millions of other clones from the same genetic template; a genetic result of being a clone of Jango Fett, a bounty hunter who was killed during the first battle of the Clone Wars. By the time he and his regiment were sent to New Plympto, Vill's "face"—or more accurately, Jango Fett's face—sustained several scars. As was the same case with his cloned "brethren," Vill was also designed to age at a faster rate than real Human beings. Thus, his physical age was at least twice as long as his actual, chronological age.
Ironically, his loyalty to Emperor Palpatine was the cause of his demise. As a commander in the 501st Legion, Vill was loyal to his superior officer, the Sith Lord Darth Vader. But when Vader inquired about a secret contingency order to eliminate him, Vill was incapable of complying with an answer. His loyalty to Vader conflicted with his allegiance to Palpatine. Yet his lack of a reply was all the confirmation that Vader required before he killed the clone who had become nothing more than a loose end.
When Commander Vill became an Imperial stormtrooper, he continued to use his Phase II battle armor, which originally served as the armored uniform of the Republic clone troopers. Vill's armor sported the distinctive blue markings that identified him as a member of the 501st Legion. During the conquest of New Plympto, his armor was modified with the addition of a pauldron and kama. In addition to the DC-15A blaster rifle, the primary weapon of cloned stormtroopers at the time, Vill was also equipped with dual DC-17 hand blasters.
Three months after the Battle of New Plympto, the Imperial code of uniformity became more strictly enforced, and thus the stormtroopers were required to remove the color designs on their armor. Vill obliged the new custom and restored his armor to its full white appearance. He also discarded his pauldron and kama, and thus adopted the same appearance as the other rank-and-file stormtroopers.