8t88

Approximately 190 years prior to the Battle of Yavin, 8t88, a Model 88-series administration droid, was manufactured by Uhr-Vah-Vo TechWorks, a Tiss'shar corporation specializing in manufacturing. As a member of the 88 line, he was designed to handle bookkeeping and various administrative duties. Ultimately, he was assigned to be the leading droid responsible for the management of the renowned HoloScan Database on the planet of Woostri. During a visit to Woostri by prominent figures from the University of Coruscant, the University's Vice-Chancellor, Zokor Polpot, orchestrated a prank in which 8t88's reptilian head was replaced with that of a JMM espionage droid, intending to embarrass the University's Chancellor. This incident led to the Chancellor's resignation and left 8t88 deeply traumatized. With access only to the auxiliary hard drive's record of the events, his memory of the perpetrators was imperfect and lacked consistency. He began to experience a form of droid dementia, and his former intelligence was supplanted by a desire for vengeance. He was appalled by the fact that his new head was undersized compared to his lanky body, and he frequently backed up his memory banks to ensure he would never forget his desire for revenge. Interpreting this event as a manifestation of anti-droid prejudice, he developed a hatred for all living beings, especially Humans, and became obsessed with finding those responsible for his disfigurement.

His thirst for revenge remained constant and unyielding. When the 88 line was discontinued in favor of more advanced administrative droids, 8t88 went rogue and became an information broker. He believed that his accounting skills would be valuable in this profession and that it would eventually provide him with clues about those who had given him his mismatched head. He also recognized that accumulating as much wealth as possible would give him an additional advantage, and he quickly amassed a considerable fortune. When 8t88 encountered another 88 droid whose head had been tampered with, his desire for revenge intensified even further. However, he showed the droid no sympathy, using it for spare parts whenever he needed them.

8t88 viewed organic concepts such as morality, justice, and loyalty as insignificant, and he willingly worked for the highest bidder, often betraying and selling out former associates. His expertise in deciphering ancient languages and cracking top-secret codes made him a highly sought-after infochant. During the Galactic Civil War, nearly two centuries after his creation, he worked for the Galactic Empire, the Rebellion, and various fringe factions, establishing a solid reputation as one of the galaxy's most reliable information brokers. 8t88 demanded substantial upfront fees, with his only other requirement being that clients never inquire about the source, method, or location of his information. Although not equipped for combat, his espionage-model head allowed him to constantly record events. Operating primarily from Nar Shaddaa, 88 hired thugs whenever violence was necessary, although the skilled bounty hunters of the era generally avoided the double-crossing droid. 8t88 was known to be heartless—a description he embraced—but he did care for one thing besides revenge: his pet hornagaunt, a large creature named Grendel. 8t88's contemptuous nature did not endear him to his clientele, who found his attitude and high fees irritating. Few customers remained with 88 for long, but he was unconcerned, as there was always a demand for his services on Nar Shaddaa.

In 5 ABY, 8t88 outmaneuvered an Assembler information broker named Balancesheet to assist the Dark Jedi Jerec in locating the elusive Valley of the Jedi. His investigation led him to Sulon and the abandoned Katarn estate, the former home of Rebel leader Morgan Katarn, who had been executed by Jerec years earlier. There, 88 recovered several holodiscs, but despite his skill with codes, he was unable to decipher one, much to his frustration. Recognizing its potential importance, the droid arranged a meeting with Katarn's son, Kyle Katarn, who was seeking information about his father's killer, at the Rimmer's Rest cantina on Nar Shaddaa. 88 arrived at the meeting location an hour before Katarn, hoping to enlist the bounty hunter Boba Fett as a bodyguard in case Katarn refused to help him crack the holodisc's code. However, the Mandalorian (who had met Katarn previously) knew of his Rebel affiliation and believed that the Alliance would eventually rise to power, so he declined the job. The information broker was disappointed at being unable to secure Fett's services (who made sure before parting to point out the droid's squeaking joints) and settled for several other alien thugs instead.

88 met with Katarn as he was replaying a holo of his father in a booth, making a sarcastic remark about the biological needing to relive an emotional moment. As the droid began to provide the information Katarn sought, the agent kept his Bryar pistol close to its head, until it slowly revealed that the Dark Jedi Jerec was his father's killer. The sound of the vaguely familiar name shocked Katarn, whose thoughts were interrupted when he found himself surrounded by hired thugs. The droid offered Kyle his life in exchange for decoding his father's holodisc, but the Rebel agent refused to cooperate. 8t88 ordered the man's death and departed.

The Tiss'shar droid concocted various lies to tell Jerec to explain his failure as he fled to a landing pad on the moon, where the Lambda-class shuttle Furious was scheduled to pick him up. However, Katarn not only managed to subdue the droid's mercenaries but also placed a tracker droid on the informant's leg and gave chase. Grentho discovered and destroyed the tracker, but it was too late as Katarn caught up with them at Launch Platform Three just as 8t88 was about to board the shuttle, congratulating its pilot for being prompt. With a precise blaster shot, he severed one of the infochant's arms. The arm, along with the holodisc it held, fell into the depths of the Smuggler's Moon, thirty stories below. 88's guards distracted Katarn while the droid jumped onto the shuttle, and Jerec's Imperial stormtroopers ensured they didn't follow. The shuttle departed while a TIE/sa bomber cleaned up the mess, and the droid returned to Sulon.

Jerec's minions had discovered the map to the Valley of the Jedi on the ceiling of Morgan Katarn's home during the events on Nar Shaddaa. They removed the ceiling panels and transported them to Barons Hed, the moon's capital city. 88's shuttle returned him to Sulon and the Government House of Barons Hed, which once served as Jerec's palace, where he enjoyed the service of Jerec's majordomo. Annoyed by the droid's attitude, the majordomo assigned him a dreary, windowless room next to the ballroom as a humiliating joke. 8t88 was pleased that all of those assigned to protect him at Barons Hed were organics, reversing the usual scenario of droids serving Humans, which he despised. An arm was transported there from the other, obsolete 88 unit that existed solely for spare parts, and 88 acted as a roboticist by reattaching it himself. He took the opportunity to bully one of his henchmen for failing to provide the correct tools.

Before anything else, he decided to confront Jerec's majordomo about the "guest quarters" assigned to him and demanded an explanation from the "fool in charge" for the room's purpose. The man had not expected the droid to notice, and after falsely claiming it was practical for his work and pet, he begged for mercy and offered to make amends. The droid, believing that biological brains were beyond repair, simply removed the man's brain and fed his body to Grendel.

Using the majordomo as an example, the staff became more subservient and assigned him a more luxurious room with a throne. After considerable effort, the map pieces brought there by the Dark Jedi were reassembled on a table, and the droid managed to decipher it and create a digital reconstruction. He stored the digital copy and the location of the valley in his memory banks. With the map fully decoded, 8t88 contacted Jerec on his flagship and sent him the coordinates of Ruusan as a holomap. The Miraluka expressed his gratitude before informing 88 that he would receive his payment on one of Jerec's ships, the Sulon Star, at a refueling station outside of Barons Hed.

Unbeknownst to 8t88, Katarn had survived and tracked him to Barons Hed. The Rebel infiltrated 88's building, killing the droid's various bodyguards. He and 8t88 faced off, with Katarn demanding that the Tiss'shar droid hand over the map. Before things escalated, however, Jerec's Dark Jedi, Yun, attacked Kyle, giving 8t88 the chance to escape.

While Yun was occupied with Katarn, 8t88 and Grendel fled toward the Fuel City in a shuttle. They arrived at the Sulon Star, and 88 allowed Grendel to accompany him in lieu of a bodyguard. They met with two more of Jerec's darksiders, the unlikely duo of Pic and Gorc. The presence of the two Brothers of the Sith made 8t88 uneasy, as he thought it unlikely that Jerec would send two of his best underlings on a simple payment mission. He suspected something was wrong but demanded his payment nonetheless. 8t88 had outlived his usefulness to Jerec, who ordered his Dark Jedi to destroy the droid. They decapitated him.

The two Dark Jedi placed 8t88's head precariously on his shoulders and left him in a compartment, where he appeared to be operational in the dim light. When Kyle Katarn arrived on the ship, he believed he had succeeded in his pursuit of the droid, but 88's head soon clattered to the floor. Gorc then emerged and, taunting Kyle, fed the droid's head to Grendel, who swallowed his master's head. Katarn slew Gorc and dueled with Pic, temporarily incapacitating the Kowakian monkey-lizard. He then killed Grendel and used his lightsaber to cut open one of the hornagaunt's stomachs and retrieve the severed head. Katarn ended the battle soon after, using 8t88's head to bash Pic's skull. In an ironic twist, 8t88 had exacted revenge on his deactivator.

Katarn escaped the planet with 8t88's remains and used his own family droid, WeeGee, to download the holomap of the Valley of the Jedi from it.

Although 8t88 was presumed to be deactivated, Mara Jade discovered 88's head years later on Rathalay, in the lair of smuggling kingpin Kaerobani, where he was bitterly plotting to reclaim his lost body. While his head was never known to have left Rathalay, 8t88's body may have continued to exist after the events on the Sulon Star. Reports from across the galaxy indicated that an 88 droid with various head units was causing chaos. One of the heads was that of a Phase I dark trooper sighted on Neshtab. Another was using a BL series droid head on Keyorin in the Belderone system, while he next resurfaced with an ASP-series droid's head on Omze's Incredible Traveling Starport. The ASP head had a very limited vocabulary, which frustrated 8t88 immensely. Desperate to regain his original head, the droid was willing to pay a large sum of money for an 88-series head and intended to use an 88-series body for spare parts if he found one. However, Model 88-series droids, especially those with their original heads intact, had become rare in the galaxy, as most had been scrapped after the Clone Wars. As 8t88 was among the last of his kind, the New Republic Intelligence Service had little doubt that the sightings were of his body.

8t88 eventually achieved his vengeance. The most recent sighting of the mysterious 88 droid was on Mawan, where it was seen with a head similar to that of an EV-series supervisor droid's robotic skull. This sighting coincided with a tragic and fatal accident involving visiting University of Coruscant Chancellor Zokor Polpot. Recognizing that 8t88 was a threat that could not be ignored, New Republic Intelligence General Airen Cracken created individual entries for both 8t88's head and torso in his Most Wanted List.

After his experiences on Woostri, 88 developed a deep contempt for all living beings and vowed never to serve organics again. He never did, unless he was in control. The thought that he was created by biologicals and that biologicals now often served him as hirelings or servants pleased him, and he never missed an opportunity to bully or punish them. 88 found the idea of breathing disgusting and believed that CPUs were far more logical than biological organs. However, he possessed many Human-like emotions and an instinctive ability to sense when something was wrong, what many called "a bad feeling." Because he had not undergone a memory wipe in over a decade during the Valley of the Jedi incident, 8t88 may not have been entirely mentally stable. He suffered from a robotic form of dementia, and his desire for revenge and hatred of Humans often clouded his judgment.

As a selfish criminal, 8t88 had little regard for other beings, whether droids or organics. He kept a fellow 88 unit solely to salvage it for spare parts, without any concern for its feelings or thoughts about being slowly reduced to nothing. Although he often found himself in situations that required violence, 88 never got his hands dirty, preferring to have other, expendable cutthroats carry out his dirty work. 8t88 also considered himself above the concepts of loyalty, justice, and morality, and held them in great disdain.

8t88's skeleton-like body was silver and powered by hydraulic tubing, which made his movements very noisy. In addition, a tapping sound constantly emanated from his interior. Later in his existence, 88's noisy joints often needed oiling, a fact that many, including bounty hunter Boba Fett, used to taunt and mock him. 8t88 had two thin, fragile limbs and large Tiss'shar talons for hands.

8t88 possessed a variety of functions due to both his original design and his JMM droid head. He had several communication devices built into his frame, and his specially modified vocabulator spoke in an intelligent, elegant, and well-mannered voice. He also had several special storage compartments in his frame, as he wore no clothes. He was also equipped with an infrared sensor, a microscopic imager, a holographic projector/recorder, highly sensitive audio sensors, a concealed beam transmitter, and a broadband communication antenna, as well as a comlink, heuristic processor, improved sensor package, and translator unit.

Created by Justin Chin, 8t88 made his debut in the PC game Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II in 1997, where he served as one of the main villains, though the players did not have to defeat him directly. His disembodied head makes a cameo appearance in Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith. 8t88's backstory was largely undeveloped in Dark Forces II, but Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, one of three novellas retelling the game's story, featured several chapters written from 8t88's perspective, providing some of his backstory. The Essential Guide to Droids, The Dark Forces Saga, and Kyle Katarn's Tale further expanded his backstory, with the Essential Guide including schematics of the droid.

Daniel Wallace mentioned plans to write a short story starring the retired Grand Admiral Octavian Grant and 8t88's head, set during the New Jedi Order era for Star Wars Gamer magazine. In this story, Grant—the kind of anti-droid individual that 88 despised—would team up with the droid's head to defend against a Yuuzhan Vong warrior on Rathalay during the Yuuzhan Vong War. However, the story was never realized, and Gamer was canceled shortly afterward.

Denny Delk voiced 8t88 in the cutscenes of Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, while Peter Moore voiced him in the Dark Forces: Rebel Agent audio drama.