Kamino, with a pronunciation of /kə'minoʊ/, existed as an aquatic planet situated in a far-off star system found within Wild Space. Its location, close to the Rishi Maze dwarf satellite galaxy, sometimes led to its categorization as extra-galactic. The Kaminoans, a race known for their tall and graceful stature, inhabited this world, which served as the capital for the Ruling Council led by the Prime Minister. Noted for their advanced cloning capabilities, the Kaminoans generally kept to themselves, famously creating a clone army for the Galactic Republic.
Some clone troopers referred to Kamino as "Big Stormy" or the "Planet of Storms." It was the fifth planet within a system consisting of thirteen planets, deeply embedded within the Wild Space region, beyond the Outer Rim. It orbited an aging star to the south of the Rishi Maze, a dwarf satellite galaxy in a decaying orbit within a loose sector of an unnamed star grouping south of the Rishi Maze. Three moons, including Korasa, revolved around the planet. Kamino's structure included a molten core, a rocky mantle, and a crust composed of silicate rock. Long-term climatic shifts caused the planet's continents to submerge, resulting in a global ocean that enveloped almost the entire surface, leaving only a few islands that were once mountaintops. These remaining peaks experienced nearly constant rainfall. However, the planet wasn't always subject to constant rain, as seen in a Confederacy of Independent Systems attack to obtain a DNA sample from Jango Fett. The planet's thick atmosphere allowed only vague glimpses of its intense storms and lightning. Despite technically residing in Wild Space, Kamino was occasionally considered extra-galactic due to the proximity of its system to the Rishi Maze.
Due to their relative isolation, the origins of the Kaminoans remain largely unknown. Several aspects of their physiology were unique: their digitigrade stance, initially suited for the seabed, eventually became primarily used within their scientific facilities, and only male Kaminoans possessed fin ridges on the back of their small, bulbous heads. Their almond-shaped eyes could only perceive colors in the ultraviolet spectrum. Consequently, their seemingly white structures were actually colored with hues invisible to Humans and other similar species.
The Kaminoans rode flying cetaceans referred to as aiwhas. These aiwhas, native to the planet Naboo, were likely created through cloning technology.
Kaminoan legends speak of Protas, a god-beast who ruled the oceans before the second sun rose. His rule faced challenges from Melkorr, a great titan, and later from the Kikla legion, both of which he overcame. Emboldened by his victories, Protas became arrogant and prevented an Aiwha Pod from migrating to warmer waters. Unable to endure the cold winter, the Aiwha fought Protas, ultimately defeating him through the sacrifice of one of their own.
Around 19,000 BBY, significant climate changes led to the melting of Kamino's extensive glaciers. The Kaminoans, through their adaptability, survived the Great Flood that submerged their planet's continents. They employed cloning to ensure their survival.
Throughout much of history, Kamino's location and existence were known to only a select few, with the Galactic Republic learning of it as late as 4500 BBY. In 3996 BBY, following the destruction of Ossus, Jedi Master Qalsneek the Bull hid artifacts rescued from Ossus within the ruins of Derem City. After the Jedi Civil War, kyber darts originating from Kamino were used throughout the galaxy, though their origin remained largely unknown. Kamino managed to endure the galaxy's most challenging periods before the Clone Wars.
In later years, the Kaminoans developed saberdarts, which were similar to the older kyber darts. These weapons were favored by bounty hunter Jango Fett. The Kaminoans also created clone miners to work on Subterrel. While prospecting on Subterrel, Dexter Jettster became acquainted with the Kaminoan cloners and even discovered a saberdart.
In 32 BBY, Sifo-Dyas commissioned the Kaminoans to create a Clone Army without the knowledge or approval of the Jedi Council. Darth Tyranus, under the direction of Darth Sidious, assassinated Sifo-Dyas to keep the army's creation a secret from the Jedi and the Republic. Tyranus then hired Jango Fett to serve as the Prime clone. Fett agreed, stipulating that the Kaminoans create an unaltered clone for him, his son Boba Fett. Jango raised Boba on Kamino for the following decade.
In 22 BBY, Obi-Wan Kenobi was led to Kamino while investigating the would-be assassin of Senator Padmé Amidala through a saberdart. Jango Fett had used the saberdart to kill Zam Wesell before Kenobi could interrogate her. Kenobi had Dexter Jettster identify the dart, who then directed him to Kamino. Obi-Wan and Yoda were troubled to find that Kamino had been removed from the Jedi Archives. During his stay at Tipoca City, Obi-Wan discovered Jango Fett, the source of the Clone Army's genome, and his "son," Boba Fett. Upon being discovered, Jango and Boba narrowly escaped the planet with Obi-Wan in pursuit.
Grand Master Yoda then traveled to Kamino to receive a desperately needed contingent of clone troopers to aid in the rescue of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, and the Jedi Knights during the Battle of Geonosis, which marked the beginning of the Clone Wars. After the Separatists discovered the clones' origin, Commander Merai launched an attack on Kamino under the orders of Passel Argente, but the Republic won the First Battle of Kamino, which occurred in 22 BBY. During the Second Battle of Kamino, Mandalore the Resurrector and his Mandalorians attempted to destroy a cloning facility, but the clone trooper garrison thwarted their efforts. Sometime after the Second Battle of Kamino, the Confederacy made another attempt to capture and destroy the cloning facilities, but clone troopers at a nearby monitoring station prevented this plan. Following the Battle of the Rishi moon, Separatist leaders General Grievous and Commander Asajj Ventress launched an attack on Kamino to obtain a sample of Jango Fett's DNA. Elements of the Open Circle Fleet and clone troopers stationed there repelled the attack force.
The Clone Wars' conclusion led not only to the near annihilation of the Jedi Order and the defeat of the Separatists but also to the rise of the Galactic Empire in place of the Republic. To secure the cloning facilities responsible for providing the Empire with the clones that helped Emperor Palpatine seize power, the Empire firmly established control over Kamino through military force. Although Kamino continued to produce stormtroopers for the Empire, a small group of Kaminoans resented the Empire's treatment of Kamino as a military state. In response, they launched a covert rebellion by secretly breeding a new army of clones based on Jango Fett's genetic template. Unlike the original Clone Army bred for the Republic, this new generation of clones was engineered with unwavering loyalty to Kamino.
Over the decade following the Clone Wars, the Anti-Imperial Clone troopers were grown and trained to eventually liberate Kamino from Imperial rule. Equipped with Phase I armor and composed entirely of Jet troopers, the Anti-Imperial clones were augmented with a series of ARC troopers and a few LAAT gunships. Approximately twenty years after creating the first generation of Fett-based clones, the Anti-troopers were fully grown, armed, and ready to fight their Imperial counterparts.
However, around the same time, the Empire discovered Kamino's clandestine operation and dispatched an elite detachment of the 501st Legion to Kamino to crush the rebellion and restore Imperial control over the cloning centers. The 501st's primary target was the Tipoca City Cloning Facility, Kamino's capital, which was then occupied by the Kaminoan rebels and their Anti-troopers. Boba Fett, also a clone of Jango Fett, was hired as the 501st's mission commander due to his extensive knowledge of Tipoca City's layout and operations. To prevent further insurrections, the mission to Kamino was kept completely off the record.
The Anti-troopers were virtually doomed from the start of the battle. Despite their advanced training, the younger Fett clones were outmatched by their more experienced Imperial counterparts, who had no qualms about killing their fellow clones. Besides possessing veteran troopers from the Clone Wars and superior firepower, the 501st Legion was aided by Boba Fett, who commanded his forces on-site and led the stormtroopers into Tipoca City, eliminating Anti-troopers wherever they encountered them.
To preserve Jango Fett's blood, the primary source for producing the clones, one of the 501st's main objectives was to secure a container holding a sample of Fett's DNA. After storming Tipoca City and retrieving the container, the 501st brought the sample to a landing platform where an Imperial shuttle awaited them. The shuttle transported Fett's DNA off-planet while the 501st continued to fight their rebel brethren. After gaining more ground outside the city, the 501st proceeded to their next objective: destroying the Kaminoan life support systems to kill all the rebel clones that had not yet been decanted, preventing the Kaminoans from raising more Anti-troopers against the Empire. Despite being protected by numerous elite ARC troopers, the rebel clones failed to prevent the 501st from destroying the undeveloped clones.
After securing most of Tipoca City, Boba Fett and the 501st Legion forced the remaining Anti-troopers and ARC troopers onto the platforms, where they were brutally eliminated. As the fighting continued, the Kaminoan rebel leaders, realizing the futility of their situation, attempted to retreat using their LAAT gunships. However, the 501st destroyed both gunships, along with the Kaminoan traitors. When the battle concluded, none of the rebel clones remained alive. With his assignment completed, Boba Fett left the 501st Legion to mop up on Kamino while he returned to his bounty hunting activities.
Although the stormtroopers of the 501st Legion reaffirmed their loyalty to the Galactic Empire, the circumstances surrounding the battle convinced Emperor Palpatine that a clone army based entirely on one genetic source was too susceptible to corruption. From that point on, new clone stormtroopers would be created from various templates, and the Empire even began enlisting regular Humans into the Stormtrooper Corps. While the 501st Legion remained composed purely of Jango Fett's progeny for the time being, the rest of the Imperial Army became increasingly diverse through an ever-growing pool of enlisted troopers and alternative source clones.
Thus, the "Clone Revolt" on Kamino indirectly led to the clones of Jango Fett becoming a minority within the army they once dominated, an irony that the Fett clones neither appreciated nor grew accustomed to. Roughly a decade after the incident on Kamino, Commander Cody bitterly resented the Imperial Army's decline in operational effectiveness. Furthermore, Cody despised enlisted stormtroopers, dismissing them as incompetent and expendable.
In 1 BBY, shortly after the beginning of the Galactic Civil War, the Sith Lord Darth Vader secretly transported the body of his deceased fallen apprentice, Galen Marek, to Kamino. Preserving Marek's corpse as a source of genetic material, Vader employed an experimental version of Kaminoan cloning technology known as the Accelerated Cloning Process to create a more powerful version of his former disciple. Deep within the Timira City Cloning Facility, Vader personally oversaw the project, determined to regain an assassin of Marek's caliber.
However, due to the inherent challenges in cloning Force-sensitive individuals, the initial series of Marek's clones were grotesquely deformed and highly unstable. After months of meticulously correcting the imperfections in the procedure, each subsequent clone was somewhat more stable, forcing Vader to train numerous clones in a "trial and error" process until he finally created a perfect clone to replace the original apprentice. Although one clone managed to escape from Kamino after failing to purge himself of the imprinted emotions he gained from Marek, Vader recalled Boba Fett to Kamino and tasked him with luring the rogue clone back to his homeworld.
Despite losing the clone that nearly marked the project's first success, Darth Vader's efforts were ultimately rewarded with a unique clone who met all of the Sith Lord's expectations. Like the other clones before him, however, the latest clone was haunted by the imprinted memories and emotions of his dead progenitor. Unlike his predecessors, this clone was determined to prove his worth by overcoming his former self's feelings through willpower and constant training on Kamino. As the clone completed his trials, he emerged as his own person with a deep resentment for his former self's weaknesses and failures. With the perfect clone of the original Starkiller at his service, Vader ended the cloning project on Kamino in victory.
Meanwhile, Boba Fett successfully brought Starkiller, the renegade clone who had been given his progenitor's former codename, back to Kamino by taking Captain Juno Eclipse hostage. As Starkiller unleashed destruction on Kamino and throughout Timira City, the clone's Rebel allies engaged Kamino's Imperial garrison in a brutal fight in space and on the planet. Although Boba Fett and the Dark Apprentice remained in reserve to intervene on Vader's behalf only if necessary, the Empire was defeated in the Battle of Kamino, which also resulted in the capture of Darth Vader after being spared by a reluctant Starkiller. Although the Rebels lacked the resources to liberate and hold the planet, the victory on Kamino demonstrated the Rebellion as a legitimate threat to the Galactic Empire. After destroying Timira City by causing a tsunami wave to obliterate the cloning facility, the Rebels departed to the secret rebel base on Dantooine, unaware that Fett was pursuing them and their valuable hostage in his ship.
The Galactic Civil War triggered an economic collapse on Kamino, and the production of clones eventually ceased after the Battle of Endor and the fall of the Empire. Nevertheless, the planet continued to operate on smaller contracts, often for warlords and criminal organizations.
Years later, Kaminoan Taun We sought revenge against the Mandalorians who attacked them during the Clone Wars by hiring Boba Fett to kill Fenn Shysa, the last Mandalorian veteran of the Second Battle of Kamino.
In 40 ABY, Boba Fett traveled to Kamino to consult his doctor and learned that he was dying. The only person who could cure him was Ko Sai, a scientist who had invented the accelerated aging process. She had disappeared after the First Battle of Kamino. He decided to hunt down Taun We, who had defected more recently. The current Prime Minister of Kamino, Koa Ne, offered to pay him to return Taun We's data to them. Boba Fett refused after Koa Ne declined to pay his exorbitant price, stating that he would sell the data to the highest bidder.
Kamino made its debut in the 2002 film Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. The architecture of Kamino served as an inspiration for the University of Texas's designs for a Marine Research Facility.
George Lucas initially promised Star Wars fans that he would reveal the reason for Kamino's erasure from the Jedi Archives in 2005's Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. However, after shifting the story's focus to Anakin Skywalker, Lucas chose to omit certain extraneous plot points related to Attack of the Clones, including the Kamino mystery. Consequently, Lucas allowed James Luceno to explain the mystery surrounding Kamino and its Clone Army in his novel Labyrinth of Evil.
According to the map in The New Essential Chronology, Kamino is located precisely where Obi-Wan Kenobi indicated. However, in the film, he points toward the Unknown Regions, which contain no known systems. In The Essential Atlas, Kamino is depicted with some land, rather than being entirely covered by water. This land is merely marsh, not solid ground. Star Wars: Battlefront also portrays some landmasses on Kamino.