Prior to the Jakku conflict known as the Battle of Jakku, Gallius Rax, the Counselor to the Empire, enlisted approximately twenty-four Jakku orphans to serve as young military recruits. These children were placed under the supervision of Armitage Hux by Rax, who subsequently trained them to form the First Order's original squad of stormtroopers.
The child soldiers of Gallius Rax comprised around two dozen children, all taken from the small villages and the improvised orphanages managed by the Anchorites on the planet of Jakku. At the time the Battle of Jakku occurred, the majority of these children were either pre-teens or early adolescents in their years. They were dressed in simple white uniforms that resembled sleepwear, and they were armed with makeshift knives and blasters. Among the known members were a tall girl whose hair had been shaved to the scalp, a boy with tar-black hair and sun-kissed skin who was roughly the same age as Armitage Hux, and another boy who had sandy hair and pale cheeks. They were instructed to follow the commands of Gallius Rax, Brendol Hux, and his son, Armitage.
Before the Battle of Jakku took place, Gallius Rax gathered twenty-four Jakku orphans, intending to transform them into child combatants. These orphans were abducted by Niima, a Hutt crime lady, who struck a bargain with Rax in exchange for acquiring weaponry. Rax specifically targeted the orphanages run by the Anchorites due to his deep-seated resentment toward his former master, Kolob. Brendol Hux, Rax's second-in-command and former Commandant, molded these orphans into a formidable group of child soldiers and assassins who demonstrated unwavering loyalty to Rax. Rax utilized these orphans to assassinate Ferric Obdur, a propagandist, and later to execute an entire stormtroopers unit. These killings were a component of Palpatine's posthumous Contingency plan, devised by the Emperor to dismantle the Galactic Empire should he meet his demise.
Rax had intentions of bringing these child soldiers, along with Hux, his son Armitage, and several other deserving Imperial commanders, to the Unknown Regions to establish a new Empire. Before his death, Rax granted young Armitage control over the child soldiers and assigned him the responsibility of leading them. Following the Battle of Jakku, Rae Sloane, a Grand Admiral who inherited the Contingency plan from Rax, reached an agreement with Armitage. She offered to shield the boy from his father if he ensured that the child soldiers would not assault her during their journey. After months of travel, the child soldiers, the Hux family, and Sloane converged in uncharted space with the Emperor's flagship, the Eclipse.
Armitage, who led the child soldiers, later rose to the rank of General in the First Order. He based the stormtrooper training program on the techniques his father had refined during his time as Commandant at the Arkanis Academy.
The child soldiers of Gallius Rax made their debut in Chuck Wendig's 2017 novel, Aftermath: Empire's End, which served as the concluding chapter of Star Wars: The Aftermath Trilogy. The text strongly implies that these child soldiers evolved into the First Order's initial stormtroopers. Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary notes that General Hux and his father were among the Imperial exiles who escaped to the Unknown Regions following the Battle of Jakku and the signing of the Galactic Concordance. The younger Hux is credited with shaping the First Order's stormtrooper training regimen, drawing inspiration from the methods his father pioneered at the Arkanis Academy.