An Imperial communications droid, sometimes referred to as a "comm droid" by those around him, was a key figure in the life of Ania Solo and her pursuit of the Sith Darth Wredd following the second Imperial Civil War. Originally serving the Imperial Knight Yalta Val, the comm droid sustained significant damage when Val was attacked in the Surd Nebula, ultimately ending up as discarded material in Solo's junkyard. Before escaping the nebula, the droid did manage to recover Val's lightsaber, and Solo's finding of the weapon initiated a series of dramatic events. The droid quickly developed loyalty to Imperial Knight Jao Assam, remaining by his de facto master's side as Assam and Solo worked to track down Wredd.
In the year 138 ABY, an Imperial communications droid with masculine programming was in service to the Galactic Federation Triumvirate. While on a mission to the Carreras system alongside the Imperial Knight Yalta Val, the comm droid was deployed into the Surd Nebula to serve as a communications beacon due to the nebula's interference with transmissions. After Val's shuttle crashed on the planet Mala, the Knight was ambushed by a Sith master and apprentice and taken as a prisoner. Surveying the crash site for survivors, the comm droid found none before retrieving Val's lightsaber. As he sped away from the planet toward the Triumvirate's base on Coruscant, the droid was heavily damaged by particulate matter within the nebula. He only made it as far as the Carreras system, where he was left amongst the refuse in the junkyard owned by Ania Solo.
One week later, Solo came across the droid and brought him to her friend Sauk at a Carreras Minor ice mining platform, where the lightsaber was discovered hidden inside the droid. Their attempts to sell the weapon resulted in an encounter with law enforcement, and their successful escape in Solo's ship only led to them being attacked by the Sith apprentice—Darth Wredd—at Solo's junkyard. The IG-series droid AG-37 transported Solo and Saul away from the planet in his freighter, where Sauk, distraught at becoming a refugee and a criminal, began tinkering with the comm droid and discovered a hologram of Yalta Val dueling the Sith Master. At AG-37's request, the comm droid enhanced the image of Val's lightsaber, leading the group to realize it was the same weapon they now possessed. Fleeing a sudden blockade of Carreras starfighters forced the freighter down to the surface of Carreras Minor, where Sauk finally managed to stabilize the comm droid's power source.
When the Imperial Knight Jao Assam, searching for his missing comrade, arrived and rescued the group from a tentacled serpent, the now-operational comm droid flew out of the ship using his repulsorlifts and played the hologram for the newcomer. He then provided the coordinates for the planet Mala, but the group's rescue attempt was interrupted when they were caught in the tractor beam of a Shifalan patrol ship. The Shifalans were acting under the orders of Darth Wredd, who was impersonating Yalta Val, and Solo's group were all imprisoned in holding cells within the Carreras G51 communications array. The comm droid was the only exception, having managed to conceal himself in a floor compartment aboard the freighter; once the area was clear, he escaped into the hangar where the freighter was stored. Solo and her companions were freed by the Shifalan governor Biala, who had grown tired of "Yalta Val" undermining her authority, but Wredd attacked the group in the hangar, severely injuring many of them.
Jao Assam was knocked out of the hangar and into the vacuum of space, but the comm droid followed, placing a breath mask onto the Imperial Knight's face to keep him alive. Solo, having survived the battle relatively unharmed, boarded Assam's starfighter and pursued the departing Wredd to Mala, where she freed Yalta Val from his captivity. Wredd was in the process of using the communications array to broadcast his declaration of an insurgency against both the Triumvirate and the One Sith, but Solo's intervention prevented him from killing Val in front of the galaxy, and the two Force users engaged in a brief duel before the Sith fled. Solo then returned to the array and brought her injured comrades aboard AG-37's freighter; she returned to Mala and rescued Val in time to save him from the array, which Wredd had rigged to crash onto the planet's surface. As the freighter left the system, its crew encountered Assam and the comm droid and brought them aboard.
Assam rested aboard the freighter, but the damaged vessel was unable to enter lightspeed. The comm droid repeatedly sent out a distress signal, which was eventually received by the Animus, a Triumvirate-aligned Star Destroyer. The Destroyer rescued the freighter and began its journey to Coruscant, and the comm droid floated through its corridors, eventually finding Assam recovering in a bacta tank. At that moment, Assam experienced a Force vision of Darth Wredd striking down his Empress, Marasiah Fel, and he decided to hunt down the rogue Sith, despite direct orders to the contrary from Her Imperial Majesty. Sauk and AG-37 left Solo's company aboard the latter's repaired freighter, but Solo, Assam, and the comm droid boarded a shuttle and began their pursuit, departing with the reluctant blessing of Yalta Val. Their first destination was the planet Nalyd, where a criminal database revealed that Dieben, one of Wredd's minions, had recently been extradited.
From Nalyd, the trail led to Dac, a water world whose oceans had been poisoned during the recent Imperial Civil War. Within the system, the shuttle was attacked and dismantled by pirates, causing its barely functional cockpit to crash land inside the Mon Calamari Orbital Shipyards that orbited the ruined world. After eliminating the pirates who boarded the shuttle, Solo and Assam began to explore the shipyards, accompanied by the comm droid. Discovering that the pirates were building a fleet using Mon Calamari and Quarren refugees as slave labor, Assam ordered the comm droid to send a message to Coruscant using Imperial encryption. The group was then discovered by the slaving ring's leader, the Sith Lord Darth Luft. The Sith threw Solo, Assam, the Mon Calamari Luen, and the Quarren Tikin into an escape pod, and the comm droid quickly joined his friends inside before the pod was launched into the poisoned oceans of Dac.
As the pod sank, the comm droid reconfigured his antenna to continuously broadcast the pod's depth. The signal was picked up by AG-37 and Sauk, who were nearby, and the two managed to pilot their freighter into Dac's oceans and retrieve the escape pod using a harpoon and tow cable. As the reunited group discussed their plans in a shipyard hangar, Tikin abruptly returned to his post, unwilling to get involved. Assam resolved to confront Luft to find Wredd, even as the others departed in the freighter to seek reinforcements. The comm droid loyally followed Assam, but when Tikin betrayed their plan to Luft, Assam and the droid were discovered and forced to evade a barrage of blaster fire. Tikin was killed by Luft despite his attempts to cooperate with the Sith, and as Assam confronted Luft, the enraged Mon Calamari and Quarren slaves began to revolt against their captors. Simultaneously, a Triumvirate fleet led by Admiral Gar Stazi and Yalta Val—who had received the comm droid's message—arrived in the system and attacked the pirates.
As Stazi flooded the shipyards with water from a tanker, the comm droid plotted an escape and made his way to a hatch, which he opened by slicing into its controls. The water crystallized into an ice plume as it rushed into space, but the droid avoided being frozen and remained close to the shipyards' exterior as the battle unfolded. After receiving a request from Solo, he closed the doors to Bay 519C just in time to save her and a group of refugees from being sucked into space. The death of Darth Luft at Assam's hands and the subduing of the pirates by Val's Imperial Knights and seatroopers brought the battle to an end, and Solo's group resumed their hunt for Darth Wredd. Their transport was the freighter of AG-37, who had decided that hunting for Wredd was the right course of action. In the ship's cockpit, a message arrived for Assam, and he, along with Solo, Sauk, AG-37, and the comm droid watched as a hologram of their target appeared. The renegade Sith had been systematically murdering members of the One Sith in an attempt to restore the traditional Sith Rule of Two, and he thanked Assam for eliminating Luft and furthering his ultimate goals.
During their pursuit, the makeshift crew of AG-37's freighter took on delivery jobs as part of their captain's shipping business. Early in the year 139 ABY, the comm droid was hovering outside of the ship's bridge as AG-37 navigated them through a dangerous minefield. AG-37's success allowed them to land at Lasgo Port on their target planet and deliver their goods, but to everyone's surprise, the group discovered a "Wanted" poster featuring Solo on the surface. Back in space, a micro-meteor penetrated the freighter's shields, prompting Sauk to send the comm droid out into space to assess the damage. While the droid repaired the puncture, he noticed a disturbance coming from a nearby derelict ship and proceeded to investigate—with the rest of his crew watching via his live camera, the comm droid peered into the derelict's transparisteel panels and saw survivors. AG-37's crew immediately docked with the ship and provided it with atmosphere. One of the survivors was Ramid, an old friend of Solo's, but Ramid and his crew quickly kidnapped Solo and detached from AG-37's freighter. After detonating a mine that damaged AG-37's ship, Ramid escaped into hyperspace.
AG-37, Sauk, and Assam managed to repair the freighter and begin searching for Solo, eventually locating Ramid's ship on a planet that sometimes rained glass. A search of the downed vessel revealed only corpses, none of them Solo's or Ramid's, and a sudden glass storm forced Sauk and Assam to seek refuge back in the freighter. AG-37, however, ventured out into the glass rain to locate their quarry. While his biological friends waited, the comm droid received a transmission from Yalta Val on Coruscant and played it for them. Val revealed that Solo was innocent of the crime for which she was being framed—the murder of Imperial Knight Teemen Alton—as Alton had been killed by someone with a prosthetic hand. When AG-37 located Solo at the planet's only outpost, Sauk and Assam brought the freighter there, and Assam dismounted. Sauk was forced to take the ship above the clouds, however, as acid rain began to fall.
The comm droid remained aboard AG-37's freighter while Jao Assam ventured into the settlement to rescue Ania Solo. There, Jao found that Ramid had been killed and that Ania was being attacked by an unidentified masked bounty hunter, the real killer of the Imperial Knight whom Ania was alleged to have murdered. While Jao and Ania succeeded in killing the bounty hunter following a prolonged fight, Ania was subsequently arrested by a force of Trandoshan stormtroopers and brought back to Coruscant to face trial. However, Master Val and Jao Assam succeeded in clearing Ania's name by presenting evidence that Ania was not the real killer and that real killer, the bounty hunter, had a prosthetic hand. Following Ania's acquittal, the comm droid accompanied Sauk and AG-37 when they were reunited with Ania. However, Jao was arrested and imprisoned for the crime of deserting the Imperial Knights.
Following Ania Solo's kidnapping and rescue, the rogue Sith Darth Wredd resurfaced and kidnapped Jao Assam. The two of them then escaped Coruscant and headed for parts unknown. Galactic Empress Marasiah Fel then dispatched Ania, Sauk, AG-37, and a platoon of Trandoshan stormtroopers to rescue Jao Assam. The comm droid accompanied Ania and her companions on this mission to rescue Jao. Their quest took them to the floating world of Mala. Mala had been the former home world of Darth Wredd prior to its destruction towards the end of the Second Imperial Civil War. The One Sith had tested a bioweapon on the planet, destroying all life on Mala and knocking the planet from its orbit. Darth Wredd was the sole survivor and was forced to join the One Sith but harbored a desire for vengeance against the Sith. After killing his master, Wredd had embarked on a one-man insurgency against the One Sith. He also intended to recruit Jao as his apprentice and to bring him over to the dark side of the Force.
Darth Wredd planned to lure the One Sith and Empress Fel to Mala where he intended to exact revenge against the Sith and to kill the Empress. Wredd tricked Jao into transmitting Mala's coordinates to Ania's rescue party, the One Sith, and Empress Fel. As planned, Ania and company discovered Mala and rescued Jao. During the rescue mission, the comm droid served as a torch light for the rescue party. The comm droid was also present during a fierce battle between Ania's rescue mission and a large One Sith army. Ania's mission was later reinforced by an army of Imperial Knights led by the Empress herself. The Imperial Knights succeeded in wiping out the One Sith army, thus playing into Darth Wredd's hands. Darth Wredd then attempted to assassinate Empress Fel but was thwarted and killed by Jao and Ania. The comm droid was present at the death of Darth Wredd and the reunion between Jao and Master Val. Following Jao's pardon, the Imperial Knight was allowed to resign from his Order and join Ania, Sauk, and AG-37. The comm droid accompanied Jao and Ania's company on their travels throughout the galaxy.
The Imperial communications droid, sometimes simply called "comm droid" by his companions, was small and spherical, not much bigger than the head of an average Human. He hovered on repulsorlifts and was also equipped with sublight drives that enabled him to fly through the vacuum of space. As a communications droid, he could send and receive signals that could travel long distances, and he possessed both a video camera and a holoprojector, each of which could both record and play. The comm droid could also slice into electronic systems. Mostly light gray in color but with some green on his exterior, the droid also had a single blue photoreceptor. A large fin extended from the top of his frame, and four thin limbs protruded below, as did three electric lights. An additional limb could extend from the front of his frame that could be used to manipulate tools. Although he was described using masculine pronouns by some, at least one other droid referred to him as "it."
Although originally assigned to Yalta Val, and programmed to send messages that bore Val's personal stamp, the comm droid became quickly loyal to Jao Assam during the Carreras Incident. AG-37 posited that the droid believed Assam had come to Carreras just to rescue him, and that the droid consequently felt he owed a debt of gratitude to the Imperial Knight. The droid saved Assam from death by exposure to deep space, and he continued to follow Assam in the aftermath of Carreras, joining him on his hunt for Darth Wredd and staying aboard the Mon Calamari Shipyards with Assam after all of their friends had fled the yards to find reinforcements. The droid also voluntarily entered an escape pod with Assam that was bound for the poisoned oceans of Dac, and from there broadcast a signal that ultimately led to the Imperial Knight's salvation. Assam thought his companion a "smart little guy." The comm droid displayed a dose of curiosity when he investigated a nearby derelict ship, despite his companions' insistence that there was no time to do so.
The communications droid was created by authors Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman as a character in the comic series Star Wars: Legacy Volume 2. He was mentioned in the solicitation for the series' first issue, and he has since appeared in every issue of the series save for its twelfth and thirteenth. He is, however, yet to receive a name. The droid has been drawn by both Hardman and Brian Thies, and has been colored by Rachelle Rosenberg and Jordan Boyd.
The comm droid appeared on a phantom variant cover of Legacy's first issue that paid homage to the classic 1977 poster for the original Star Wars film. In the picture, the comm droid occupies space in the top left corner that in 1977 was taken by the Death Star.
