Cad Bane

Biography

Cad Bane lived during the last decades of the Galactic Republic and was native to the planet Duro. He became a bounty hunter and eventually earnt the reputation of the galaxy's most highly regarded mercenary, who operated primarily for the financial reward of his missions, particularly after the death of Jango Fett. His closest rival in his trade eventually came to be Jango Fett's son Boba Fett, who also began to build his reputation as a mercenary against the Jedi.

Bane worked for the highest bidder, caring little for who employed him or the faction that his client represented, as long as he received his pay. His allegiance to his employer was of no matter to him that if he was offered a better fee elsewhere; he had no issues with turning on his original client. His reputation only grew as the war between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems escalated.

He frequently teamed up with several other bounty hunters and mercenaries in his jobs; among their number was the shapeshifting Clawdite Cato Parasitti, a lethal assassin who shared his allegiance to money. Parasitti subcontracted assignments for him and recruited extra help as he required.

During the war, Bane flew The Sleight of Hand, a Telgorn dropship that he extensively modified himself. He also had several bases established in a number of locations; in the Outer Rim's Rogue Antar system named Black Stall Station, to a secret hideout on the planet Tatooine. He outfitted them with several booby traps and a laser defense grid to stop his adversaries, making sure that no one would be able to survive the attacks.

His work also earned him some powerful enemies, and a 500 000 credit bounty was eventually placed on his head for his crimes against the Republic.

The Clone Wars

During the second year of the war, Bane was contacted once again by Darth Sidious for a job. He was contracted to pursue Jedi Master Ring-Sol Ambase, who was setting out on a mission to the planet Kynachi with his Padawan, Nuru Kungurama and a squad of clone troopers. After bypassing the Trade Federation's blockade of the planet and arriving on the Federation-controlled world, Bane recruited a food vendor to identify any strangers in a town on the planet. He provided the vendor with a special comlink that overrode the Federation's frequency jammer, which disrupted communications on the planet. The vendor later contacted Bane to report that Kungurama and three of his squad's clone troopers, who had all been stranded on Kynachi following some sabotage to their ship and were headed with Lalo Gunn to her diner on Kynachi. Complying with Sidious's latest instructions, Bane proceeded to the diner and staged an elaborate deception in order to manipulate the group's actions, summoning four BX-series droid commandos to fake a fight with him at Gunn's starship, the Hasty Harpy.

After the battle droids attacked Kungurama and the clones and were destroyed by the Republic squad, Bane pretended that he had been blinded by a luma grenade where troopers CT-5177 and Knuckles found him lying on the ground. The clones brought Bane into the building, where Kungurama, Gunn, and trooper CT-8863 questioned him on his identity and business. Taking the risk of revealing to the trio that he was a bounty hunter in order to more effectively deceive them, Bane lied and stated that the droid commandos had been trying to arrest him and had opened fire on him when he had tried to run away. When Gunn asked after the reasons for his presence on Kynachi, Bane flatly replied that a job had brought him to the planet, but Gunn, unsatisfied with his vagueness, put one of the fallen droids' E-5 blaster rifles to his forehead and demanded to know how he had bypassed the Trade Federation's blockade.

Bane stated that he had been hired to break someone out of the KynachTech Industries factory prison and that his client had provided him with a datatape of the facility's schematics and pass codes to get through the Federation blockade. His disclosures earned him freedom from the blaster on his forehead. However, Bane truthfully reported that earlier he had seen the factory's droid guards escorting into the prison four Republic troopers and an unconscious Ring-Sol Ambase. Kungurama, determined to rescue his Master, developed a plan to have CT-8863 build a new droid to break into the prison. This idea was, in fact, the exact plan that Bane had intended for Kungurama to devise. During his time on Kynachi, Bane secretly hired Gunn to ensure that Kungurama and the clones reached the planet Vaced, a task that she accepted for a promised reward.

Accompanied by the droids, they reconnoitered the prison and Bane then took them to the Kynachi spaceport's Docking Bay 21 to get to The Sleight of Hand, which they had planned to use to escape from the planet once the prisoners were rescued. The four then returned where CT-8863 and Kungurama were assembling the new droid. The unit was successfully reactivated and was renamed Cleaver. With Kungurama, Gunn, the troopers, and Bane posing as prisoners, and Cleaver acting as their droid captor, they were admitted into the facility. Upon entrance, the members of the squad dropped their disguises and confronted the facility's Techno Union overseer, Umbrag. As Kungurama cornered Umbrag and demanded information from him, the Overseer inadvertently caused a battle droid to fire its blaster rifle. At the sound of blaster fire, Bane drew his blaster pistols and began a chaotic fight.

With the others' attention focused on the battle, Bane was able to slip away and capture Ring-Sol Ambase. Bane placed the comatose Ambase in a transparisteel stasis pod to keep him in his near-death condition. Eventually, he returned to the prison with Ambase's lightsaber and found Kungurama, Gunn and the troopers, who had driven Umbrag away and had been reunited with the rest of their clone squad. Bane lied to the group, saying that he had been unsuccessful in finding his previous quarry. The clones didn't trust him, but Bane gave Ambase's lightsaber to Kungurama with the lie that it was all he had found of Ambase. Thus Bane received Kungurama's thanks before departing, though he refused to give the Padawan his name. Bane used a gravsled taken from the KynachTech factory to transport Ambase's stasis pod and returned to The Sleight of Hand in Docking Bay 21, bringing Ambase's body onto the vessel. Departing from the planet, Bane used his pass codes to bypass several Republic Navy Star Destroyers. After evading the cruisers and activating his ship's automated pilot mode, Bane returned to the main cabin and contacted Sidious, to whom he reported his success. The Sith Lord was pleased with the result and told Bane to deliver Ambase to Bogg V, the fifth moon of the Bogden system.

He eventually landed on Bogg V near the solar sailer and met with Asajj Ventress, an agent of Count Dooku. After showing Ventress how to operate Ambase's stasis pod, Bane handed the inert Ambase over to her and completed the transaction. He then received Sidious's next assignment from her and left for the Bilbringi system to secure the Bilbringi Depot, the primary settlement of the system's largest asteroid, Bilbringi VII.

Sidious gave him one thousand peggats to buy the depot from its owner, Drixo the Hutt, but Bane also took three IG-86 sentinel droids in case Drixo refused to sell her property. Arriving at Bilbringi Depot, Bane was stopped by two Gamorrean guards at the entrace to Drixo's headquarters. He attempted to bribe them into admitting him to the compound with chips of precious metal. When the Gamorreans demanded more, Bane simply killed them with his silencer-capped blasters, retrieved his metal offerings, and admitted himself to the depot. Proceeding to Drixo's chamber, Bane was intercepted by several of her bodyguards, and he was removed of his blasters and peggat satchel. Speaking with Drixo from the chamber overlooking her pit, Bane conveyed his client's offer to buy Bilbringi Depot for the one thousand peggats. Although Drixo dismissed the bid, she also refused to return the peggats.

With Drixo remaining uncooperative, Bane had his IG-86 sentinel droids enter the room and and open fire. Bane then also retrieved his blasters from the guards and promptly killed them too. With all of Drixo's guards dead, Bane dispatched the two Theelinservants as well. Although Drixo begged for her life and offered to give Bilbringi Depot to him for free, Bane simply had his droids eliminate her as well, claiming the depot by force. Bane then reported to Sidious the successful capture of Bilbringi Depot, and a pleased Sidious transferred the bounty hunter's payment to his account.

Mission from Darth Sidious

Bane was eventually hired by Darth Sidious for another ruse, however before he was hired for his initial mission, he had to firstly prove his skills in another mission to the Senate Building. He was to discover the location of Ord Enisence, a Jedi Master whom Sidious wanted eliminated. Blasting his way through the Senate security, Bane uncovered the location of Ord Enisence and killed him. He then moved his body to his apartment in an Underworld Coruscant hotel, where Sidious eventually contacted him again with his real mission; stealing a holocron from the Jedi Temple's Archives which was under the protection of Jedi Master; Bolla Ropal. Sidious would use this to unlock the Kyber memory crystal which within it recorded all Force-sensitive infants in the galaxy. Sidious additionally provided the schematics of the Temple.

In preparation for the operation, Bane subcontracted Cato Parasitti for assistance and prepared his techno-service droid, Todo 360, for the job. Bane thus installed an explosive in the droid. Parasitti and Bane studied Sidious's intelligence file on Ropal together. Despite Sidious's inside information, Bane still required an agent on the inside of the Temple. Parasitti thus assumed the form of Ord Enisence. Bane passed an ear-comlink to Parasitti so that they could maintain contact, and although Parasitti questioned the details of Bane's own plan to break into the Jedi Temple Holocron Vaults, Bane kept a calm demeanor and stated that he would handle it. With that, the bounty hunters proceeded to the Jedi Temple and set their plan into motion.

Bane and Todo used their rocket boots to reach an unattended overhang on the side of the Jedi Temple, close to the building's roof. At a computer terminal in the Archive Library, Todo was able to locate a weak point in the Temple's energy shield and opened up an aperture. Bane and his droid zoomed in through the breach and entered a ventilation shaft, where they descended into a wide, vertical passage that was being blocked by a set of large, active fans. Parasitti directed Todo to the control board, and the droid deactivated the fans so that he and Bane could slip between their blades. Once Bane and Todo had passed between the blades of one of the fans, the droid accidentally reactivated the fan from a motion-sensing security switch. Before the two could be sucked into and sliced by the blades, Parasitti disabled the fan, saving both of them.

With the way clear, the pair continued on through the vent system to a shaft directly overlooking the high-security Holocron Vaults, which was being protected by a dense laser web. Although Todo wanted to bypass the grate, Bane stopped him and checked with Parasitti on the vault's security measures. Bane noted a change in his comrade's voice, as the shapeshifting Parasitti had assumed the form of Jedi librarian Jocasta Nu. Hearing the sounds of the Jedi searching for them, Bane impatiently waited as Parasitti deactivated the vault's laser sensor system from her terminal. The instant that the primary laser systems were down, Bane and Todo descended into the shaft leading to the Holocron Vaults. While Bane used his gauntlet to cut through the safe's lock mechanism, Todo deactivated the remainder of the laser beams surrounding the vault's entrance. Bane then directed Todo, with his own hidden intentions, to slice through the wall and cut a passage to the Temple's communication center in order to have him lure the Jedi away from the vault.

Meanwhile, Parasitti was captured by Ahsoka Tano and revealed Bane's objective to the Jedi. Thus losing contact with his inside agent, Bane was unable to access the diagrams that would help him deactivate the lock. He told Todo to go to the Jedi Temple's communication center to pose as a distraction for the Jedi, and once the droid departed, Bane primed a bomb of the same model that he had installed in the droid to break through the vault's lock. Bane was then forced to hide from Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who were approaching his location and who had also been tipped off by Tano to the mercenary's whereabouts. As the explosive went off, he waited until the pair had followed Todo to the communication center before emerging from the shadows. He entered through the Holocron Vaults' door and proceeded unopposed into the room, where he then extracted the holocron from its holding place. After obtaining the holocron, he donned a Jedi robe and snuck away through the Archive Library. Despite catching sight of a cuffed Parasitti being led away by Tano and Jocasta Nu, Bane did not attempt to rescue her and escaped the Temple, leaving Parasitti in the Jedi's custody and allowing Todo to serve his purpose as a decoy by being destroyed by the explosive that he had installed inside him earlier.

Exploits at Devaron

With hired assistance from fellow bounty hunter Aurra Sing, Bane took a fleet of Munificent-class frigates and C-9979 landing craft to mount a surprise attack on the planet Devaron, where Bolla Ropal maintained a Republic base called the Temple of Eedit. Initiating a ground assault on the planet and commanding his armada from his lead Munificent-class frigate, Bane contacted Sing's battle droid squad, Nashtah Team, to check on her progress. Sing reported that she was on the western end of the valley where the outpost was located, but even though she spotted Ropal and had a clear shot at him, Bane ordered her not to shoot the Jedi Master, as he was his target. Instead, Bane told Sing to distract Ropal's Padawan Tyzen Xebec and several clones who had just arrived. In the meantime, Bane left his command ship and moved in to capture Ropal.

Flying in a Rogue-class starfighter, Bane shot several clone troopers before landing and heading for Ropal's position. Along the way, Bane received word from his command ship's crew that the Republic Star Destroyer Resolute had arrived out of hyperspace and realized that Parasitti had betrayed his target to the Jedi, at which he swore to return the favor. Bane ordered his fleet into defensive formation to stop the Resolute before it could interrupt his task. He found Ropal deflecting blaster shots with his lightsaber and loaded an expensive shot of cortosis ore into his blaster pistol, using it to short out Ropal's weapon. With Ropal disarmed, Bane threw a cord at the Jedi Master, tying his legs together and knocking him to the ground.

Ropal refused to open the holocron for Bane, so Bane ordered one of his super battle droids shock him and thus rendering him unconscious. Bane took Ropal hostage and loaded him on board a Sheathipede-class transport shuttle and taking him to his command ship. They were eventually ambushed by the Resolute, commanded by Anakin Skywalker. Ordering his battle droid crew to move the ship out of the battle zone and prepare to jump to hyperspace, Bane went to confront Ropal in the holding cell, as only a Jedi could open the holocron and combine it with the Kyber crystal to make it readable. However, the Resolute targeted the frigate's hyperdrive and compromised the ship's power converters, trapping Bane in the system.

Though Bane tortured Ropal with electrical charges, the Jedi Master continued to refuse to unlock the crystal with the holocron. Having no use for an uncooperative prisoner, Bane ordered his droid subordinate to increase Ropal's electrocution to full power, killing the Jedi Master. Bane saw this murder as only a slight setback to achieving his objective, but he still required a Jedi to access the crystal.

As Skywalker and Tano landed on the dorsal hull of Bane's frigate, Bane refused to send out Vulture droid reinforcements into the battle to the surprise of both his battle droid crew and Gunray. Although Gunray demanded that he transmit the information and abandon the plan before the Jedi boarded his ship and stole the holocron back, Bane replied that he could not submit the data, but still intended to let Skywalker and Tano embark his ship in order to get one of them to unlock the crystal with the holocron. Ending his conversation with Gunray, Bane gave orders to his crew, telling them to wipe the frigate's memory, activate the self-destruct sequence, and transfer control of all shipboard functions to his wrist-com.

Leaving his battle droids to defend the bridge, Bane escaped through a ventilation duct moments before Skywalker, Tano, Clone Captain Rex, and their clone trooper squad arrived and captured it from the droids. On the frigate's gunnery deck, Bane assembled lines of B1 and B2 battle droids, intending to have them fight and distract the clones while he himself separated the Jedi and led one of them away. With his troops in place, Bane ran through the hallways of his frigate and lured the Jedi and clones to the gunnery deck. Once Skywalker, Tano, and the clones had arrived in the darkened room, Bane revealed his forces by reactivating the lights and ordered the droids to open fire on the Jedi and clones. As a gunfight erupted as planned, Bane secured himself to the floor with his magno-grip boots and increased the fight's stakes by disabling the frigate's gravity generators, and deactivating the artificial gravity. The Jedi and clones rose off the floor, while the battle droids, still magnetized to the deck, continued to fire at them. Bane targeted his blaster fire at Skywalker, who made it past him, and the bounty hunter quickly got out of range of the Jedi's lightsaber slashes. Bane opened fire on the clones, shooting and killing several of them. However, Skywalker soon returned to fight Bane, surprising him from behind and delivering a kick that knocked the holocron out of his grip. Just as Skywalker was about to grab the holocron, the astromech droid R2-D2 reactivated the gravity.

Bane retrieved the holocron and shot at a trooper still magnetized to the roof, keeping Skywalker occupied with safely lowering the clone to the floor while he himself made his escape. Bane drew Tano after him, and the Padawan fell into his trap. Luring Tano into a dead-end corridor away from Skywalker, Bane cut her off from her Master by closing the hallway's blaster doors. Bane's first laser shot at the Padawan was deflected back at one of his gauntlets, but he managed to deliver a kick that knocked her lightsaber out of her hand. Before he could fire at her again, Tano brazenly grabbed his blaster arm and flipped him to the ground. Bane stopped Tano from retrieving her lightsaber by grabbing her ankle and sending a paralyzing stun charge through her body that knocked her unconscious. He picked up the holocron and placed Tano in self-tightening stun cuffs that had been specially designed for Jedi.

Once Tano had woken up, Bane stole her Padawan braid jewelry from her as a trophy. Bane then electrocuted Tano and moved her to the frigate's airlock and placed her on the space-ward side of the shield. After receiving word from a battle droid outside the airlock that Skywalker had arrived, Bane activated the airlock's shield, trapping Tano so that she could serve as a bargaining chip.

Skywalker entered the room to find Tano at Bane's mercy, and Bane demanded that Skywalker unlock the memory crystal, fully prepared to open the airlock to the vacuum of space and send Tano to her death if he refused to do so. With his Padawan's life at risk, Skywalker handed over his lightsaber and used the Force to disassemble the holocron, combining it with the crystal and making the crystal's contents readable.

Once Bane had taken the holocron, Skywalker retrieved Tano's lightsaber and his own weapon with the Force and made quick work of Bane's super battle droid bodyguards. In retaliation, Bane opened the airlock, keeping the two Jedi occupied while he flew away with his rocket boots through an emergency bulkhead that sealed behind him. Bane made contact with Gunray and informed him of his success with gaining access to the crystal.

After forcing Anakin Skywalker to unlock it, Bane was sent to kidnap four of the Force-sensitive infants which were listed in the crystal. Eventually, he was captured by Skywalker and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano after delivering two of the children to Sidious's secret facility on Mustafar. Bane however manages to lure Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu into a trap on his hideout, and subsequently escaped from the Jedi's custody.

Personality

One of the galaxy's most lethal, ruthless, fearsome, and deadly bounty hunters, Cad Bane earned the reputation of the foremost blaster-for-hire during the Clone Wars, filling the position that fellow mercenary Jango Fett had occupied until his death. Quintessentially cold, cruel, calculating, and extremely capable in his line of work, Bane was unscrupulous and had much less moral content than his closest rival, Boba Fett. He completely ignored the morality of his work and often turned upon his own clients if he needed to. His loyalty was ultimately to credits and therefore to the highest bidder. His usual rate was considerable, but so was his reputation, to the point that his quarries knew that nothing would stop him from capturing them. Bane regarded credits with the highest importance, and though he did not pass up the opportunity to demand more pay from his clients when one arose, he was very dedicated to his work if paid the right amount for it, taking on jobs that were considered to be tough, costly,dangerous, and even impossible. If offered the appropriate payment, he did not place any restrictions on the client or contracted quarry, regardless of whether the latter was a person or a possession.

Crafty, resourceful, vicious, and brutally ruthless, Bane was a clever strategist. Displays of his astuteness included his arrangement for rival mercenary Davtokk to unwittingly serve as a test for his own team of hunters, his wily pilferage of the murdered Denal's armor to ensure his own escape from the Jedi at Devaron, and his ruse for Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi at Black Stall Station that enabled him to make another getaway. He chose to orchestrate his raid on the Senate during guard shift changes to maximize his operation's element of surprise and thus casualties by eliminating the majority of the active Senate security all at once, thereby showing his opponents no mercy. Even when tasked with bounties like the recapture of Ziro, he did not falter in the tenacious and treacherous pursuit of his quarry.

Bane was tirelessly patient, and it was said that he could not be stopped and would pursue his prey across the galaxy if necessary, no matter how dangerous the mission or the target. He was both respected and feared in his line of work, and he would not let anyone stand in his way. Bane was autonomous as a bounty hunter and did not place his trust in others easily or often, believing that the best way to ensure that a task was completed was to do it himself. Although he did not always operate alone, he usually worked solo, as doing so gave him the freedom of improvisation and more credits that did not have to be split with others. When he recognized that the job was big enough, he employed his fellow hunters for assistance, though he preferred to keep both his methods for selecting comrades for joint operations and his introduction into the bounty business itself obscure to the galaxy at large.

He proved his skill as a leader while commanding the posse that he formed to free Ziro the Hutt from Republic custody, and his assured manner and brutal methods earned him respect from his underlings. Bane displayed a lack of concern for his accomplices, caring little what happened to his team after they had liberated Ziro, provided that they avoided capture by the Republic. Additionally, when his comrade, Cato Parasitti, was captured by the Jedi during their joint infiltration of the Jedi Temple, Bane did not attempt to rescue her. Instead, he ignored her plight and left her in the Jedi's custody to continue his work for Darth Sidious.

Bane was smooth and thorough in his jobs and did not leave a mess behind unless he was paid to do so. Despite his penchant for a good fight, Bane preferred to use stealth and surprise tactics to avoid a direct fight when possible. Although he would have enjoyed taking down the likes of Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and indeed pursued them on several occasions, Bane did not let personal feelings get in the way of his work.

Skills and abilities

• Able to speak Galactic Basic Standard, thus understood Huttese, Jawaese and other languages
• Possessed a "stoic tolerance" for pain and Jedi mind tricks
• Skilled in the various forms of the art of combat; known as one of the deadliest beings in the galaxy with a blaster.
• Skilled in unarmed combat
• Adequate starship pilot

Equipment

• A pair of personalized BlasTech LL-30 blaster pistols
• Explosives
• Bola
• Small hold-out pistol
• A customized projectile carbine, used to short out lightsabers with cortosis
• Durasteel ice pick
• Cybernetic breathing tubes
• Durasteel magno-grip boots were equipped with customized Mitrinomon jetpack thrusters
• Wrist gauntlets, which included a variety of control devices, built-in tools, and weapons, including a cable launcher, comlink, data uplink, lanyard, non-lethal contact stunners, a projectile launcher and a flamethrower.