0-0-0

"I'm 0-0-0 or Triple-Zero, if you prefer. I'm a protocol droid, specialized in etiquette, customs, translation and torture, ma'am."

- 0-0-0 introduces himself to Doctor Aphra

0-0-0, also known simply as Triple-Zero, was a protocol droid designed to specialise in etiquette, customs, translation and torture.

Reactivated and Vader seeks the truth
"Override imprint 'master' on all individuals present. Codename: Aphra and codename: Vader." "Ah, better not shake hands, then. May route a fatal shock through my palm. Old habits die hard and all that. And in my experience they certainty die harder than most organics, ma'am."

- Aphra and Triple-Zero

A few weeks after the Battle of Yavin, Doctor Aphra, a rogue archaeologist, who specialized in droid and weapons technologies, traveled to Quarantine World III in order to steal the Triple-Zero personality matrix that she intended to use to reactivate Triple-Zero who could awaken a BT-1 assassin droid she had salvaged some time before, on the orders of the Droid Gotra. She eventually succeeded, after the Sith Lord Darth Vader intervened. Aphra brought Vader aboard her ship, the Ark Angel, where Vader hired her to help him acquire an army of battle droids to track down a Rebel pilot, and an Imperial agent.

Aphra inserted the personality matrix into a silver protocol droid's body and turned it on. Triple-Zero awoke and introduced himself as a protocol droid specialized in etiquette and torture, as Aphra imprinted herself and Vader as Triple-Zero's new masters. Triple-Zero thought better of shaking the hands of his new masters, thinking he may accidentally kill them with an electric shock, so he instead inquired whether he could be of assistance. Aphra told him he could awaken BT-1, or Bee Tee, as he spoke the R&D languages that only droids associated with the Imperial Tarkin Initiative spoke. Triple-Zero did so, and Bee Tee instantly took hostility to Vader and Aphra, but Triple-Zero berated him for wanting to kill their new masters and shut him down. Soon thereafter, Aphra gave the two specialized assassin droids to Vader and prepared to travel to Geonosis, a desert world in the Outer Rim, to steal a droid factory from a Geonosian queen.

Once on Geonosis, Aphra sent Triple-Zero and Bee Tee into the queen's lair to navigate the most direct route to the queen's chamber so she and Vader could follow. Farther into the tunnels, the two droids came across other droids: B1 battle droids, that were used extensively during the Clone Wars that occurred about two decades before. Triple-Zero was very surprised at the droids, and intended to try and communicate with them in their native language, Geonosian hive-mind, but had nothing to say. So Bee Tee burned them to death with his built-in flamethrower, while Triple-Zero realized he did have something to say: He laughed at them as they burned and died. Soon, the droids reached the queen's chamber and waited for Vader and Aphra to arrive before entering to confront the alien queen. The queen was angry at the unexpected visitors. Vader ignored her, however, and began the heist. He cleared the queen and the battle droids from atop the factory and ordered Bee Tee to open fire. Meanwhile, the Ark Angel remotely blew a hole in the ceiling of the lair that allowed Vader's ship, a J-type 327 Nubian starship, to lower a crane through. The crane lifted the factory out through the gap, while Triple-Zero held on to Bee Tee, who blasted out of the cave using his booster rockets.

Later, aboard Vader's J-type 327 Nubian, Bee Tee and Aphra got the droid factory working. It created one BX-series droid commando as a test. Triple-Zero examined the droid and determined it had "teething issues," and suggested to his masters that his enhancement methods could be used to improve the droid factory's functionality. Shortly after, while Aphra and Vader were preoccupied, Triple-Zero answered a message from the Wookiee bounty hunter Black Krrsantan who Vader had hired some time before. Triple-Zero informed Vader of the Wookiee's arrival, who brought aboard his bounty: the Imperial agent. The agent insisted that if Vader tortured him, he would get none of the information Vader wanted. Vader agreed, and sent Triple-Zero to interrogate the agent. Triple-Zero was satisfied at having someone to torture, and set to work.

Later, Triple-Zero managed to extract all information from the agent. Including his name: Cylo-IV, the location of his research base: within a nebula in the Outer Rim, and his commission from the Emperor: to create apprentices to replace Vader as the Emperor's chief enforcer. Triple-Zero reported all to Lord Vader, who ordered course be set to the research base.

Vader's team took his J-type 327 Nubian starship to the base, while the factory produced two platoons worth of commando droids. Aphra fired an ion charge that disabled the base's systems and confused the soldiers stationed within. Vader, meanwhile, ejected into space and boarded the base. Aphra landed the starship on the base and Triple-Zero and Bee Tee cut through a blast door to serve as distractions to the soldiers so Vader could vent them into space when he cut through the base's organic walls. Triple-Zero inquired as to whether he had served adequately as a distraction. Vader, however, ignored the protocol droid, leaving Triple-Zero to lament to Bee Tee that he had had more grateful masters in the past&mdash;though it hadn't stopped him from draining their blood. The droid commandos arrived and went off with Vader to subdue all resistance, which left the two assassin droids to return to the ship and wait for Vader's return with Aphra.

Vader remained in the base for some time, before returning without the commando droids. He subsequently learned the name of the Rebel pilot, Skywalker, and set out to Skywalker's homeworld of Tatooine to learn all he could of the boy. Vader's team accompanied him, and took the Ark Angel. Once on Tatooine, Vader investigated the homestead where Skywalker had grown up. It had been burned by Imperial troops weeks before, and Triple-Zero was disturbed that droids had been slaughtered in the attack. They next traveled to another home that Vader entered alone. He so reemerged, so Aphra detonated a molecular purge bomb that destroyed all evidence that anyone had ever lived there. Vader left right after to continue his duties within the Empire, while Aphra and the droids took the Ark Angel to the Outer Rim jungle planet, Son-tuul.

While on Son-tuul, Aphra hired a group of bounty hunters&mdash;the Trandoshan Bossk, the midget Beebox, the IG-series assassin droid IG-90, and Krrsantan&mdash;on the orders of Vader, in order to steal the Son-tuul Pride's fortune of credits that had been seized by the Empire just before, and was in transit to the Anthan Prime Orbital Dockyard in the Anthan system aboard an Arquitens-class light cruiser. Triple-Zero and the group took the Ark Angel to Anthan Prime, where, in orbit, Aphra remotely detonated an asteroid that created a small asteroid field, which the cruiser collided with. The Imperials, unaware that they were being attacked by a sentient foe, remained unaware when Aphra, Bee Tee and the bounty hunters boarded the cruiser to install a homing beacon so Krrsantan&mdash;who had stayed behind in his Auzituck anti-slaver gunship&mdash;could use his gunship to tow an asteroid into the cruiser to break it open and spill the credit ingots into space where Bee Tee could could gather them up. Which, after Triple-Zero informed Krrsantan he could begin his run, is exactly what happened. Although, Krrsantan was in cahoots with Aphra, and on Vader's orders, had been told to let a majority of the credits drift into space so they could be collected later and given to Vader. Then, Aphra and the three hunters returned to the Ark Angel, where Triple-Zero welcomed them and informed them that the plan had gone on without a hitch.

Soon thereafter, the credits were gathered and brought on to the Ark Angel where they were split into five equal shares: one for Triple-Zero's master, and four for the hired guns. The mercenaries were unsatisfied with the lower-than-promised pay, but agreed, nonetheless, to work with Aphra again only if she paid up front the next time, and left with their credits. Aphra and the two droids then traveled to Anthan 13, one of Anthan Prime's moons, to collect the credits where Krrsantan had dumped them and meet with Vader. Krrsantan also came to receive his "bonus pay" and then left. Triple-Zero confessed to Aphra, due to the crystalline caverns of Anthan 13 and the large pile of credit chips, that he had always had a hankering to be covered in precious metals. Aphra and Vader discussed her next mission before Vader left as well, leaving Triple-Zero to express express his discomfort on not receiving a portion of the contraband even though IG-90&mdash;a droid like Triple-Zero&mdash;had received a share. Aphra had believed the droid had been taking joy in the work, but Triple-Zero corrected her: he had not been torturing an organic being; therefore, there was little joy. Aphra told him to have patience and started work on their next assignment, the individual Commodex Tahn.

Triple-Zero, Aphra and Beetee then returned to to the Spire, a floating city on Anthan Prime, and landed near a holochess business. Triple-Zero was enthralled by the prospect of possibly playing holochess after being locked away on Quarantine World III for centuries. He admitted to Aphra that due to his extensive programming in the art of torture, he was a terrible holochess player, but that did not stop him from loving the game. Aphra negotiated with "The Ante," a Givin infochant, who provided Aphra with Commodex Tahn's family background. Triple-Zero voiced, as they walked back to the ship, that he thought Tahn didn't seem like someone Vader would be interested in. Aphra agreed; he belonged to a family of morticians on the planet Naboo.

Behind the scenes
The protocol droid 0-0-0 first appeared in Darth Vader 3: Vader, Part III, the third issue of the Marvel comic book series Star Wars: Darth Vader, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Salvador Larroca.

The blueprints of 0-0-0 shown in Darth Vader 3: Vader, Part III originated in various Star Wars Legends sources. One of them appeared in the 1999 reference book The Essential Guide to Droids. Another body shot was featured in Star Wars Blueprints: The Ultimate Collection. The close-up of the protocol droid's head originated as a blueprint that came with C-3PO's Riddell mini-helmet.