Kosh/Legends

"Captain Kosh is arriving momentarily, so stay sharp&mdash;there could be Rebel spies anywhere!"

- A sandtrooper in Mos Eisley

Captain Kosh was a Human male Imperial officer in charge of a garrison of stormtroopers on the planet Tatooine. In 0 BBY, Kosh was tasked by Commander Nahdonnis Praji to search for the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, who were carrying stolen plans for the newest Imperial superweapon, the Death Star. Working in conjunction with Captain Mod Terrik's Desert Sands sandtrooper unit and the elite 501st Legion, Kosh's troops followed the droids' trail to the spaceport of Mos Eisley, but R2-D2 and C-3PO were ultimately able to escape.

Biography
Kosh was a Human male captain in the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps who was stationed on the planet Tatooine in the years leading up to the Battle of Yavin. Kosh was the officer in charge of a local garrison of stormtroopers. In 0 BBY, Rebel Senator Leia Organa's starship, the corvette Tantive IV, was intercepted above Tatooine while in possession of the stolen plans for the newest Imperial superweapon, the Death Star battlestation. Led by Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader, Imperial forces seized the ship but found no trace of the plans. Vader soon discerned that before being captured, Organa had hidden the plans inside her astromech droid, R2-D2, who, along with his counterpart, C-3PO, used an escape pod to reach Tatooine's surface.

Vader assigned Commander Nahdonnis Praji to lead the search for the droids and recover the plans. While Vader's elite 501st Legion was being prepared, Praji assigned Kosh's garrisoned troops and the newly arrived Desert Sands sandtrooper unit under the command of Captain Mod Terrik to lead the search. After a brief landfall, however, Praji delegated the overall command of the operation to Kosh. The Imperial troops followed the droids' trail, discovering that a young moisture farmer, Luke Skywalker, had acquired R2-D2 and C-3PO and was heading to the Mos Eisley spaceport to secure passage off-world.

The troops under Kosh's command searched Mos Eisley but were unable to find any trace of the two droids, who were deliberately hiding from them. Kosh himself soon arrived at the spaceport in a Sentinel-class landing craft to oversee the search. As he was disembarking from the craft, flanked by two stormtroopers, the rest of the troops greeted him and snapped to attention. The search for the droids continued; however, due to a delay in coordination of Kosh's garrison, the Desert Sands, and the 501st, R2-D2 and C-3PO were able to escape from Tatooine with Skywalker aboard the freighter Millennium Falcon, captained by smuggler Han Solo. The droids and the plans were eventually delivered to the Rebel Alliance, allowing the Rebels to destroy the Death Star during the Battle of Yavin.

Personality and traits
Kosh had fair skin and wore a gray stormtrooper officer's uniform.

Behind the scenes
Captain Kosh first appeared in Heroes in Hiding, a 1996 children's pop-up book written and illustrated by Ken Steacy. In the book, he was identified as the officer in charge of the search for the missing droids. This created a contradiction, as in 1995, Decipher, Inc. had released its Premiere Limited set for the Star Wars Customizable Card Game, which identified the officer leading the search operation as "Commander Praji." Because the depiction of Kosh in Heroes in Hiding was very vague, the article The Empire's Finest: Who's Who in the Imperial Military&mdash;published in Star Wars Insider 96 in September of 2006&mdash;dismissed the inconsistency as easily reconcilable. In 2008, Kosh received an entry in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, although it did not describe his participation in the search for R2-D2 and C-3PO. However, the StarWars.com Hyperspace-exclusive article Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Praji, written by Nathan O'Keefe and published on February 5, 2009, provided a canonical resolution of the contradiction, integrating both Kosh and Praji into the storyline.

Appearances

 * Heroes in Hiding

Notes and references
Kosch