Hand of Judgment

"Mostly, we're known as the Hand of Judgment."

- Daric LaRone

The Hand of Judgment was a group of five stormtrooper deserters, who performed multiple vigilante operations across the Empire in 0,5 ABY. They left their post aboard Imperial-class Star Destroyer Reprisal after the leader of the group, Daric LaRone killed Major Drelfin of the Imperial Security Bureau. The Major had threatened LaRone after accusing him of insubordination during a mission to planet Teardrop, but the stormtrooper had turned tables on Drelfin and had been forced to kill this in self defence. The four witnessess to the event&mdash;Korlo Brightwater, Taxtro Grave, Saberan Marcross and Joak Quiller&mdash;decided to desert with their friend as they feared ISB would severly punish them for doing nothing to save the Major. They were able to steal a modified Suwantek TL-1800 freighter Gillia that was outfitted with lots of military supplies and weaponry.

Hoping to avoid capture by ISB the group travelled to Drunost&mdash;where they encountered and destroyed a swoopgang which was attacking a group of farmers&mdash;and to Janusar city on Ranklinge where they removed a corrupted Patroller Chief Cav'Saran from power. They first went by the name "Hand of Judgment" when on Ranklinge, when LaRone&mdash;who had been chosen to be the group's spokesman&mdash;was not able to come up with a good faked operational number. The connection between Cav'Saran's people and the swoopgang led the stormtroopers on a trail of BloodScar pirates who had been recruiting other illegal groups in Shelsha sector. Together with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, who also were tracking the pirates, the Hand of Judgment headed to Gepparin where they found a link between the pirates and Barshnis Choard, the governor of Shelsha sector. They followed the lead to Shelkonwa where the crew of Millennium Falcon also wanted to go as they had a friend who had gotten in trouble on the capital.

While the rebels were searching for their friend the Hand of Judgment went to help a downed ship that had landed near them and encountered an imperial agent, Mara Jade. She ordered them to help her stop a stolen AT-ST which was controlled by one of the pirates named Caaldra. After the fight Jade covered LaRone and his companions against a member of 501st legion, but demanded their help as a return favour in infiltrating the governor's palace&mdash;Jade had a reason to believe governor Choard was a traitor to the Empire. The group got into the palace and the Hand of Judgment found the governor first arresting him to stand trial for his treason. While separated from the stormtroopers Jade had heard about a group of five deserters and realised that they were the Hand of Judgment, but when Darth Vader questioned the group, she covered them again claiming they belonged to her. After hearing the truth about the Hand of Judgment and why they had deserted Jade decided to let them go while she investigated the matter.

For the next three months the Hand of Judgment travelled from one place to another getting rid of small problems such as mercenary groups and corrupted local politicians the Empire paid no attention to. When Jade got another mission involving infiltration to governmental palace&mdash;according to her information governor Ferrouz of Poln system was planning to defect to Rebellion&mdash;she decided to employ the Hand of Judgment again. When Jade found out that the governor had been coerced to co-operation with the Rebels&mdash;his family had been abducted&mdash;the Hand of Judgment took him under protective custody while she went after the kidnappers. With help from a group of Troukree led by Vaantaar the stormtroopers were able to ward off the attacks on the governors life.

When the governor and his family had been secured Vaantaar insisted on LaRone and his companions to follow him to meet his mysterious master. Vaantaar brought the Hand of Judgment aboard the Admonitor where they met Senior Captain Thrawn, who was interested in having LaRone and his companions under his command in his shadow Empire at the Unknown Regions. He wanted them to train a new group of stormtroopers where aliens would also be welcomed and after some thinking the Hand of Judgment decided to accept the offer and name their new unit as 501st legion.

Going rogue
"As Brightwater pointed out, I'm the one who killed Drelfin. Maybe they'll let you go back to the unit.''" "''Of course, as Grave pointed out, Palpatine's Empire may not be worth serving anymore. I was under impression we'd already been wondering about that when all the rest of this went down."

- LaRone and Quiller noting various opinions on their desertion

In 0,5 ABY the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Reprisal was tasked with rooting out a rumored Rebel base on the planet Teardrop. All the Rebels got out before Reprisal arrived, but Captain Ozzel still decided to deploy the troops to attack the suspected city on the hills. Among the Stormtroopers that participated in the attack were Daric LaRone, Taxtro Grave, Joak Quiller and Saberan Marcross while their friend, Scout trooper Korlo Brightwater, was on patrol duty outside the city. The members of Imperial Security Bureau who were accompaning the task force ordered the soldiers to shoot defenceless civilians&mdash;according to LaRone's observations the first people who were targeted were aliens.

Several days after the battle ISB Major Drelfin came across LaRone and his companions in a passage on board the Reprisal. He recognised LaRone and accused him of insubordination and treason&mdash;he had missed his shots on purpose when ordered to kill the people on Teardrop and the ISB operatives had noticed his lack in precicion shooting. The confrontation ended when Drelfin threatened LaRone with a gun and the trained battle reflexes took control of the stormtrooper who grapped the weapon and shot the Major in self defence. LaRone's four friends, who were present on the event, realized that he was in serious trouble, and that their own situation was also questionable as none of them had tried to stop LaRone. The death of an ISB Major would soon be noticed so the group came to conclusion that their only way out of it was to leave the Reprisal immediately. Following Quiller's advice the group decided to grap one of the modified ships ISB had brought on board&mdash;they chose Suwantek TL-1800 freighter named Gillia as their vehicle of escape. To get out of the Reprisal LaRone pretented to be Major Drelfin and tricked the ship to drop out of hyperspace so that they could leave&mdash;as the ISB was known to perform missions the fleet knew nothing about they were allowed to go on their way&mdash;before no one had found out about Drelfin's death.

When searching their new ship the stormtroopers found a wide variety of armors and weaponry as well as forged identity tags and money&mdash;the ship itself was also equipped with false registry papers. Seeing their military equipment the group thought that they could become merchenaries, but they still remembered the oath they had sworn to the Empire and the New Order and they were hesitant to hire themselves out for the criminals. After the massacre on Teardrop&mdash;combined with the rumors they had heard about the destruction of Alderaan&mdash;they had been wondering if the Empire they had served so loyally really was worth their allegiance. The large amount of money ISB had stored on board the Gillia allowed the stormtroopers to survive for a while without finding work, so they decided to head for Drunost to buy fuel and provisons before they would try and find a more permanent hiding place.

While LaRone and Grave were shopping on Drunost a swoopgang attacked a group of farmers near where stormtrooper's Suwantek was parked. Because LaRone had grown up as a farmer, he wanted to help them&mdash;he was unaware that in truth the "farmers" were smuggling weapons for the Rebellion&mdash;and with his companions he made a short work of the swoopgang letting the farmers go on their own way. The incident, however, forced them to leave Drunost before they had gotten all their supplies&mdash;they didn't want to wait for the Reprisal to track them there. The battle with the gang also forced the stormtroopers to think about their chain of command, as they knew battles required someone to lead while others followed the orders, and in the end LaRone was chosen to become a leader of their team.

Becoming the Hand of Judgment
"All right, I give up. Somebody say it.''" "Okay. The Hand of Judgment''?"

- LaRone and Grave after the first came up with the name of their group

After they departed from Drunost LaRone's group headed to Ranklinge, where they intended to complete their shopping, but when they landed in the city of Janusar a Sergeant Whisteer of the local patrol group tried to shake them down. The patroller also confiscated the two Aratech speeder bikes that had been found on board the Suwantek. When the patrollers were gone a starport worker told that the one behind the extortion was in fact the Patroller Chief Cav'Saran who had taken the entire city under his control. Such a misuse of power angered LaRone and his companions, who decided to release the city with the help of few honest patrollers who had lost their job, when Cav'Saran had taken over. After a day of making plans and shopping LaRone led his group to the Patroller Central. Their contact from the spaceport was waiting for them there with the ex-patrollers and a sizable crowd. When LaRone confronted Cav'Saran about his actions the Patroller Chief decided to make a fight for it with the support of his most loyal followers, but the five stormtroopers cut them down easily. When the former senior officer Colonel Atmino&mdash;who LaRone assigned to take charge of the city&mdash;asked the stormtroopers their identification numbers LaRone used the name "Hand of Judgment" when he had no better ideas at that time. While the other members of the group later teased LaRone because of the name&mdash;at first LaRone himself considered the name to be rather lame&mdash;they decided to keep it.

The newly named the Hand of Judgment then went through the information they had gained from Cav'Saran's files and compared it with the things they knew abou the swoopgang they had faced on Drunost. They noticed that both groups had suspicious connections with a pirate group called the BloodScars. They decided to return to Drunost to learn more about the swoopgang, but instead they found one of the farmers in close conversation with a suspicious group of people that included two humans and a wookiee. Believing that the group might be connected with the pirates they followed them to Purnham system, where they became allies of convenience with the group against a known group of pirates. Fron the two pirates they captured alive the Hand of Judgment learned that the BloodScars had been gathering smaller groups under their command. The pirates also told them about a mercenary named Caaldra who had been meeting with the leader of the pirates. In the end the information learned from the pirates was not as useful as LaRone had hoped it to be.

The conversation with the two humans they had been following turned out to be more fruitful, but the Hand of Judgment had no way of knowing how important Rebel figures they had met&mdash;the crew of Millennium Falcon consisted of Han Solo, Chewbacca and Luke Skywalker. Solo was extremely suspicious of LaRone and his companions&mdash;even though he had no idea they had Imperial background&mdash;but they were still able to co-operate in tracking down a likely location of the BloodScar pirate base. LaRone decided to keep Solo, Skywalker and Chewbacca locked up in three of the cabins while they would follow the lead to Gepparin system, where they expected to find the pirates. But when they arrived to Gepparin in the addition to pirates the Hand of Judgment found Reprisal. The Star Destroyer had gotten there slightly ahead of them as Captain Ozzel and his ISB associate Vak Somoril wanted to destroy the pirate base as an excuse of killing an Imperial agent, Mara Jade, who had infiltrated there&mdash;they were afraid that the woman had found out about the five missing stormtroopers. In fact Jade was completely unaware of the desertion of LaRone and his friends, but the special operations people who had been sent to accompany her during the infiltration mentioned about it to her. She wasn't all of that interested in the runaways as her own mission took priority.

While LaRone and his companions were trying to get away from the Reprisal, Skywalker, Solo and the Wookiee were able to escape from their confinement and their timely help enabled them to get loose from tractor beam Reprisal had on their ship. Chewbacca, who was flying Millennium Falcon, lured Reprisal after him and led it to useless hunt to Alderaan system while the stormtroopers landed to search what was left of the pirate base. In the command bunker they found a communications unit that was set to send message to Shelkonwa, the capital planet of Shelsha sector. Because Solo and Skywalker&mdash;who had learned that their friend was in trouble on Shelkonwa&mdash;also wanted to head that way they decided to stay together a little while longer even after learning both of their affiliations to Empire and Rebel Alliance. After Chewbacca returned with Millennium Falcon they headed out.

Working for the Emperor's Hand
"You have the entire Five-oh-first. You certainly won't begrudge me my Hand of Judgment."

- Mara Jade to Darth Vader

When the Hand of Judgment arrived to Shelkonwa with Solo, Skywalker and the Wookiee, they found Executor orbiting the planet after Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, had personally arrived to search for Organa, whose presence in Makrin City had been reported to him by Chief Administrator Vilim Disra. The faked military registry information allowed them to land unchallenged to Greencliff spaceport. As the city was crawling with Stormtroopers from 501st legion the Hand of Judgment decided to escort the Rebels during their search so that they would not fall to the hands of Imperials. When they were nearing their target&mdash;Skywalker had used the Force to locate Organa as well as roaming patrols they tried to avoid&mdash;they saw a small spaceship shot down near by. LaRone decided that their duty was to go and help there and ordered his Rebel allies to continue on their own while they would go and see what had happened.

The Hand of Judgment found a young, red-haired woman fighting against an AT-ST that had shot down her ship and as she used a high level Imperial recognition code they helped her to stop the rogue vehicle. They were also helped by Chewbacca&mdash;flying the Suwantek and providing heavy air support&mdash;and Solo's group who were attemping to return to the ship without drawing unwanted attention as they had already found Organa. Soon after the battle official Stormtrooper patrols arrived to the scene, but as the young woman&mdash;Mara Jade, Emperor's Hand&mdash;noticed LaRone's reluctance to identify his group, she covered them claiming that they were special unit given under her command. After they had left the scene together Jade wanted LaRone to tell her all the things he had not told to regular military, but he spun a story of half-truths to hide the fact that they were practically military deserters and she accepted it only demanding that the Hand of Judgment would for the time being take orders from her.

Behind the scenes
The original idea that would become the Hand of Judgment came from Albin Johnson, during a conversation he had with Timothy Zahn at the 2004 Stellarcon.

In an interview with The ForceCast, Zahn stated that he would like to write a story about the Hand of Judgment being kidnapped by Thrawn and joining the Empire of the Hand.

Appearances

 * Allegiance
 * ''Choices of One