Rune Haako/Legends

Rune Haako was the Settlement Officer of the Trade Federation, as well as the Neimoidian lieutenant to Viceroy Nute Gunray in the years before and up to the end of the Clone Wars.

Biography
"We will not survive this!"

- Rune Haako to Nute Gunray.

Haako was promoted to his position after the betrayal of fellow Neimoidian Hath Monchar. He served as the Trade Federation Settlement Officer, meaning that his primary duties were to act as a diplomatic attaché and legal counsel to the viceroy. He was widely known for his jurisprudential acumen, but when confronted with real threats, he reacted with typical pessimism.

Haako was at Viceroy Nute Gunray's side when the Trade Federation decided to blockade the peaceful planet of Naboo, and he was one of the few people, besides Gunray and Daultay Dofine, who knew that the Sith Lord Darth Sidious was the one who had ordered the blockade.

When the Battle of Naboo was concluded, Haako was captured along with Gunray and the two were transported to Coruscant for trial. After several trials, however, Gunray was never formally punished for the Naboo incident and maintained control over the Trade Federation; Haako was also shielded from any convictions&mdash;due to control wielded over the courts by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who was secretly Darth Sidious.

Haako would later serve at Gunray's side in the Confederacy of Independent Systems throughout the Clone Wars. He went with Gunray to the Separatist summit on Geonosis, and when an army of Jedi Knights and Republic clone troopers invaded, Haako advised the Viceroy that they should flee the planet. The pair then escaped aboard Gunray's shuttle, Lapiz Cutter. "We must get the starships back into space!"

- Rune Haako to Nute Gunray.

In the final days of the war, Rune Haako's forgetfulness was responsible for the Jedi's acquisition of Gunray's mechno-chair, which was equipped with a holotranceiver used by Darth Sidious to communicate via hologram to Viceroy Gunray, during the First Battle of Cato Neimoidia. The chair also contained intelligence capable of leading the Jedi toward finding Darth Sidious. However, Haako was never truly punished for this misdeed&mdash;he was merely chastised by Gunray&mdash;as their evasion of the Republic forces was a clear priority at the time. After a stop-over on Utapau, Haako and the other Separatist leaders were sent to Mustafar to orchestrate their armies' operations from there. When Anakin Skywalker, now Darth Sidious's apprentice Darth Vader, was sent to kill the Separatist leaders on Mustafar, Rune Haako was present and tried to hide underneath the table in the conference room as Vader slaughtered the other CIS leaders. When he tried to escape duing the confusion, Vader found&mdash;and bisected&mdash;him.

Behind the scenes

 * Rune Haako was played by Jerome Blake and voiced by James Taylor in The Phantom Menace. In Attack of the Clones he was played by an uncredited David Healey and voiced by Christopher Truswell (despite an error in the credits saying he is Lott Dod and is played by Alan Ruscoe), and played by Sandy Thompson in Revenge of the Sith.




 * Rune Haako's mask was lost shortly after The Phantom Menace finished filming. The production crew gave Daultay Dofine's mask to David Healey instead, and for a time it was thought that this "new" Neimoidian would become a separate character, and he was given the name Gilramos Libkath, after Gillian Libbert and Kathryn Ramos. However, despite being called Gilramos Libkath in the Attack of the Clones Visual Dictionary, the official LFL explanation is that it is in fact Haako, despite his different appearance and much deeper voice than in The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith. This did not stop Libkath from being established as a different character who looks and dresses similar to Haako's appearance in Attack of the Clones.


 * In the video game, Rune Haako dies when he is cornered by Vader. "I beg you for mercy," he pleaded. "You won't kill me. It's not allowed, for a Jedi Knight." Vader replied, "There is much you fail to understand," before killing him.


 * In the Revenge of the Sith comic adaption, Haako appears in his The Phantom Menace costume, unlike in the film.

Appearances

 * Cloak of Deception
 * Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter
 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (Incorrectly identified in the credits as Lott Dod and originally thought to have been Gilramos Libkath)
 * Evasive Action: Reversal of Fortune
 * Labyrinth of Evil
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition 16:5:241