Switch

"Turn him into scrap, boys!"

- Ganga Lor, on Switch

Switch was a protocol droid who worked as an information broker on Sel Zonn Station in the months following the end of the Clone Wars. He had had aspirations to become a crime lord and he established an organization that was based in a storage bay. However, he soon became a rival of the Chevin criminal Ganga Lor for control of illegal activities aboard the station. Alderaanian Security hired him to collect and receive one of their agents, who had been frozen in a slab of carbonite, and he gained possession of the carbonite. After the agent they sent to collect it from him was attacked, a group of spacers met with him instead and they negotiated with him for its release. However, as they concluded their business, they were attacked by Ganga Lor and a group of his thugs. Switch and the spacers defeated the Chevin and the protocol droid later sent them some encrypted messages that one of his agents had obtained on Cato Neimoidia.

Arrival on Sel Zonn Station
"So you thought you could hide your deal with the offworlders from me, droid?"

- Ganga Lor

At some point prior to 17 BBY, Switch set himself up as an information broker on Sel Zonn Station, an XQ2 Platform that orbited the planet Brentaal IV. He assembled a group of thugs to work for him, which included a Twi'lek, who served as his majordomo, and some Gamorreans, along with the astromech droid R5-B8. He operated out of Deep Storage Bay V14, a storage bay on a level of the station with restricted access. Although he soon became well known on the station, he was able to keep the location of his headquarters secret because the bay was quarantined, due to exhaust conduits that passed through it. Switch also had his majordomo bring monthly bribes to the station's manager, to ensure that it remained off-limits. He allowed the bay to fall into disrepair and had an expensive japor ivory wood desk placed in the center of the room, so that he could conduct his business from it. The protocol droid soon gained a rival in the form of Ganga Lor, a Chevin crime lord, who had arrived on the station at about the same time as him. He also had dealings with Doctor Byra Fenn of Delgas Medical Supplies, and she owed him some favors as a result.

Business with the Alderaanian rebels
In circa 17 BBY, Switch was hired by Alderaanian Security to collect and store some cargo for them. The cargo consisted of one of their agents, who had been investigating Empress Teta in the Deep Core Security Zone and had been frozen in carbonite to reduce the chance of capture by the Galactic Empire while traveling back to Alderaan. Switch arranged for the cargo to arrive on Sel Zonn Station in the cargo bay on Blue Deck, an Imperial-controlled zone of the station, as he believed that they would not expect anyone to be bold enough to hide contraband there. Around this time, he was also contracted by someone else to arrange for a crate of Corellian ale to be delivered to Alderaan, and he kept this in the Blue Deck cargo bay as well.

An Alderaanian agent called Maya was sent by Senator Bail Organa to collect the cargo from Switch, but she was attacked by stormtroopers after arriving on Sel Zonn Station. Some spacers tried to help her escape from them and found out from her about the cargo, so they went to collect it instead. On their arrival at Switch's cargo bay, he introduced himself and R5-B8 to them. He also offered them drinks from his extensive collection, while explaining that his services were available to anyone who was prepared to pay. He then asked why they had came, and they entered negotiations. He offered to release the cargo for a payment of 1000 credits, but just as the spacers were concluding their business, Ganga Lor and a group of his thugs entered the room and attacked them. Lor was jealous of the deal that Switch had made with the Alderaanians and wanted to finally rid himself of his rival. Even though Lor had bribed Switch's own thugs prior to the attack so that they would not fight hard, Switch and the spacers were able to kill the Chevin gangster and his cronies. Lor's organization was destroyed, as all of his men had participated in the attack, so Switch gained more control over crime on Sel Zonn Station.

Shortly afterwards, Switch received some information from TC-663, a protocol droid who was one of his contacts and worked on Cato Neimoidia as a translator for the Hutt, Darga. The translator had been monitoring communications from Darga's palace and had noticed that someone had been secretly sending messages to the Galactic Empire while the Hutt slept. He sent copies of these messages to Switch, but the information broker was unable to break their encryption. The spacers Switch had encountered on Sel Zonn Station had since joined the Alderaanian Resistance and were staying as guests at Darga's palace, so he ordered TC-663 to give them a copy of the transmissions. He hoped that they would be able to break the encryption and would then share the information from the messages with TC-663, who could then send this on to him on Sel Zonn Station.

Characteristics
By the time he became an information broker, Switch had not had a memory wipe for a long time, allowing him to develop a greater degree of individuality than most droids. The remnants of his protocol droid programming led him having aspirations to sophistication and he acquired an extensive collection of beverages, showing his refined tastes. The Japor ivory wood desk he acquired also showed this, as it was hand-crafted, making it rare and expensive. Switch spoke with a Coruscanti-Imperial accent and sounded like an upper-class Human, making him sound as sophisticated as appeared. He spoke cheerily and lightly, but he was not as civilized or friendly as he seemed. He gave no value to life, so thought nothing of the deaths of sentient beings. However, he did understand friendship and considered R5-B8 to be his most valued companion. He was persuasive and possessed good criminal acumen, and it was these traits that he used to form his organization and convince sentient beings who served him to make him their leader. He wanted to use these skills to become a crime lord, so was pleased when Ganga Lor's rival criminal organization was destroyed. He also liked to flicker his eyes, to imitate blinking.

Switch was covered in shiny, ebony-colored plating. He was fitted with standard protocol droid systems, including a processor, a vocabulator, a translation unit, and hand appendages.

Behind the scenes
Switch made his first and only appearance in The Traitor's Gambit, the first adventure in the Dawn of Defiance campaign, a supplement to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. In that, the players can engage in a fight with Switch's Gamorrean guards and if they choose to do so, Switch isn't bothered by this. The players also have a variety of options for how their negotiations with Switch can occur. They can get him to reduce his fee by 200 credits if they agree to supply him with information on a regular basis. They can also bribe him to find out about what the cargo is, and if they mention that they own a ship, he offers to pay them to deliver a crate of Corellian ale to an address on Alderaan. If the players fail to persuade Switch to tell them the cargo's location, then he gives it to them after Ganga Lor's attack. If any of the player characters are injured during the fight, Switch calls in a favor with Byra Fenn, to get them healed free of charge. It is also possible for Switch not to survive the attack, but this is presumably non-canon, as he is referenced in the second Dawn of Defiance adventure, A Wretched Hive, and so must have survived. After the encounter, it is possible for Switch to contact Captain Sirona Okeefe, to tell her that the spacers require transport off the station.