Cad Bane/Legends

Cad Bane was a male Duros who rose to be the galaxy's deadliest bounty hunter during the Clone Wars. Born on the planet of Duro, the ruthless Bane worked for the highest bidder, and after fellow bounty hunter Jango Fett perished in the opening battle of the war, the Duros became the galaxy's best and most fearsome mercenary. In 22 BBY, Bane was hired by the Dark Lord Darth Sidious to capture Jedi Master Ring-Sol Ambase on the planet Kynachi, a job that the bounty hunter successfully executed. Later in the war, Bane was hired by the Hutts to break the Republic captive Ziro Desilijic Tiure out of prison on Coruscant, and formed a team of hunters to capture members of the Galactic Senate. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine was forced to free Ziro, and Bane later disbanded his team of hunters.

The Duros hijacked a dangerous weapon from the Skakoan assassin Kul Teska on Alzoc III, and Teska and the Jedi Order both attempted to retrieve the stolen cargo because of its value. Later working again for Darth Sidious, Bane stole a Jedi holocron from the Jedi Temple to activate a memory crystal&mdash;which he also obtained&mdash;containing information on potential Force-sensitive infants. The bounty hunter and his Separatist escort were ambushed over the planet Devaron by Jedi forces, but the Duros managed to escape. Bane captured the infants listed in the memory crystal and brought them to a secret facility on Mustafar, where Sidious planned to alter them for his own purposes. At some point, the Duros was given the heavily modified Porax-38 starfighter Xanadu Blood by the Confederacy as partial payment for his work.

Bounty hunter
"Master Cad Bane, I presume. I've heard much about you. Who hasn't? The greatest hunter since Jango lost his head&hellip;"

- Davtokk

The Duros male Cad Bane was born on the planet of Duro during the last decades of the Galactic Republic. He became a bounty hunter, earning a reputation as the galaxy's preeminent mercenary who operated solely for the financial reward of his missions. Bane worked for the highest bidder, and cared little for who employed him as long as he continued to get his pay. If his quarry offered him a better fee, Bane had no qualms with turning on his original employer. Bane was in operation during the Clone Wars, and by the time Jango Fett&mdash;the bounty hunter considered to be the galaxy's best&mdash;perished in 22 BBY during the opening battle of the war, Bane was something of a veteran in his line of work. With Fett out of the picture, Bane rose to be among the galaxy's most notorious, ruthless, and fearsome bounty hunters. However, Bane had enemies, and a considerable price was placed on his head.

Deception on Kynachi
"Jedi, huh? My fee just went up. A lot.''" "''You will be compensated. Go to Kynachi immediately. I will contact you with further instructions."

- Cad Bane and Darth Sidious

In the first year of the war, while cleaning his blaster pistols in his shabby Coruscant apartment, Bane was holographically contacted by the Sith Lord Darth Sidious and hired to pursue a Jedi-led clone trooper squad, which was headed to investigate the origins of the recently destroyed Separatist warship Malevolence on the planet Kynachi. After arriving on the Trade Federation–controlled world, the Duros recruited a food vendor to identify any strangers in the town and provided the vendor with a special comlink that overrode the Federation's frequency-jammer on the planet. The vendor later contacted Bane in the hotel where the bounty hunter was staying, reporting that three robed men&mdash;two of whom were carrying blaster rifles&mdash;and a Chiss youngling were headed with the local Lalo Gunn to the diner that she owned.

The men and the Chiss going to the diner were in fact three Republic clone troopers and the Jedi Padawan Nuru Kungurama. Complying with Darth Sidious's latest instructions, Bane proceeded to the diner to set up an elaborate staging of events and manipulate the group's actions. The Duros summoned four BX-series droid commandos to fake a fight with him at Gunn's starship, the Hasty Harpy. After the battle droids had been destroyed, the bounty hunter pretended that he had been blinded by a luma grenade, and was taken into the diner by trooper CT-5177, nicknamed "Chatterbox," and another trooper named "Knuckles." Bane chose to take the risk of revealing to Gunn, Kungurama, and the troopers that he was a bounty hunter in order to deceive them. The Duros lied and stated that he had been hired to break someone out of the KynachTech factory prison, having been provided with a datatape of its schematics. However, he also truthfully reported that he had seen the facility's droid guards escorting in four Republic troopers and an unconscious Ring-Sol Ambase, Kungurama's own Jedi Master. Unbeknownst to the Republic squad, the Duros himself had been hired by Sidious to capture Ambase alive.

With the scenario that Bane had provided, Kungurama developed a plan to have trooper CT-8863, nicknamed "Breaker," build a new droid&mdash;using parts from the disabled droid commandos and the Genetech brain of Gunn's destroyed navigation-turned-waiter droid, Teejay&mdash;to break into the prison. Bane accompanied Chatterbox, Knuckles, and Gunn as they reconnoitered the facility and checked out the hunter's own ship, which the group planned to use to escape Kynachi and break through the Trade Federation blockade surrounding the planet, with additional assistance from pass codes that the Duros had been given. The four returned to Gunn's transport, where Breaker and Kungurama were assembling the new droid. The unit was successfully reactivated and renamed "Cleaver," and Bane devised a risky plan to break into the prison and liberate the captives. With Kungurama, Gunn, the troopers, and the poncho-adorned Bane posing as prisoners and Cleaver as their droid captor, they were admitted into the prison.

The squad confronted Trade Federation Overseer Umbrag, but as Kungurama cornered the Skakoan, Umbrag inadvertently caused a battle droid to fire its E-5 blaster rifle. At the sound of blaster fire, Bane drew his pistols and began to shoot at the nearest battle droids, sparking the outburst of a chaotic firefight. With the others occupied with the battle, Bane was able to slip away and capture Master Ring-Sol Ambase, who had been previously captured by battle droids. The bounty hunter eventually returned to the prison with Ambase's lightsaber, meeting the Jedi and troopers, who had been reunited with the rest of their clone squad. The Duros continued to deceive the group, saying that he had been unsuccessful in finding his "quarry". Although the clone troopers did not trust Bane, the hunter gave Ambase's lightsaber to Kungurama, stating that it was all that he had found of the Jedi. Bane received Kungurama's thanks before departing.

Bane used a gravsled taken from the KynachTech Industries factory to transport a transparisteel coffin containing an unconscious Master Ambase. The bounty hunter returned to his ship in the nearby Docking Bay 21 and brought Ambase's body onto the vessel. Departing the planet, the Duros used his pass codes to bypass several Republic Navy Star Destroyers that had arrived in orbit of the remote world. After escaping the cruisers and activating his ship's automated pilot mode, Bane returned to the vessel's main cabin and contacted Darth Sidious. The Sith Lord was pleased to learn of the bounty hunter's successful mission, telling the Duros to deliver the Jedi to the fifth moon of the Bogden system before severing the connection.

Raid on the Senate
Bane was later hired by the Hutts to free crime lord Ziro Desilijic Tiure, who had been arrested earlier in the war for crimes against the Republic and incarcerated in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center. Instead of opting for a straightfoward prison break, however, the Duros decided to force the Republic into freeing Ziro by taking hostages. To do so, he would need a group of skilled bounty hunters, and assembled a team consisting of the Jedi hunter Aurra Sing, the Weequay mercenary Shahan Alama, and the Patrolian slicer Robonino. The team was backed up by two Separatist BX-series droid commandos and a number of IG-86 sentinel droids.

As the organic members of Bane's posse usually worked alone, Bane decided to arrange a test for his comrades to ensure that they could work together as a team. Bane lured fellow bounty hunter Davtokk to the planet of Keyorin under the pretense that Bane was holding a recruitment drive. Bane knew that Davtokk intended to kill him and collect the bounty on his head, and assembled a life-size mannequin of himself from a scrapped battle droid to fool the bounty hunter. After arriving on the planet and entering the safehouse with directions from Bane's techno-service droid, Todo 360, Davtokk fired upon the mannequin, assuming it to be Bane. The Duros watched the events unfold as his comrades ambushed and crippled the enemy mercenary.

Bane emerged from the shadows and confronted Davtokk, explaining that the entire operation had been arranged as a final test for his new team. Pointing one of his blaster pistols at Davtokk's head, Bane killed the incapacitated mercenary. Heading to Coruscant, Bane took his team to raid the Galactic Senate, planning to take senators hostage in order to force Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to release Ziro the Hutt. After Bane, Alama, a sentinel droid, and two droid commandos landed at the Republic Executive Building in an airspeeder, a squad of Senate Commando guards confronted the approaching Bane. The Duros commented on their hastiness, and before the guards could arrest Bane, Sing used a sniper rifle to kill most of the guards from a long-range post. Bane personally eliminated the Senate Commando captain, Jayfon, by tackling him and snapping his neck.

With the guards eliminated, Bane signaled to Sing, Robonino, and the other hunters that the coast was clear. The bounty hunters arrived at the building with several more sentinel droids. Leaving the droid commandos outside to clear the platform and stand guard, the team entered the headquarters of the Senate. After eliminating the Senate Commando posted at the Executive Building's power control room, as well as several droids inside, Bane left Robonino to shut off the power before heading for the building's atrium with the rest of his team. Along the way to "meet" the senators, Bane&mdash;having planning his infiltration of the Executive Building during Senate Guard shifts&mdash;eliminated most of the active Senate security by tossing a primed thermal detonator into the guards' barracks when two shifts were assembled there. Entering the atrium, Bane caught the attention of the senators discussing a piece of Senate legislation by firing several blaster shots. The bounty hunters surrounded the senators, and when Senator Philo objected to being taken hostage&mdash;walking away while refusing to "listen to insolence"&mdash;Bane shot him in the back.

The Duros ordered the senators to turn over their communication devices before contacting Supreme Chancellor Palpatine in his office via a holotransmission, Bane stated that the senator hostages would be freed if Ziro the Hutt were to be released from prison. After Palpatine objected, Robonino shut off the power, trapping Palpatine and Senator Orn Free Taa in the office and compromising all external communications. As the bounty hunters collected the senators' transmission devices, Bane came across Senator Padmé Amidala. While speaking with her, Bane noticed Amidala glance at something behind him, and the bounty hunter turned around and recognized Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker surveying them from an upper level window. Bane fired at the man, and Skywalker fled, prompting the Duros to order Alama and an IG-86 sentinel droid after the Jedi.

Alama returned without the droid, and reported that while it had been destroyed by Skywalker, an examination of the droid's remains showed that the Jedi Knight did not have his lightsaber. Bane dispatched Sing with Alama to find and bring the Jedi back to him. The Duros contacted Palpatine once more and told the Chancellor to make a pardon disc. Senator Taa would be picked up by Bane's airspeeder and taken to deliver the disc to the prison. Taa reluctantly obeyed, and the sentinel droid HELIOS-3D took the senator to the Detention Center. Sing and Alama then returned to the atrium with Robonino and an unconscious, handcuffed Skywalker, and the Duros taunted the knocked-out Jedi Knight before ordering him to be tossed in with the rest of the hostages. Meanwhile, 3D collected the Hutt and went back to the Executive Building, while Taa stayed at the prison in the safety of the Coruscant Guard. Preparing to leave, Bane ordered the rest of his team to set up their "parting gifts" around the senators&mdash;a laser web that would activate explosives upon the slightest touch.

Wishing the senators and Jedi a "most respectful farewell," Bane left the building with his comrades. Upon the team's arrival outside on the landing platform, two LAAT/i gunships landed, and clone troopers of the Coruscant Guard piled out. The troopers confronted the group of bounty hunters, blocking their escape, and Palpatine contacted Bane. The Chancellor ordered the Duros to surrender, but Bane him of the trapped senators, and Palpatine reluctantly relinquished his attempts to apprehend the bounty hunter. Bane's airspeeder arrived, driven by 3D and hauling Ziro in a rear transport. With the lives of the senators still at risk, the Coruscant Guard clones allowed the team of mercenaries to escape. After they were a safe distance away, Bane remotely activated the explosives as payback for the indignities Ziro had suffered in prison.

Skywalker, in the meantime, had recovered, and began to cut a hole in the floor around himself and the senators. Just as the explosives went off, the Jedi and the senators dropped into the room below. As Ziro congratulated Bane on a "job well done," Bane demanded his pay from the Hutt, as he did not work for free. After they had escaped, Bane transferred the rewards for the mission appropriately into the accounts of his accomplices, although Alama did not believe that the Duros had transferred all of the credits. Bane ordered Alama, Sing, and Robonino to "bury their prides" and flee separately to hide from the Republic, stating that it would not do to get captured. The bounty hunters complied, and Bane himself was able to evade apprehension by the Jedi Order.

Cargo thief
After Bane inadvertently hijacked a dangerous weapon on Alzoc III from the Skakoan assassin Kul Teska, both Teska and the Jedi went to retrieve the stolen cargo because of its importance and value.

Work for Darth Sidious
Later, while in his quarters located in the backstreets of Coruscant, Bane was personally contacted via hologram by Darth Sidious, who hired the Duros to steal a holocron from the Jedi Temple's Archives. Bane initially believed the mission to be impossible, but after Sidious put that the bounty hunter's reputation into question, Bane agreed to the job, requesting an elite starfighter and triple his usual rate. Sidious provided Bane with schematics of the Temple and a memory chip. The Duros recruited the shapeshifting Clawdite bounty hunter Cato Parasitti, whom the Duros frequently worked with. Bane also used his techno-service droid, Todo 360, for the mission, secretly equipping Todo with an explosive device. After Parasitti arrived in his quarters, she took the form of the dead Jedi Master Ord Enisence to gain access to the Jedi Archives' security systems.

With Parasitti at a computer terminal in the Archive Library, Bane and Todo 360 were able to find a weak point in the Temple's energy shield. Entering a ventilation shaft from the Temple's roof, Bane and his droid discovered that their way was being blocked by an active fan. Parasitti pointed Todo to the fan's controls, but once Bane and his droid had passed, Todo accidentally reactivated the fan from a laser beam trigger. The fan severed the cord that Bane was using to descend through the shaft, and the Duros and the droid dropped to the shaft floor. The pair arrived at a shaft over the high-security holocron vault, and the Clawdite deactivated the vault's entire laser sensor system from her terminal in the Archive Library. As Bane broke into the holocron safe, he directed Todo to cut through one of the vault's walls to get to the Temple's communication center and lure the Jedi away from the vault. The droid complied and began to cut a hole in the wall.

Parasitti, meanwhile, had been captured by Anakin Skywalker's Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, and after the Clawdite revealed that Bane was infiltrating the holocron vault, Skywalker and Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi arrived in the vault to apprehend the intruder. While Bane hid in a dark ventilation duct, Todo triggered an explosion and lured the Jedi to the communication center, and the two Jedi pursued the droid. Opening the safe door and securing the holocron, Bane donned a Jedi robe and sneaked past the other Jedi that had their attention focused on the explosion. Despite catching sight of a captured Parasitti on the other side of the room, Bane left without his accomplices, leaving Todo to be destroyed in the communication center by the explosion that he had planted in the droid earlier.

The bounty hunter later stole a memory crystal that contained a list of potentially Force-sensitive infants&mdash;in short, the future of the Jedi Order. Bane was lent a Separatist escort of several Munificent-class frigates by Trade Federation Viceroy Nute Gunray. The Duros captured the Rodian Jedi Bolla Ropal to use the stolen holocron and unlock the crystal. Under electrocution, Ropal refused to help the Duros and preferred to die, a sacrifice that Bane deemed foolish. However, two Jedi soon headed his way to capture the bounty hunter. After a long chase, Skywalker and Tano found and ambushed the Duros and his escort over the planet Devaron. Skywalker's flagship, the Resolute, targeted the frigate's hyperdrive and destroyed the vessel's power converters. With Bane's fleet of vessels crippled, Gunray contacted the Duros, angered that the ships he had lent the bounty hunter were being damaged and destroyed.

The Duros ordered his battle droid crew to transfer complete control of all shipboard functions to his wrist-com. Skywalker and Tano dropped out of space with Clone Captain CC-7567 and a squad of clone troopers aboard several All Terrain Tactical Enforcers, intending to board Bane's frigate, rescue Ropal, and retrieve the stolen holocron. The bounty hunter lured the Jedi and clones to the frigate's gunnery deck and turned off the artificial gravity, and Bane used his magno-grip boots to stay attached to the ground. As the Duros had planned, a firefight erupted between his battle droid forces and the Jedi. Although Skywalker initially managed to get past the Duros and attack him from behind, Bane was able to flee and draw Tano after him. Tano pursued Bane and fell into the trap that the bounty hunter had set. The Duros cut the Padawan off from her Master and lured her to a dead-end corridor. Bane knocked her out, stole her lightsaber, and placed her in binders inside an airlock.

With Tano taken hostage, Skywalker agreed to use the Force to unlock Bane's stolen memory crystal. However, as the bounty hunter took the crystal, the Jedi telekinetically retrieved his own and Tano's lightsabers, making quick work of Bane's B2 super battle droid bodyguards. Bane opened the airlock and propelled himself away with his rocket boots, while Skywalker rushed to prevent his Padawan from falling into the vacuum of space. Although Captain CC-7567 and his clone squad went for safety, Skywalker refused to leave the Munificent-class frigate with the bounty hunter still on the loose. Bane was eventually able to retrieve the infants listed in the memory crystal and took them to a secret facility on the remote planet of Mustafar, where Darth Sidious planned to surgically alter them and create a corps of Force-using spies.

At some point, Bane was given the Xanadu Blood&mdash;a heavily modified and well-equipped Porax-38 starfighter&mdash;by the Confederacy as partial payment for his work on its behalf.

Personality and traits
One of the galaxy's most lethal, ruthless, fearsome, and deadly bounty hunters, Cad Bane earned the reputation of the leading blaster-for-hire during the Clone Wars, filling the position that fellow mercenary Jango Fett had left vacant when he perished on Geonosis at the beginning of the conflict. Bane had much less moral content than Fett and would often turn upon the very people who hired him unless he was paid. Bane's usual rate was of a considerable price, and he requested more pay from his clients at every opportunity. However, if the price was right, the Duros could not be stopped, and would track his quarry to the ends of the galaxy if necessary; nothing was more important to Bane than credits. He was capable in blaster combat, but preferred stealth and surprise tactics instead of a direct fight when the possibility arose.

The Duros did not place his trust in others easily or often, believing that the best way to ensure that a task was completed was to do it himself. When his frigate was crippled over Devaron, he ordered his battle droid crew to transfer full control of the ship to his wrist-com. Although Bane did not always undertake missions himself, operating alone gave him the freedom to improvise and more credits that did not have to be shared with others. After his team of hunters had freed Ziro, the Duros cared little what happened to his accomplices as long as they hid from the Republic. Furthermore, Bane did not attempt to rescue his comrade, Cato Parasitti, when she was captured by the Jedi; rather, he escaped on his own as if he did not know her.

Bane's methods of choosing comrades for joint operations and his introduction into the bounty business remained obscure to the galaxy, and Bane preferred to keep it that way. He knew that Davtokk intended to execute him for the bounty on his head, and used this to his advantage, luring Davtokk to Keyorin to serve as a test for his team. Undaunted by individuals of higher authority, he remained unswayed with both the Senate Commandos' attempt to arrest him and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's threats of retribution. Indeed, the Duros even welcomed the opportunity to test his abilities against the "legendary prowess" of the Jedi Knights. He did not let personal feelings get in the way of his jobs, but would have enjoyed to take down the likes of Jedi Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The bounty hunter was able to deceive Kungurama, Gunn, and the clone troopers while on Kynachi, though the troopers eventually came to mistrust the Duros. A talented actor and a cold but clever strategist, Bane was also able to secretly manipulate the group into raiding the KynachTech prison by creating an elaborate setup of a droid commando fight. To gain the group's trust, Bane revealed that he was a bounty hunter. He was aware of the risk he took in doing so, but also knew that it was easier to deceive someone by telling most of the truth than a complete lie. Bane planned his infiltration of the Executive Building carefully during Senate Guard shifts so that he could maximize the element of surprise&mdash;as well as his casualties&mdash;by eliminating them at the same time.

The bounty hunter took cold pleasure in striking fear through his quarries, as evidenced by his treatment of the senators. When Senator Philo attempted to leave while refusing to listen to Bane's "insolence," the Duros killed the senator without a second thought and showed the other senators that he meant business. The Duros did not take prisoners, and intended for his senator hostages to be killed even after he had gone through negotiations with the Chancellor for their release in exchange for Ziro's liberation. When Darth Sidious requested the bounty hunter's services for infiltrating the Jedi Temple, Bane believed the job to be impossible and foolhardy, but immediately agreed to the job&mdash;requesting triple his normal rate&mdash;when Darth Sidious suggested that the Duros's reputation had been exaggerated.

Equipment
Bane's impressive arsenal of weapons and tools insured that he would be well-prepared for any situation that might arise. The Duros carried a set of personalized twin blaster pistols that were customized from the BlasTech-engineered LL-30 model, and had quick-draw holsters to hold them at his waist. He also kept explosives and a concealed bola as extra weapons. He had cybernetic breathing tubes that were imbedded in his cheekbones; they were directly connected to his windpipe, allowing him to work freely in the harshest atmospheres without requiring additional protection or oxygen. Bane's durasteel magno-grip boots were equipped with customized Mitrinomon jetpack thrusters, and his wrist gauntlets possessed a variety of control devices, built-in tools, and weapons, including a cable launcher, comlink, data uplink, and non-lethal stunners. He often wore a wide-brimmed hat and a tunic made from Nashtah hide.

Behind the scenes


The character of Cad Bane was created for the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series and was first featured in the series' first season finale, "Hostage Crisis," as well as its accompanying web comic, Invitation Only. Because the episode introduced the concept of bounty hunters into the series, Bane was one of the first such individuals to appear in the series. The Duros also appeared in Hunting the Hunters, Part I, the first in a series of web comics that transitioned between the television series' first and second seasons. He later appeared as a prominent character in Secret Missions 1: Breakout Squad, the first installment in a new series of novels. Scheduled for roles in Season Two, Bane will be featured in a multi-part story arc, and is also to be an unlockable playable character in the upcoming multi-platform game Republic Heroes.

Bane was portrayed by voice actor Corey Burton, who also provided the voices for Ziro Desilijic Tiure and Shahan Alama in "Hostage Crisis." At the suggestion of series producer and Star Wars creator George Lucas, Burton took inspiration from film actor Peter Lorre, and used Bane's already established Western American influences to voice the Duros mercenary with his own original characterization.

Initially, bounty hunters were not to be a part of the television series, but as the first season's storylines developed, a character was required to fill the role of a hunter. Supervising Director Dave Filoni and writer Henry Gilroy explored introducing the Gen'Dai mercenary Durge as the series' first bounty hunter, and the character was reimagined as a Human. The individual eventually evolved into one named "Nom Kahbah" before George Lucas became involved with the development, suggesting that a Western American influence be used. At Lucas's request, inspiration for the character was taken from Lee Van Cleef's characters from the films The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More. Filoni found an unlabeled sketch of a bounty hunter from the original Star Wars trilogy, and the concept ended up providing the basis for Bane's model, which additional expansion by Lead Designer Kilian Plunkett to incorporate the Duros species' features. The character's name was eventually changed to "Cad Bane."

Some first season publicity materials mistakenly implied that Darth Sidious and the Separatists had hired Bane to free Ziro the Hutt from prison, but the Hutts were later verified in Bane's Databank entry to have been the ones that gave him the assignment.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Forces of Darkness
 * Star Wars The Clone Wars Secret Missions 1: Breakout Squad
 * The Clone Wars: Invitation Only
 * The Clone Wars: Hunting the Hunters (Part 1)
 * The Clone Wars: Hunting the Hunters (Part 3)
 * HoloNet News — A Galaxy Divided (Part 1)
 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes
 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Holocron Heist
 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Holocron Heist