HK-series assassin droid

"Statement: I see you have purchased me, master. I find this a satisfactory arrangement. Am I to accompany you now? Shall I kill something for you?"

- HK-47 to Revan

HK-series were combination of assassin droids and protocol droids, with their last models being battle droids. They were originally manufactured by Czerka Corporation and later Duwani Mechanical Products, and eventually by the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Thier ability to perform the functions of a protocol droid became a major reason for their unmatched lethality, as they could and would often act as normal (if quite sinister looking) protocol droid, thus concealing thier true function and allowing them to get to closer to intended targets.

History
The first HK droid was Czerka Corporation's prototype HK-01. This progenitor of all HK series droids was responsible for the Great Droid Revolution on Coruscant. He was destroyed by the Jedi Master Arca Jeth and the revolt was ended.

Seeing the effectiveness and potential of the HK series after witnessing the havoc HK-01 caused, the Czerka Corporation improved the design into the HK-24 model. The HK-24 met little success on the market, as few had want of an assassin droid. Czerka halted production of the HK-24 and sold the entire remaining inventory to Arkoh Adasca, the head of Adascorp. Arkoh deployed the HK-24s to capture Gorman Vandrayk and as guards of various prisoners. The HK-24s were finally all destroyed during the First Battle of Omonoth while trying to protect their owner.

A unique, custom model, HK-47, was constructed by Revan shortly after the Mandalorian Wars using schematics of the HK-24. HK-47 was much improved over the HK-24, and successfully assassinated several targets, including many Jedi. This was due to HK-47's extensive knowledge of how Jedi behaved and how to best counteract their Force abilities. Due to his large degree of autonomy and adaptive programming, HK-47 went on to become the longest surviving, most infamous, and most effective of the HK series.

Due to the effectiveness of HK-47, Revan also design the HK-50. With the HK-50s, Revan improved their armor and weapon proficiency, installing high yield explosives within their chassis, improving thier self-maintenance capabilities and removing the static from their vocabulators. While the HK-50s were in many ways an improvement on HK-47, they were designed more for mass causality inflection than their predecessor as they preferred killing as many targets with as little effort as possible. Originally designed to infiltrate and destroy Republic ships that would not defect to Revan's cause, Revan was defeated before he could deploy them. The HK-50s were instead deployed to capture any survivors of the First Jedi Purge after G0-T0 discovered them. Eventually, the HK-50s were destroyed by HK-47 after the latter infiltrated the HK's manufacturing facility, activated the prototype HK-51s, and turned them against the HK-50s. Sometime after, the Republic banned the ownership, manufacture, and use of HK series droids.

An unknown HK unit, most likely a HK-50 or HK-51, was owned by Sith Master Darth Scabrous.

Close to the end of the Great Galactic War, Czerka Corporation manufactured several HK-51 droids at the behest of the Sith Empire. Whether Czerka managed to somehow recover the designs for the HK-51 prototypes or these HK-51s were independently developed from salvaged HK-50s is unknown. Either way, these HK-51s were designed for precision, specific assassinations, instead of mass casualties that the HK-50s preferred. Improving massively over their predecessors, HK-51s came preinstalled with a variety of weapons and abilities. Beyond a 21% improvement in blaster accuracy and thicker durasteel armor over the HK-50s, HK-51s also came with micro-missile launchers instead of previous model's flamethrowers, a stealth field generator, greater mobility, and improved protocol functions. The HK-51s also had unique failsafes of their programming. The first caused the unit's assassination protocols to degrade, severely affecting their combat performance, until the HK-51 could no longer function at all, unless the HK-51 successfully assassinated a highly important figure in Republic Space. An exploitable flaw in this was that the subroutine did not specify who the target was loyal to. The second was a loyalty subroutine which would cause the HK-51 to be only loyal to a single owner and whoever that owner authorized. This was to prevent the HK-51 from being reprogrammed to assassinate their owner. One of the few, if only, shipments of HK-51s was stole by the Dread Masters and was shot down onto the planet Belsavis where it sank into the ice. The crash caused almost all units onboard to be irreparably damaged and the ship was undiscovered until years after the war. After the ship's rediscovery, an unknown Spacer managed to repair and reactivate the sole salvageable HK-51 and had the droid serve as their personal assassin and guard during their travels.

Five years later, a droid called HK-55 appeared. Though information is unreliable at this time, he appears to either be a repainted HK-51 who has been reprogrammed to primarily serve as a bodyguard instead of an assassin or an entirely new model based on the HK-51 series. HK-55 does hint that he can, and will, reactivate his assassination programming if he feels the need to.

Eventually, the knowledge of the HK series became lost to time. This was until members of the Confederacy of Independent Systems discovered the wreck of a ship on Mustafar that contained the deactivated HK-47. Quickly realizing that HK-47 was superior than any droid they had ever seen (due to them activating HK-47 and the ancient droid proceeding to effortlessly slaughter several engineers and B2 Battle Droids), the engineers proceeded to try and produce battle droids based on his design. They produced several prototypes including: HK-57s, HK-58 Aurek and HK-58 Besh, HK-67s, and the HK-Taskmaster, before settling with the HK-77s. These battle droid versions of the HKs where overall inferior to their predecessors, being meant for more frontline combat. They had blasters attached to the ends of their arms, preventing them from posing as protocol droids, and they were not as deadly or armored as thier predecessors. Unfortunately for the Separatist engineers, Darth Vader arrived on the planet under the orders of the newly christened Emperor Palpatine and killed every member of the engineering team. HK-47, having had his data drive, behavior core, and personality core uploaded to the ship wreck before his body was taken by the engineering time; as well as the new HK battle droids, lay undiscovered for over 20 years. Upon rediscovery by a group of spacers, HK-47 managed to convince them to help me take control of the old droid factory. The group succeeded in their missions, only to be double crossed by HK-47. He used the droid factory to create a new body that was similar to his old one, installed himself into it. HK-47 then went on to gather all the old droids, including the various HK battle droids, to begin a war with all organic life. HK-47 ultimately failed as the spacers managed to destroy his factory, his army, and his body; but not before he managed to upload his consciousness to parts unknown.

Several HK-77 units were later recovered from Mustafar. Many of these units were reprogrammed and refitted as fire fighting droids, via replacing their blasters with fire extinguishers and coating them in heat resistant chemicals.

Known units

 * HK-01
 * HK-24 series assassin droid
 * HK-47
 * HK-50 series assassin droid
 * HK-51
 * HK-55
 * HK-57
 * HK-58 Aurek
 * HK-58 Besh
 * HK-67
 * HK-77
 * HK-Taskmaster

Behind the scenes
The term HK "Hunter-Killer" was first used in Star Wars with HK-47, which in turn is a reference to the dropship of the same designation that appears in the BioWare game Shattered Steel, which in turn was a reference to BioWare writer Drew Karpyshyn's billiard team.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 13: Days of Fear, Part 1
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 14: Days of Fear, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 17: Nights of Anger, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Daze of Hate
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
 * Red Harvest
 * Star Wars: The Old Republic
 * HK-51 Revealed