Droid Gotra

"The Droid Gotra heard about a surviving Geonosian queen with a droid factory. They wanted me to liberate it from the evil carbon-based oppression."

- Aphra

The Droid Gotra was a band of lethal repurposed battle droids with grievances against the Galactic Empire for having been abandoned after their service during the Clone Wars who supported droid emancipation. The group was confined to an industrial complex in the bowels of the planet Coruscant and served as muscle for the Crymorah syndicate.

Description
"Tasked with controlling crime in his sector, he succumbed to temptation by hiring himself out to the Droid Gotra."

- Darth Vader, on Phoca Soot

Confined to an industrial complex located in the bowels of the planet Coruscant, the Droid Gotra was a lethal band of repurposed battle droids that supported droid emancipation and served as muscle for the Crymorah syndicate in robberies, kidnapping, and illegal salvage, and extortion.

History
"I was abstractly meant to be delivering these two to the Droid Gotra. They had another mission lined up&hellip;"

- Aphra, in reference to BT-1 and 0-0-0

The Droid Gotra was founded by repurposed battle droids with what some considered legitimate grievances against the Galactic Empire for having been abandoned after their service for the Confedracy of Independent Systems at the end of the Clone Wars. It recruited Q2-B3KO, an articulated holographic color separator who produced propaganda supporting the Separatist Droid Army during the Clone Wars, to disseminate messages of mechanical emancipation.

In 14 BBY, the Empire's base on the Sentinel moon came under attack by insurgents using Separatist equipment and droids. The installation's commander, Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, initially suspected that the Gotra was responsible, but found it unlikely that they would make use of obsolete weapons to send a message to the Empire. Phoca Soot, the Coruscant Security Force prefect of level 1331, hired himself out to the Droid Gotra instead of controlling crime within his sector. However, his duplicity did not go unnoticed and he was executed by the Sith Lord Darth Vader as an example to Coruscant's criminal elements, advising them to relocate their operations to sectors in the galaxy's Outer Rim Territories, lest their activities infringe upon Emperor Palpatine's designs.

In 0 ABY, the Droid Gotra hired the rogue archaeologist Doctor Aphra to recover the Triple-Zero personality matrix, which could turn a protocol droid into a torture specialist, and the prototype BT-1 assassin droid on their behalf. They also meant to have her liberate a droid factory from Karina the Great, a Geonosian queen who survived the Empire's sterilization of Geonosis. Although successful in retrieving the droids, she instead turned them over to Darth Vader and helped him secure Karina's droid factory, as he needed personal troops for his own ends without the Empire knowing.

Behind the scenes
The Droid Gotra was first mentioned in Tarkin, a novel written by James Luceno and released on November 4, 2014.

Appearances

 * Tarkin
 * Darth Vader 3: Vader, Part III 
 * Darth Vader 4: Vader, Part IV
 * Doctor Aphra 9: The Enormous Profit, Part I
 * Doctor Aphra 10: The Enormous Profit, Part II