Dengar/Legends

"I must say, he looks like a thoroughly nasty fellow."

- C-3PO

Dengar (also known as "Payback") was a Corellian mercenary and Imperial Assassin, Grade One active during the Galactic Civil War. The acerbic bounty hunter and pilot of the Punishing One was among an elite group of hunters recruited by Darth Vader to capture Han Solo and the passengers of the Millennium Falcon shortly after the Battle of Hoth. At this time, he was a middle-aged man of heavy build, wearing battered dark brown Stormtrooper armor with a dingy cloth wrapped around his head to conceal the circuitry for his enhanced auditory and visual systems.

Biography
Dengar was born on Corellia and was a well-known and successful swoop racer for the Ferini team during his youth. By the time he reached pre-adolescence, he was considered something of a cult hero throughout the Corellian system. Through his connections with the Ferini team, he gained endorsements and higher wages and winnings. Quickly mastering the professional circuit, he was called to the private tour, where more dangerous challenges awaited him.

Dengar was constantly compared to another young swoop jockey on the private circuit named Han Solo. Eager to prove his superiority, Dengar challenged Solo to a winner-takes-all race through the crystal swamps of Agrilat. On the final stretch of the race, Solo brought his swoop down directly over and in front of Dengar, burning his face in the swoop's exhaust and locking the repulsor fins of both swoops. The maneuver sent Dengar flying off of his swoop to crash headfirst into crystalline plants. One crystalline stem directly impaled his brain, leaving him in a condition so perilous that only the Empire's doctors had the ability to repair him to a near-natural state. Dengar was kicked out of professional swoop racing for engaging in the illegal race and was abandoned by his friends on the Ferini team. His life in ruins, Dengar became viciously embittered with Solo with whom he vowed his vengeance upon.



As it was, Dengar was forced to become part cyborg through Imperial experimentation. The parts of his brain controlling his senses of compassion, mercy and pity were removed, leaving him an emotionless killer. He was only left with rage, hope and, accidentally, loneliness, the only emotions the Imperial doctors decided he would need to fulfill his new duties. Particularly, the doctors allowed him to feel hope at the empty promise that if Dengar was successful in serving the Empire, he would be returned to his old self. He was also fitted with a number of cybernetic implants, such as new, more powerfully enhanced eyes and ears. He also had his hypothalamus gland cut out and replaced with a central computer module to control his new systems.

The Ferini team had scattered after his accident and eventually joined up with another swoop gang on Tatooine. Dengar wanted his revenge, but he was still property of the Empire and could not do the job himself. In 1 ABY, he hired a tough and well armed individual to take out his old crew.

He briefly worked as a gladiator before the Empire employed him as an assassin, a task Dengar carried out ruthlessly and without question until after he was ordered to kill the Holy Children of Asrat. These children denounced the Emperor and declared their official desire to leave the Empire. Faced with killing children or deserting the Empire, Dengar chose to leave. Despite no longer being able to feel the difference between good and evil, he still recognized the disparity when he saw it. The Empire posted a bounty for his desertion.

Sometime after his desertion from Imperial service, he became a bounty hunter after learning of a price on Han Solo's head. He quickly came into the service of Jabba the Hutt despite a debatable record at best. Of the twenty-three bounties he'd collected, only six were taken alive. During the Galactic Civil War, he encountered Solo a number of times. Once, just before the Battle of Yavin, while searching for the Yavin Vassilika, and then twice in the year before the Battle of Hoth: once on Tatooine, when Solo attempted to reunite Jabba the Hutt with his nephew Grubba, and then again while teamed up with Boba Fett, Skorr and Bossk in a showdown with Solo, Luke Skywalker, and the pirate Raskar on Ord Mantell. Still, Dengar was never able to capture Solo; it seemed as if Solo always got the best of him and was always one step ahead of him. Dengar often remarked to himself that all he ever saw of Solo was the aft of the Millennium Falcon as it was flying away from him.

His career as a bounty hunter and assassin even saw him targeting Imperials, specifically officers of COMPNOR's Redesign efforts. He believed that COMPNOR was the most evil branch of the Empire. This included COMPNOR General Sinick Kritkeen on the planet Aruza. During this mission, the Aruzans paid him a small bounty to assassinate Kritkeen in the hopes that the Empire would abandon their Redesign efforts of Aruza. There, he saved an Aruzan woman named Manaroo, who would soon become an integral part of his life.

On the planet Toola, Dengar was recruited by an unnamed woman to join the Rebel Alliance, who had taken notice of his targeting of Imperial officials. The woman secretly programmed the coordinates for an unnamed star on the farthest rim of the galaxy into his ship's navicomputer, where he found a hidden Rebel outpost. There, he was examined by military intelligence officers and accepted assignment to a newly formed outpost on the planet Hoth. However, his true intention for joining the Rebellion was that he knew wherever the Rebellion was would be where he would find Han Solo.

Unfortunately for Dengar, he exited hyperspace into the Hoth system in the midst of the Rebel evacuation of the planet. Despite the presence of a Super Star Destroyer and a massive Imperial fleet before him, he recklessly tried to reach the planet's surface in hopes of finding Solo. His ruse of posing as an Imperial Scout failed when, riding in the wake of a squadron of TIE Fighters, Dengar's ship was hit with an ion blast from the planet's surface. Drifting helplessly through space, his ship was tractored in by the Executor. His ship was boarded, Dengar was captured and, the Empire quickly realizing his identity, was imprisoned.

Aboard the Executor, Darth Vader offered him a reprieve of his death warrant, allowing him the freedom to hunt down Solo and the Millennium Falcon. Disgusted with the fleet's inability to capture the fugitive ship, Vader recruited Dengar and five other bounty hunters to bring him the passengers of the Falcon, believing Luke Skywalker was one of them. By this time, his bounty hunting record was still unimpressive. He had yet to claim one remarkable bounty.



While searching for Solo in the Hoth Asteroid Field, the engines of the Punishing One were crippled by a bomb placed by Boba Fett, only to leave Dengar helplessly watching the Millennium Falcon slowly limp out of the system followed closely by the Slave I. He managed to repair his craft and followed Solo's particle vapor trail to Bespin's Cloud City, where he arrived a few days later, again, to see the Slave I leaving the city with the carbonite frozen Han Solo in tow. However, it was on Cloud City that Dengar was reunited with Manaroo, where he saved her and several other dancers, for a time, from the Imperial subjugation of the city. The woman would soon become a permanent part of his life.

With Manaroo accompanying him away from Cloud City, the Aruzan woman, pitying Dengar's near-emotionless state, tried to share her own feelings with him through her Attanni, an Aruzan custom in which two people shared emotions cybernetically. Dengar was once again able to feel what it was to be human again, feeling what she felt and seeing what she saw.

Sometime during 3 ABY, a contract had Dengar teaming up with fellow bounty-hunters 4-LOM, IG-88, Bossk and Zuckuss on a mission for Domina Tagge to steal a sacred gem from a temple in the Red Nebula.

Just prior to 4 ABY, the Rebel Alliance, at the behest of Dengar, successfully evacuated the Aruzans from their world, freeing them of their Imperial tormentors. Dengar's primary interest in the matter was to free Manaroo's parents.

Soon afterwards, Dengar and Manaroo traveled to Tatooine, where he knew Boba Fett would eventually deliver the carbonite frozen Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt. He soon learned that Solo was indeed alive and being held in Jabba's palace. There, Dengar finally caught up with Solo, clutching the carbonite slab and laughing in the face of his old nemesis. However, in his absence, Manaroo was captured by Jabba's cronies and taken to his palace to work as one of the crime lord's many dancers.

In a bid to rescue her, Dengar returned to Jabba's palace, knowing he would have to kill the Hutt to save Manaroo. He formulated a plot with other members of Jabba's entourage, which Jabba himself soon discovered. The Hutt tasked Boba Fett with personally taking care of Dengar, with the stipulation that he died a painful death by way of the Teeth of Tatooine in the Valley of the Winds. The night before Jabba was to execute Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca at the Pit of Carkoon, Fett drugged Dengar and left him at the mercy of Tatooine's elements. Surprisingly, for the second time, Boba Fett had done Dengar a favor, so to speak. Although he left Dengar to die, he allowed him to remain with his armor strapped on, which effectively saved him from the brutally harsh winds until he was saved by Manaroo. Dengar realized that for the second time, Fett resorted from killing him, the first being when he merely disabled the Punishing One near the Hoth Asteroid Field instead of destroying it and Dengar outright. Still, he vowed to make Fett pay.



After being rescued by Manaroo, the two agreed to be married. Dengar recovered from his wounds for several weeks in Mos Eisley, racking up enormous medical bills. It was then that he realized that few people were aware that Jabba had died at the Pit of Carkoon. He traveled with Manaroo to the site of the Hutt's death only to find a badly burned and scarred man on the brink of death, who had apparently killed the Sarlacc. He discovered that this broken man was Boba Fett, having survived from being swallowed by the Sarlacc. Dengar nursed Fett back to health. The infamous Fett even served as Dengar's best man during his wedding to Manaroo, and accompanied him on a mission to kidnap the head of Kuat Drive Yards.

Dengar renounced his occupation as a bounty hunter, and after a brief spell as partner with Fett, he retired to a new life with his love.

In 9 ABY, Mara Jade was taken prisoner for a short time by a bounty hunter. She later escaped from him and found an ID card that read "Dengar Roth." However, the card was forged and carried by a man named Gunner Groth, who used the phony ID to better scare his targets and negotiate higher bounties with the Empire.

In 11 ABY he briefly came out of retirement to work for Grappa the Hutt, who was paying large sums for bounty hunters. After Grappa's organization began to unravel, Dengar fled, but was picked up by Black Sun, which Grappa had offended. However, after revealing all he knew of Grappa's organization, Black Sun let Dengar go unharmed, and he swore never again to work for a Hutt.

Personality and traits
Dengar was a person without emotions, due to his horrible accident and because of the cyborg parts in his brain. He had a serious demeanor and would only kill a person professionally, not for amusement. Right before any assassination he would attempt to visualize his target as Han Solo, his need for revenge enhancing his desire to kill.

During much of his career he was considered more ruthless than Boba Fett himself, and usually performed assassinations rather than live captures. Nevertheless, traces of self-recrimination plagued his thoughts, resulting in deep self-loathing and despair.

After he met Manaroo, his emotions were restored, thanks to the Aruzan Attanni device and Manaroo's will to change him.

The operation Dengar underwent after his swoop accident left him more physically enhanced than normal men. He could move faster and was stronger than others. He could also enhance his vision and could hear much that was otherwise inaudible to the ears of normal people.

Weaponry
Dengar carried a Valken-38 blaster rifle. The hook that held the bipod in the folded position was left in place and can be seen as a small protrusion.

He also possesses one blaster pistol, either an identical one of his rival Han Solo, or an L-23 blaster pistol. He has concussion grenades and a vibroblade.

Armor
Dengar's body armor is a conglomeration of various Imperial armor. The chest plate is from a Snowtrooper, while the shoulder bells, forearms, midsection, codpiece, and thighs are standard Stormtrooper armor. The two shin armor pieces are slightly modified versions of the left leg Stormtrooper armor.

The undersuit appears to be the same as the Snowtroopers.

Behind the scenes
Dengar was played by British actor Morris Bush.

Dengar's armor consists of bits of sandtrooper, stormtrooper and snowtrooper armor, that were repainted from their original white. This was to point to his Imperial past.

In Return of the Jedi, Dengar can be seen 3 times: First when Bib Fortuna escorts Luke Skywalker to meet with Jabba, second when Luke falls in the rancor's pit, and in Jabba's court when Luke, Han and Chewie are brought before Jabba, after Luke kills the rancor.

He was slated to appear in Jodo Kast and Dengar: Preying for Time, but the comic was canceled.

In many pre-production still photos Dengar is pictured holding a BlasTech DLT-19 (a modified MG 34). This was not the gun he had in the film, but it was used by 4-LOM.

Notes and references
Dengar Dengar