Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/April 30, 2011

Or Die Trying is a short story written by Sean Williams and Shane Dix that was published in the seventy-fifth issue of Star Wars Insider, released in May 2004. In 2003, Williams and Dix had written the Force Heretic Trilogy, three volumes of The New Jedi Order book series, and Or Die Trying was set between the trilogy's second and third installments. The two originally had no plans to write any tie-in stories to Force Heretic, but after The New Jedi Order wrapped up its line of novels at the end of 2003, they were contracted to write an additional story that fell within the series' scope.

The six-page story builds on the continuity of Force Heretic and features the Jedi Knight Jaina Solo infiltrating the headquarters of Onadax Droid Technologies on the planet Onadax. The company has manufactured a Human replica droid that betrayed the citizens of Bakura, and Solo hopes to bring them to justice for the crimes that their clients commit. She confronts an HRD named Stanton Rendar and engages in a discussion with him regarding the moral implications of immortality and near-invincibility, but ultimately remains firm in her convictions and prepares to apprehend him. Rendar looses a group of battle droids on her, however, setting the compound to self-destruct and fleeing the planet. Solo defeats the droids and escapes with her life.

Or Die Trying was also published in the fifty-ninth issue of Star Wars Magazine UK, and later went on to be archived online as part of StarWars.com's Hyperspace fan club. It featured numerous references to existing Star Wars stories, but its own events have yet to be referenced in any Star Wars work published since. Stanton Rendar's HRD has, however, been mentioned in several sourcebooks.