Part 1: Intro: Dash & LEEBO's Bogus Journey & 1. Battle of Hoth

Here's a link to our introduction video, if you're interested. Note that it's completely optional:





Dash and Leebo arrive at Hoth to deliver weapons to the Rebel Alliance. There they meet an old acquaintance. Not long after, the Galactic Empire launches its infamous attack on Echo Base. Dash lends a hand during the evacuation by flying one of the snowspeeders.







Now here's something interesting: Shadows Of The Empire hasn't even started yet. We're right at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. The novel doesn't begin until Luke and co. have returned to Tatooine from Bespin, after losing Han and escaping from Vader. The comic begins only slightly earlier with the group still in transit to Tatooine from Bespin; Luke's new robotic hand is still adjusting at that point.

What's happening here is the game is expanding on a throw-away line within the book. It occurs in Chapter 6 when Dash Rendar is first introduced. It's a quick demonstration of his skill without needing Dash to have done anything at that point. Also, it sets the tone for what kind of person Dash is:


I'll come back to this later, but Dash doesn't know who Princess Leia is just because she's famous. He knows who she is because he's made out with her cousin. That's made out as in "snogged." As in "played tonsil hockey." They smuckered their puckers. They made FaceTime. They pulled into Osculation Station.

*ahem*

Anyways, Dash knows who Princess Leia is and he has a past with Han, Lando, and Chewie.

Also, we have our first real discrepancy between the SOTE projects. In the game, Dash Rendar knocks out three AT-ATs. Luke only mentions the one and Dash doesn't contradict him, so it looks like his kill-count was a lot smaller. We're going to have to chalk this one up to Dash fibbing about how awesome he is. It's too bad, really. You'd think taking out one AT-AT was enough. Why bother exaggerating?




Cybot Galactica LE series repair droid, LE-BO2D9 aka "Leebo"

The SOTE graphic novel is pretty cool in that most of the inconsequential characters get represented within it--except Leebo

Leebo is Dash's droid co-pilot, acquired from a failed comedian. Thus aside from maintaining Outrider, it's Leebo's job to drop sick one-liners and hilarious burns. Unfortunately, he doesn't really get any lines in any of the SOTE multimedia projects.


Freelance smuggler, Han Solo

Other than the brief cameo early in the game, Han spends pretty much all of SOTE frozen in a block of carbonite.


Courtesy of nine-gear crow.



All schematic images come from the Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels handbook, written by Bill Smith, unless otherwise noted. The schematics were designed by Troy Vigil.
You can find it on Amazon from anywhere between 1 cent (used) and $18.00 USD.


Rebel Snowspeeder

This beauty’s full name is the Incom Aerospace Corporation T-47 Airspeeder. The T-47, commonly referred to by neckbeard Star Wars as the “snowspeeder” was originally created to be a two-man repulsorlift speeder craft intended for use as a point-to-point intra-atmospheric light cargo transport. With Incom having previously supplied starfighter craft to the Alliance such as the X-Wing, Y-Wing and Z-95 Headhunter fighters, it was only natural that they would back the Alliance with a similar line of atmospheric craft.

The T-47s operated by the Alliance have been heavily modified, with forward-facing twin laser blasters (supplied by Corellian Engineering Corporation), increased armor, and rear-mounted harpoon and tow-cable rigs which are operated by the co-pilot. Incom likes to boast about the T-47’s endless versatility, and they’re not far off, as T-47s have been used on worlds with varying climates ranging from harsh and frigid Hoth, to the mild grasslands of Dantooine, to temperate garden worlds such as Kothlis. T-47s are nicknamed based on their climate of operation, and are often called snowspeeders, airspeeders, swampspeeders, or sandspeeders by their operators.

According to behind-the-scenes documentary material on the Empire Strikes Back Blu-Ray disc, the snowspeeders were originally intended to have been homebrew craft jury-rigged together by the Alliance engineers out of old X-Wing and Y-Wing parts specifically for use on Hoth.

The more you know…

Imperial Probe Droid

Admit it, you’re doing the Probe Droid gibberish thing right now just looking at this picture.

…I am.

The Imperial Viper-class Probe Droids are the intelligence workhorse of the Galactic Empire. They’re essentially autonomous holo-imaging cameras with long-range transmitters and laser blasters for self-defence. Arakyd Industries, the go-to droid manufacturing corporation of the galaxy, pumps these things out for the Empire by the tens of thousands. By the late Imperial Admiral Kendal Ozzel’s estimate, the Empire at one point had “thousands” of active probe droids scouring the galaxy for the location of the Rebel’s hidden command base.

Probe droids are also equipped with self-destruct mechanisms to prevent enemies from capturing and either intercepting their sensor data or reverse-engineering them for counter-intelligence purposes. They are also equipped with miniature hyperdrive modules for covert intelligence operations, allowing an Imperial starship to deploy them well outside of an enemy’s sensor range.

AT-ST

The All-Terrain Scout Transport, also called the “chicken walker” due to its reverse-joint leg setup, is a light, short-range armored walking transport unit designed and used by the Empire since the late days of the Clone Wars. Its intended functions are perimeter scouting, close support for AT-AT walkers, and crowd-control in urban environment.

Standing 8.6 meters tall (roughly 28 feet), the command module is well out of reach of any potential assailant standing on the ground… outside of Ewoks and maybe Dash Rendar. AT-STs are commonly equipped with a pair of twin-linked blaster cannons mounted beneath the cockpit, as well as a light laser cannon turret mounted on its port side and a concussion missile launcher mounted on its starboard side.

They’re also insanely easy to trip up and whoever designed this thing should be taken out back and reamed with a lightsaber. Just kidding, I kind of like the AT-STs, impracticality issues aside.

Fun fact: the AT-STs (or rather footage stolen from Return of the Jedi) would often appear on Muppet Babies as part of Gonzo’s fantasies. Apparently he was afraid of them. The Jim Henson Company got away with it because Henson and George Lucas were friends, business partners, and collaborators on a number of projects. Henson was the one who recommended Frank Oz to Lucas to be the voice and puppeteer of Yoda.

AT-AT

The All-Terrain Armored Transports, along with Han’s carbonite-frozen ass and “No, I am your father,” are pretty much the iconic images associated with The Empire Strikes Back in popular culture. More commonly known simply as the “Imperial Walker,” the AT-AT is one of the largest and most heavily armored ground assault vehicles in the Imperial arsenal, capable of shrugging off nearly any type of conventional laser weaponry short of, I’m guessing, starship-mounted turbolasers.

Standing 22.5 meters tall (74 feet) on four massive legs, and powered by a Kuat Drive Yards compact fusion drive powerplant, AT-ATs are capable of stomping through any battle field at a top speed for 60 km/h and carrying a compliment of 40 stomtroopers and five speeder-bike-mounted scoutroopers securely to their drop point.

AT-ATs come standard with a pair of twin-linked heavy laser cannons mounted beneath their cockpit compartments and two medium laser canon turrets on either side of the ‘head’. They have only one known weakness: they are susceptible to tripping, as demonstrated by the Alliance during the battle of Hoth with their snowspeeders and tow-cables. Their effectiveness was also on display at Hoth, as despite employing the trip maneuver, only five (yeah, bullshit you took down three, Dash) three AT-ATs out of the 10-or-so deployed by the Empire were brought down by Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antillies, and Dash Rendar, respectively.

More fun facts: General Veers, the commander of the Imperial ground assault on Hoth and the guy who blows up the shield generator was played by actor Julian Glover, who later went on to appear in another Lucas-produced film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, playing the evil American Nazi collaborator Walter Donnovan, aka the guy who speed-ages to death because he chose… poorly. He can currently be seen playing the duplicitous old prick Grand Maester Pycelle on HBO’s Game of Thrones.





Dash Rendar: 1

Han Solo: 1



Dash is now a trading card: