Dear The Reykjavík Grapevine,
I am Ben Cawdor.
I am writing to you because I ‘d like to talk with you about a Star Wars character that since 1977 has no a real name and a story.
Do you remember one of the deleted scenes from “Star Wars IV : A New Hope” entitled “Stormtrooper Search”?
In that fabulous scene appears a stilt-legged creature (played by english stilt-walker artist Peter Barbour) that runs into Rycar Ryjerd among the streets of Mos Eisley. For this, it was called by fandom in this way: “The Stilt Monster”. But, who really was that creature? So far, obviously, nobody really knows! So far… but hearing its voice and its emitting sounds I would say that it was a droid and not a Quor’sav, as many others think.
However, it also appeared in “The Star Wars Holiday Special” ( = S level of canon).
Therefore, I personally created the story of that droid, its background etc, in order to FILL THE VOID!
Go ahead! I hope you like it.
Name of that droid : C1-R0 (10 BBY Tatooine – 3 ABY Florn)
-Story –
C1-R0 droid originally belonged to Sabbya Mawstra, a twi’lek mechanician from Ryloth who had his own workshop on Tatooine, precisely near Mos Espa. A day one of his assistant/helper robots killed him. C1-R0 droid, that was very attached to its master Sabbya, killed that murderer droid. C1-R0 vowed revenge against all the droids of the Galaxy, in memory of its beloved Master. However, a group of Jawas captured it and put on its robotic body a control device. After 2 years spent among them as a “slave” , C1-R0 managed to cut it off the control device and killed the entire Jawas’ droids.
Then it escaped and started to kill every droids on its way, using their parts to change itself, in order to increase its strength: in fact it decided to become a Bounty Hunter. Figure whose existence it learned through the stories narrated by Jawas during its imprisonment period, stories that exercised a great fascination in its robotic mind. Some time later it reached Mos Eisley and here it immediately went in search for an upgrade for its robotic legs: it found the perfect metallic parts in the hidden backyard of a store specialized in high-tech, belonging to an elderly Snivvian. C1-R0 stole those parts and with them built for itself two new and very high legs that seemed almost two stilts. Thanks to them it could finally run. But that robbery did not go unnoticed, since that metal (cunningly subtracted by C1-R0 droid ) was previously bought by a Saurin named Xertonl P’ham, a notorious smuggler, who immediately put a bounty on the thief of his stolen material.
vC1-R0 heard the news about it and, to avoid troubles, covered the metal of its new long legs with rags taken from some stalls. Once the camouflage was accomplished , C1-R0 droid began looking for its first engagement as a Bounty Hunter , in the same day in which Obi -Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker arrived in Mos Eisley. While it was looking for a client a Bimm named Rycar Ryjerd hit it with a paralyzing gun specific for droids. During that attack C1-R0 droid saw the face of its attacker and understood the reason of his violence. It was paralyzed on the sandy ground for ten minutes then it stood up and frantically went looking for its small but insidious assailant. C1-R0 droid was very angry because Rycar Ryjerd stolen from its metallic back a precious circuit, the “XPO- 734”, a special circuit that increase the visual power of the droid equipped with a visual apparatus.
At some point it reached the small Bimm ( that’s the content of the famous deleted scene “Stormtrooper Search” from “Star Wars IV: A New Hope” , then recycled inside the “The Star Wars Holiday Special”) but he managed to escape from it. In fact, despite its efforts, C1-R0 droid didn’t recover the circuit so organized itself to look for an another one. Finally it found a droid, a perfect droid for its purpose. It completely destroyed that droid, taking possession of the XPO-734 circuit, a new XPO-734 circuit for it. C1-R0 didn’t know a thing : the droid that it had killed was property of a dangerous criminal affiliated to Jabba The Hutt, who sent two of his “Guys” to eliminate it, in order to avenge the offense. C1-R0 droid was destroyed in an alley of Mos Eisley. Destroyed but not terminated. So, later, a WED Treadwell repair droid, noting its scrap, picked it up and brought it in the workshop of its master : Solth Kamn, a rodian mechanician. Here C1-R0 was partially reassembled and, when it discovered that a droid saved it, C1-R0 began to change its behaviour. Farther, Solth Kamn reminded it of its first Master, Sabbya Mawstra. C1-R0 chose to abandon its “dream” about the bounty hunter profession and return to be a repair droid, as it originally was. It asked to Master Kamn to take it with him and he…accepted.
About two years later its new Master Solth Kamn joined the Rebel Alliance, not as a soldier but as a mechanic. His first mission was on the “Mon Calamari Shipyards” around Planet Mon Calamari, and here C1-R0 droid followed him as his trusted assistant. A few months later Solth Kamn’s services were requested in the rebel base located in the Planet Hoth but during the journey something in the propulsive mechanism of his spaceship broke and at the end it fell into a Planet (Planet Florn). There, in that wild place, C1-R0 droid, trying to save its Master Kamn from ferocious indigenous beings (the Lamproids), was destroyed and definitively terminated.
That’s it.
P.S. I am not interested about money. My only goal is give “justice”, help that sadly forgotten character , because it has a very potential : this can be simply understood just by reading the story that I created for it.
Dear Ben,
Thanks for trying to fill this deep, vast, aching void inside Star Wars. Finally! Finally, someone thought to expand upon the origin and life story of “the stilt monster”! We’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. These questions aren’t going to answer themselves, after all. So thank you for taking matters into your own hands while Lucasfilm rest on their laurels.
But hey, we want to know a few more details here. For example, these two “guys” that Jabba the Hutt sent to Mos Eisley. Where were they from? Did either of them have a tragic past that led them to become gangster henchmen? And as for Solth Kamn, the rodian mechanician—perhaps his story would be interesting. We heard he was once a sous-chef on Calcoraan. Can you confirm?
With the current rate of Star Wars franchise movies in production, maybe this has legs to become a motion picture. But we gotta say, that ending was a bit harsh. Are you sure he didn’t defeat the Lamproids on Planet Florn? Could be make-or-break for the plot arc.
Have a t-shirt while you think it over.
– Your Friends At The Reykjavík Grapevine.
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