Model Write-Up #39 - Solus'Kad

"Solus'Kad was a Mandalorian training instructor who, much like Kal Skirata, had spent time training with the ARC Troopers and Republic Commandos on Kamino. Solus was a bounty hunter of the same calibre as Skirata, and spent a good deal of his time away from Kamino, taking bounties and settling debts. His hands-off attitude and generally harsher attitude to his clones than most of the other instructors earned him the nicknamed, "Steelface", as he was famously rumoured to never show emotion to or around his trainees. If they failed, he coldly told them to start again; if they succeeded, he gave them no praise and simply moved them on to the next stage of training. Many thought he acted this way due to him seeing the clones as inferior, but this was not the case. Solus actually saw the clones as vastly superior to himself and his brethren; in months, they could learn training and tactics that had taken him decades to perfect. They could be born a better soldier than he ever was, and each of them had the capacity to best him. The only reason he trained them was to impart more individualistic strategies on them, and this made Solus feel threatened. He had heard of what happened to Jango Fett, and whilst he was assured that nothing of the sort would happen to him given he was not a Jedi killer, he still had his doubts. His clones are very well trained, but the lack of contact meant they did not connect to Solus' teachings very well and they paled in comparison to the Null ARC Troopers, who were held as the golden standard for all clonetroopers to aspire to. Solus'Kad, towards the end of the Clone Wars, began seeing the writing in the sand that something else was afoot, and he resigned from his post, fleeing to a backwater crime world. There, he spent a few months establishing himself, partnering up with other hunters and trying his best to put the past behind him. At this time, his old Mandalorian armour was heavily damaged by a close-range bomb from a rival hunter's attempt at assassinating him. Although he had long since hated it, he had been gifted clonetrooper armour by the Kaminoans in thanks for his service; with his current armour destroyed, he now had no choice but to don the clonetrooper armour. He decorated it according to his own designs and modified it to serve his purposes. When Order 66 was declared, an automated message played inside his armour and he was informed of what was taking place. His worst fears supposedly realised, he went underground for three years, thinking the Jedi might be coming after him. When he came back into the public eye, he found the Galactic Empire had emerged from the ruins of the Republic, and had begun hunting renegade clonetroopers. He was listed as one, mistakenly so for his wearing of the clonetrooper armour. Because of this, he was forced to seek refuge in anti-Empire groups like the Rebel Alliance, and grudgingly supported their efforts to dethrone the Emperor. When the Empire collapsed following the Battle of Endor, he retired and went back to Kamino, seemingly relenting on his attitudes towards the rest of the clonetroopers, and was never seen again. He is presumed dead, but some say he has been working to reactivate the abandoned cloning facilities and use them for a better purpose than before..."

#clonetrooper #starwars