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C-3PO (See-Threepio)
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A fussy and
worry-prone protocol droid, C-3PO was cobbled together from discarded scrap and
salvage by a nine-year old prodigy on the desert planet Tatooine. Young Anakin
Skywalker had intended the homemade droid to help his mother, Shmi. With
limited resources, the droid that Anakin built was truly remarkable. It lacked
an outer shell, though, and Threepio had to live with the indignity of being
"naked," with his parts and wiring showing.
When Anakin
befriended Padmé Naberrie of Naboo, Threepio first
met her astromech droid, the blue-and-white droid R2-D2.
The two formed a fast friendship, working together to perfect Master Anakin's
blazing fast Podracer for an upcoming competition.
The more experienced Artoo told Threepio of the
hazards of space travel, to which Threepio proclaimed that he would never set
foot into one of those, as he put it, dreadful starships.
The Podrace was pivotal in Anakin's life, due to a wager that
earned him his freedom upon victory. Anakin left Tatooine with Padmé and Artoo, leaving Threepio behind with Shmi. Years passed
before Shmi was eventually freed by Cliegg Lars, a moisture farmer who had
fallen in love with her. She relocated to the Lars moisture farm, a small
homestead not far from Anchorhead, and took Threepio
with her.
Threepio became
just one of the many droids working on the farm, but Shmi took special care of
Anakin's creation. To better protect his fragile inner wiring from the abrasive
Tatooine sands, Shmi fitted Threepio with discolored and mismatched coverings
that nonetheless gave the protocol droid a sense of completion.
Tragedy struck
the Lars family when Shmi was abducted by savage Tusken
Raiders. A month after this sad event, Anakin Skywalker suddenly returned to
Tatooine, seeking out his mother. There was no time for sentimental reunions --
Anakin sped off into the desert, and returned with Shmi's
body. After a quiet funeral, Anakin and Padmé left on an important mission to
rescue Obi-Wan Kenobi. Since Threepio was the rightful property of Anakin, the Larses let the young Jedi take the protocol droid with him.
This marked the first time the nervous Threepio had ever been aboard a
starship.
Arriving on Geonosis,
Anakin and Padmé ventured into the dark catacombs of the Geonosian hives,
leaving the droids behind. Artoo-Detoo, once again reunited with Threepio,
insisted they follow. Threepio simply could not understand the astromech droid's clearly faulty logic -- they had been instructed
to stay behind -- but the stubborn little droid nonetheless journeyed into the
unknown with Threepio in tow.
The droids
discovered an immense droid factory churning out countless combat automata for
the growing Separatist movement. The concept of machines manufacturing machines
gave Threepio's logic circuits a flutter, and in the
confusion of the factory, the protocol droid tumbled into the dangerous
machinery.
A piece of
heavy equipment cleanly sheared Threepio's head from his
body, though both segments were still active. The headless body wandered into a
battle droid assembly line while the head landed on a conveyer belt full of
battle droid heads. A battle droid head was then automatically affixed to Threepio's body, and Threepio's
head was welded to a battle droid body.
Both mismatched
droid assemblies wandered confusedly into the battle droid ranks, and when the
Separatist droids attacked a Jedi taskforce sent to Geonosis, poor Threepio was
drawn into the fray. His twisted ordeal was brought to an end when both bodies
were incapacitated.
R2-D2 came to Threepio's rescue, tugging the protocol droid's head to his
inactive body and reattaching the two. As Threepio's
electronic brain tried to process the madness of battle, Threepio likened the
unsettling body-swapping to a peculiar dream.
Years later,
Threepio and Artoo would become the property of the
Royal House of Alderaan, an influential family of nobles with ties to the
growing Rebel Alliance. The two droids were aboard Princess Leia Organa's consular vessel when it was attacked by an Imperial
Star Destroyer due to suspected complicity in Rebel actions. The vessel
crippled, Leia stored vital Rebel information in Artoo's
memory systems -- unbeknownst to Threepio. Artoo then
took it upon himself to complete Leia's failed mission, though Threepio knew
nothing of its details.
Artoo
commandeered an escape pod, and rocketed away from the captured craft, crashlanding on the barren desert world of Tatooine. There,
the droids were taken captive by Jawa traders, and
sold to moisture farmer Owen Lars and his nephew Luke Skywalker. Determined to
complete his mission of finding famed war hero General Obi-Wan Kenobi, Artoo ran away in the middle of the night, leaving Threepio
and Luke to search for him the next morning.
Threepio andLuke eventually found Artoo,
as well as Obi-Wan Kenobi. This started an incredible chain of events that saw
Threepio catapulted into an adventure beyond his imagination. Threepio and Artoo were crucial in assisting Luke spearhead a rescue
mission to free Princess Leia from the heart of the gargantuan Imperial space
station, the Death Star. Both droids navigated the complex Imperial computer
system to provide the rescuers with timely assistance and status updates.
Having returned
to the
During the
evacuation from Hoth, Threepio and Artoo were
separated. Threepio, accompanying Princess Leia, left Hoth aboard Captain Han
Solo's recalcitrant freighter, the Millennium Falcon. Although Threepio
was nowhere near as skilled a mechanic as Artoo, he
was helpful in translating the odd language of Falcon's main computer.
During a
respite in the Bespin system, in the pastel-hued corridors of
During a daring
mission to rescue a captive Han Solo from the loathsome gangster Jabba the Hutt,
Threepio and Artoo were sent into the Hutt's palace
on Tatooine. There, they became the gristly crime lord's property. Threepio was
pressed into service as Jabba's translator until Luke Skywalker came to rescue
his friends.
Shortly
thereafter, Threepio accompanied the Rebel strike force that was sent to knock
out the Imperial shield generator on Endor. Although some would question the
addition of a protocol droid on this military mission, it ended up quite
fortunate that Threepio went along. On Endor, the strike team encountered an
indigenous species of primitives that worshipped the golden droid as a god. The
Ewoks, a tree-dwelling tribal people, proved to be valuable allies. Were it not
for their allegiance, which was won by Threepio's
impressive retelling of key events of the Galactic Civil War, the Rebellion
would not have been victorious at the decisive Battle of Endor.
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