Cylo Cylo was a humanoid male doctor who cybernetically enhanced himself into an immortal system capable of assuming another body when the previous one died . A scientist who believed that evolution was only possible for the universe if organic species were upgraded with cybernetics , Cylo dedicated his research to this goal . Having gained support from the Separatist - leaning Astartes of Celanon prior to the Clone Wars , he subsequently entered the service of Galactic Emperor Sheev Palpatine after the war ended with the Republic ' s victory and the inauguration of the Galactic Empire . For twenty years , the doctor worked to develop cybernetically - enhanced individuals who , without the need for the Force , could potentially replace Palpatine ' s apprentice , Darth Vader , as enforcers for the Empire . In the wake of Vader ' s failure to stop the Rebel Alliance victories at Yavin 4 and Cymoon 1 , the Emperor approved Cylo ' s plans to test his apprentice . Intrigued by his Master ' s mysterious new agent , Vader hired bounty hunter Black Krrsantan to track him down and discover the nature of his work for the Emperor . Captured and interrogated by Vader ' s agents , Cylo revealed the location of his research base before his fourth body died as a result of torture droid 0 - 0 - 0 ' s lethal interrogation techniques . With the death of this body , Cylo - V was activated . Shortly after he awoke , Vader launched an assault on his base in order to eliminate the potential competition for his place as the Emperor ' s enforcer . Cylo broke off the fight between Vader and two of his enhanced subjects , Morit and Aiolin Astarte , and revealed his plans to the Sith Lord . The Emperor soon arrived , demanding a test of Cylo ' s subjects . Sufficiently impressed , Palpatine declared that he would have missions for all of them but that only one would win his favor and a place at his side . Appointed to serve in the Imperial Military at the discretion of Grand General Cassio Tagge , Cylo ' s subjects served as operatives in the Empire ' s escalating war with the Rebel Alliance and various uprisings against the New Order while the doctor also served as a consultant . When the nobility of the mining world of Shu - Torun rose up against the Imperial - backed government of Queen Trios , the Emperor gave command of the military intervention to Vader while Tagge sent Cylo and his subjects to support the war effort . Frustrated with Vader ' s dismissal of him and determined to knock him out of the competition for a place as the Emperor ' s enforcer , Cylo conspired with the rebellious Ore Barons to isolate and kill the Dark Lord . Once his plans were discovered by the Sith Lord , Cylo and his remaining subjects were forced to flee , having been exposed as traitors . Biography . Pre - Imperial career . Doctor Cylo was a specialist in cybernetics whose research eventually led him to believe that technological superiority was inevitable , and that mystical aspects of the universe , such as the Force , were obsolete . To that aim , he began research on creating new forms of life , depending on technological augmentations , which he created using illegal alien parts smuggled to his research base in conjunction with cybernetic upgrades . His experiments eventually included himself when created a map of his personality , completed with memory banks and plug - in calculation systems , to make himself into an immortal system . As such , he could grow several upgraded bodies of himself ; when one body died , another was activated at his research base with no memory of what had happened to the old body . By the time of the Battle of Yavin , Cylo had already lost three bodies and was using the one known as Cylo - IV . Cylo ' s work had begun before the onset of the Clone Wars , during which time his work was funded by the Astarte line of Celanon . However , their support of the Separatist Alliance during the war earned them the wrath of the Galactic Empire once the war ended . The Astartes gave their children , Morit and Aiolin , to Cylo to protect them from Imperial reprisals . Cylo integrated the two children into his experiments , turning them into cybernetically - enhanced warriors . Service to the Empire . At some point before the end of the Clone Wars , Cylo came to the attention of Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine , who declared himself Galactic Emperor when the war ended . He was one of several scientists who was ordered by the new Emperor to save the life of his critically - wounded apprentice , Darth Vader , after his duel with Obi - Wan Kenobi on Mustafar . After a long night of operations , the scientists ' technology successfully saved Vader ' s life by replacing his lost limbs with prosthetics , and placing him in a mechanical armor which allowed him to breathe despite his badly - scorched lungs . Intrigued by the scientists who had saved his apprentice , the Emperor kept them on to see what they could accomplish without the scrutinizing eyes of the Old Republic and the Jedi to limit them . As such , Cylo continued his research and his experiments with the full backing and financial support provided by the Emperor . He upgraded Morit and Aiolin with the best genetic enhancements , and the finest technology was integrated into their flesh . In addition , he provided them with training in lightsaber combat , allowing them to possess the abilities of the Jedi and Sith of old but without the need for the Force . Cylo developed other subjects as well as Morit and Aiolin . Among his creations were a cybernetically - enhanced Mon Calamari named Commander Karbin . A veteran of the Clone Wars during which he had been injured when his ship was lost near the end of the conflict , Karbin had spent eighteen years on life support when Cylo decided to upgrade him about two years before the Battle of Yavin . He modeled his cybernetics on the cyborg General Grievous , the leader of the Separatist droid armies , whom he had always admired . This allowed Karbin to fight with four lightsabers much as Grievous had , while Cylo also included propulsors in his back to give him an edge in combat . The doctor also took an interest in a scientist named Tulon . Unlike his other subjects , she was not a warrior but a genius scientist who had been involved in high - level research and development work for the Empire , including the Tarkin Initiative and the Death Star project . Cylo enhanced her cerebellum and connected it to a series of drone - droids which she controlled through distributed intelligence in each individual drone . They allowed her to see and to fight as they provided both her weapons with incorporated blasters and defense capabilities through shield generators which they could deploy around her . As a result of her ability to see through her drone - cloud , Tulon adopted the name " Voidgazer " . Cylo seemed particularly pleased with his work on Tulon , noting that she was already a genius when he augmented her but that her upgrades had made her even smarter . In parallel to his sentient subjects , Cylo also developed a solution for what he believed was the biggest problem of enforcers : their tendency to die . Believing that only a system could succeed where an individual failed , he began work on a cyberanimation program . He developed a " trainer " artificial intelligence to guide a host ' s bestial instincts while removing any undesirable personality traits and even the ability to feel pain or other emotions . In Cylo ' s own words , the cyberanimate would feel only what his programmer wanted to feel . The doctor adapted this program to a Trandoshan but he believed that it could work on any host , even a rancor . During his time with the Empire , Cylo was heavily involved with the Tarkin Initiative and worked closely with the other great Imperial minds , possibly contributing his service to the creation of the Death Star . He became close friends with Professor Thlu - Ry , who had been working on the battle station ' s alignment tests before the Battle of Yavin . His influence allowed him to develop his own fleet of upgraded spacefearing creatures , which he used as a research base and hid in various galactic nebulae . He also developed his own armed force to man his fleet and protect his creations . As a result of his involvment with these projects , the doctor had grown powerful and influential . He believed that his subjects were the future of the Empire , and he began pushing the Emperor to use them as enforcers in the place of Darth Vader , whom Cylo saw as a relic from a bygone age . Under his vision , Vader would be relocated to a ceremonial position as the Emperor ' s apprentice while his subjects enforced his will throughout the Empire . Unbeknownst to Cylo , the Emperor had began to be concerned with his growing influence within the Empire . Coming to see his reliance on the scientists as a mistake , he decided that it was time to remove Cylo as a potential threat . However , he could not act until the Death Star had been completed . As the doctor had many friends among the Empire ' s great minds , the Emperor feared removing him would cause a schism among the scientific community which he needed to accomplish his long - term plans . Although he continued to tolerate Cylo ' s presence in his persistence in trying to remove Darth Vader , Palpatine began to consider ways of removing the scientist without causing a rift among the scientific community . Encounter with Vader . After Vader failed to prevent the Rebel Alliance from destroying the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin , his position in the Emperor ' s eyes was compromised . To make matters worse for the Sith Lord , he was unable to prevent the destruction of the Empire ' s Weapons Factory Alpha on Cymoon 1 . In order to test Vader in the wake of his failures , Palpatine decided to consider Cylo ' s plans to replace his apprentice as an enforcer with one of his subjects and summoned Cylo , who was using his fourth body at the time known as Cylo - IV , to the Imperial Palace on Coruscant to discuss these plans . Vader who had been briefing the Emperor when Cylo - IV arrived demanded to know who he was but Palpatine denied him this information and sent him away . The Emperor decided to see which of Cylo ' s subjects or Vader impressed him most . The one who won the contest would win a place as his sole enforcer while the others would be removed . Cylo eagerly agreed to the challenge , confidant that his future would beat the past represented by Vader . Secretly , the Emperor hoped that Cylo - IV would overplay his hand to make one of his subjects win the contest , which would allow him to paint him as a traitor . This would allow him to eliminate the problem the scientist had began to pose . After Vader ' s meeting with Cylo - IV , he became suspicious of the Emperor ' s plans and hired the Wookiee bounty hunter Black Krrsantan to find and capture him . The bounty hunter succeeded in tracking down Cylo - IV and discovered that he was shipping illegal alien organs supplies to his secret base . Before he could discover the location of his base Cylo - IV found out that Wookiee was tracking him . Nonetheless he was captured by the bounty hunter who brought him to Vader . Once Cylo - IV was captured , Vader ordered his new droid , 0 - 0 - 0 , to torture the information about his work for the Emperor from him . 0 - 0 - 0 inadvertently killed Cylo - IV during the interrogation but not before discovering the location of his research base and the existence of his specimens . Cylo - IV ' s death led to the activation of his next body , Cylo - V . Cylo ' s base was then attacked by Darth Vader along with his droid army and Doctor Aphra . Vader then went to the dojo and encountered Cylo ' s subjects , the twins Morit and Aiolin Astarte who he engaged in a duel . Cylo - V then arrived and stopped the duel . He revealed to Vader how he had survived and that he was not making replacements for him but rather enforcers for the Empire . He told him that he believed the Force to be obsolete and claimed that his subjects were in a way Vader ' s successors . Enraged by this Vader attempted to kill Cylo - V but was stopped by the Emperor who had arrived there . The Emperor then told them that he wanted to see a presentation of Cylo ' s subjects . As Vader started fighting with the Astarte twins , Tulon Voidgazer , Commander Karbin and a Trandoshan , Cylo told Palpatine about their special skills and abilities . As no one had gotten injured yet , Emperor Palpatine demanded a real presentation and told them to fight to the death . While Vader was fighting with the Trandoshan , Morit intervened and killed the enforcer . Palpatine then called a stop to the fight and told them that their mission was to defeat the enemies of the Empire not each other . He declared that they could not kill each other at least not with him knowing . With this the Emperor along with his apprentice left . Cylo was then appointed to serve under Grand General Cassio Tagge in the Imperial Military . Betrayal . Commander Karbin had tried to eliminate Vader during a battle on the planet Vrogas Vas but failed and was killed by him . Sometime later the Emperor ordered Cylo , on Tagge ' s insistence , to accompany Vader , along with his subjects , to Shu - Torun to stop the growing rebellion by the Ore - duke s . During their meeting Cylo warned Vader that even if the Sith Lord makes a single mistake the Emperor will turn to him and his enforcers . While they were discussing their strategy with Queen Trios , in the ancestral retreat of the Shu - Torun royalty , they were attacked by a vessel belonging to Lord Rubix , the leader of the rebellious Ore - Dukes . Darth Vader along with the Astarte twins managed to destroy the vessel . Later Cylo had a conversation with General Tagge about the war progress . Tagge remarked that Vader , while being effective had many flaws . He then advised Cylo that the victory at Shu - Torun must look like the victory of the Empire , not Vader ' s . Cylo , a little while later , betraying the Empire , contacted the Rebels and told them that he can provide them Vader in the Lithoporoite seam where the dukes could finish him off . Vader , using a combat drill , led his troops and the Astarte twins to Rubix ' s delving citadel but the drill , having been sabotaged by Cylo , veered off course to the Lithoporoite stream where Rubix ' s forces were waiting to kill them . While the Sith Lord was battling Rubix ' s elite , Queen Trios , having presumed Vader dead , started preparations for the attack on the citadel but Cylo told her to call it off and recalled his troops . Vader managed to escape Cylo ' s trap with the two enforcers who turned on him . Vader fended off their attacks and Mortis seeing an opportunity killed his sister who in her dying breath revealed Cylo ' s treachery to Vader . Trios attacked Rubix ' s citadel with her forces and was soon joined by Vader who had come with the Imperial forces . Cylo fled the planet during the battle along with Mortis and Voidgazer . After defeating the Ore - Dukes , Vader informed the Emperor of Cylo ' s betrayal . Personality and traits . Cylo appeared to be human but had grafts from multiple species , notably the green scaly Rodian skin and black eye in place of his right eye . The rest of his skin was light , and he had grey hair and a light Van Dyke beard — a contrast to Cylo - IV , who had darker hair . He also had cybernetic implants across his head and neck . Cylo believed that the universe needed to evolve and that progress was inevitable . He also believed that organic species were running out of time and that the Force was obsolete . He also continued the work of Cylo by creating new specimens who he planned to introduce as new enforcers for the Emperor . He believed that men like Vader lacked the vision to see that they needed to evolve , but that the Emperor did not lack that vision . However , he did believe that Vader represented a bridge between the " old world " and his new world , seeing as Vader was more machine than man . Cylo also removed his tendency to hold grudges from his system , so he did not blame Vader for the death of Cylo - IV . Instead , he claimed that he would have done the same thing in Vader ' s place . Behind the scenes . Cylo first appeared in " " during which time he was using his fourth body " . " The fact that he has a Rodian ' s eye and cybernetics is meant to imply " the sort of things this guy might get up to , " according to Gillen , who also said that finding out who the character is will be " one of the core elements " of the " " series . Gillen further stated that the creative team went back and forth on which type of alien look to use for the character ' s right eye , before finally settling on a Rodian .