TK - 462 TK - 462 was the operating number of a human male Imperial stormtrooper . A native of the planet Eriadu , he enlisted in an Imperial Junior Academy against his father ' s wishes following the death of his younger sister Xea at the hands of rebels during a botched attempt to steal air scrubber s from the farm his family worked on . After graduating with ease from the Junior Academy , he trained at the Imperial Academy of Eriadu in Eriadu City where he was relentlessly mistreated by his instructor Commander Lassar . The commander had the cadet ' s squadmates regularly beat him and forced him to complete a five kilometer run with shattered glass in his boot s , after which TK - 462 had to rest for two weeks and have his feet reconstructed . Despite this , TK - 462 graduated as a stormtrooper , one of the elite shock troop s of the Galactic Empire ' s Imperial Army . He was initially stationed on Eriadu , catching petty criminals with his squad within the fashion district of Eriadu City ; however , when the call was given for more trooper s to be sent to the planet Lothal to fight rebels there , TK - 462 volunteered himself and left his homeworld for the first time . On Lothal , the stormtrooper found his orders becoming more and more morally ambiguous as he was commanded to burn villages in the name of the Empire . After his squad was tasked with capturing a group of kyber crystal thieves , his captain began executing civilians in a resettlement village — where the criminals were thought to be hiding — in the hopes of drawing them out . Fighting broke out after TK - 462 shot a man who had emerged from his home with a blaster rifle , and in the chaos the dead man ' s daughter took up her father ' s weapon and shot TK - 462 , causing a fatal wound . Biography . Childhood tragedy . The human male who would eventually receive the designation of TK - 462 in the Imperial Army ' s Stormtrooper Corps was born twenty - six years before the Battle of Yavin , and grew up on an air scrubber farm on the planet Eriadu with his parent s . When he was four , his mother gave birth to his younger sister Xea but then passed away by the time her son had turned twelve . TK - 462 and Xea would play on the farm while their father worked , pretending the fields of air scrubber s was a forest or army of droid s depending on what game they were playing . When TK - 462 was twelve he allowed Xea to sleep in his bed one night when she felt ill . While they slept a group of rebels began raiding the farm and attempted to steal several of the air scrubbers by pulling them away with tow cables on their starship s . TK - 462 ' s father began firing on the vessels with a blaster in an attempt to stop the theft , and this woke TK - 462 who was drawn outside by the noise . As the boy watched , one of the air scrubbers came loose from the ground but was still held by a power conduit , which his father started firing at in an attempt to free the machine and prevent it falling back to earth if something went wrong . His efforts were in vain however , as the rebel ' s tow cable soon snapped causing the scrubber to plummet back to earth through the roof of TK - 462 ' s bedroom , fatally crushing Xea in bed . Later that year , former governor of Eriadu Wilhuff Tarkin became Grand Moff and introduced far stricter laws to the world . Due to Tarkin ' s reign , Eriadu became safe enough that TK - 462 ' s father allowed him to travel to the nearby city of Phelar alone . Sometime after Xea ' s death , Tarkin visited the family ' s air scrubber farm . The Imperial spoke to TK - 462 ' s father , but the boy was far more interested in the stormtrooper s that accompanied Tarkin . When TK - 462 asked his father to allow him to enlist , his father refused , having already lost two members of his family ; however , TK - 462 ignored this refusal , and once he was of age , snuck out at night to join the Empire , leaving only a note behind for his father . Training on Eriadu . TK - 462 enlisted at the Junior Academy in Phelar and graduated with his entire class of seven after a year with ease , as the local authority were keen to provide as many local recruits as possible to the Empire . TK - 462 was not surprised when his father did not attend the graduation ceremony , but was disappointed when he was also absent at the spaceport when the trooper ' s transport left for the Imperial Academy of Eriadu . At the academy , TK - 462 was assigned to Commander Lassar , a retired clone trooper instructor who immediately to a disliking to the boy due to his short height . From the cadet ' s first day at the academy , Lassar had all of TK - 462 ' s squadmates beat him in bed every morning until he stopped moving . After about a week of the daily beatings , his squadmates began pulling their punches and TK - 462 began feigning some of the pain Lassar expected to see . When new recruits arrived at the end of the first year , Lassar failed to find anyone he hated more than TK - 462 amongst them , and so continued the beatings into the next year . A couple of weeks before TK - 462 ' s graduation , Lassar gave a toast to all his students just before they were scheduled to run five kilometer s in full gear . At the end of the toast he alone drank a glass of emerald - color ed wine and then smashed the glass with his foot . He then picked up the shards and ordered TK - 462 to remove his boots , placing the shattered glass inside and then having the trooper put them back on . TK - 462 then managed to complete the run despite the shards , but blacked out after crossing the finishing line . He awoke in the academy ' s infirmary after having his feet reconstructed , and was informed that he was to rest for two weeks but had successfully made the rank of stormtrooper . Serving the Empire . After graduating , TK - 462 was assigned to the patrol district five of Eriadu ' s capital Eriadu City , which was considered the fashion district . There he and his squadmates spent their time arresting shoplifters and other petty criminals ; however , when word got around that the Empire needed more troops to combat rebels on the planet Lothal , TK - 462 requested a transfer in order to finally avenge his sister . He was again disappointed not to see his father as he boarded the transport off world , and vomited as soon as his ship left Eriadu ' s atmosphere as he had never traveled in space before . On Lothal , TK - 462 was assigned to a stormtrooper captain who had grown up as a nerf - herder and frequently used comparisons to nerf herding in order to explain tactics to his troops . The trooper ' s assignments on Lothal included burning at least one small village and four years before the Battle of Yavin , his squad was sent to recover a shipment of stolen kyber crystal s . The stormtroopers managed to find it before lunch , as it had been dumped near a resettlement village after the thieves panicked at encountering checkpoints on every road in the area . After eating , TK - 462 and his squadmates traveled into the village to find the culprits , and upon arriving the captain pulled a Rodian shopkeeper out into the village center and threatened to kill him on the count of three unless the thieves gave themselves up . After no one came forward , the captain killed the Rodian and then grabbed a human woman , beginning his count again . As he counted , a human male ran out of a nearby building with a blaster , prompting TK - 462 to shoot him . After the man fell , his young daughter exited the building that he had come from and tried to shake his corpse awake , laying down beside her father when she could not raise him . Chaos then broke out as others in the village attacked , and TK - 462 turned to locate a squadmate who had called for aid . In the moment that he turned however , the young girl brought up her father ' s rifle and shot the stormtrooper . Knowing that the wound was fatal , TK - 462 collapsed to his knees and blood began filling his armor . He removed his helmet and stared up at the girl who had killed him , and recognized the same hatred in her face that he felt the day his sister had died . Knowing that one day the girl would grow up to kill Imperials for the Alliance to Restore the Republic as revenge for her father , he felt a strange pride overcome him , and in his final moments grinned at the girl before succumbing to his wound . Personality and traits . As a child , TK - 462 and his sister were not bothered by the ugliness of the farm they grew up on , treating it as a playground and spending all of their time together while their father worked . While she was still alive , his mother taught him the importance of understanding the world around him , and as such he had a relatively proficient understanding of physics by the time he was twelve . When Xea died , a deep hatred for rebels was born within TK - 462 , and he became determined to enlist with the Galactic Empire in order to kill them . During his training he was driven enough by his determination to serve the Empire and kill rebels that he managed to graduate despite all of Lassar ' s bullying . During the run that the instructor made him complete with glass shards in his boots , spite for the commander got him through the first five hundred meter s , with focus and determination getting him through another three steps . After that he felt as if the pain overwhelmed his brain and he completed the rest on autopilot , not even remembering crossing the finishing line when he later recovered . While capturing petty criminals on Eriadu was not what TK - 462 had signed up with the Empire for , he was still satisfied with serving the Empire and preventing crime , especially enjoying it when shoplifters tried to flee . The trooper was troubled by not seeing his father again before he left Eriadu , feeling that there were many things he had never said to the man , and regretting that goodbye was one of them . He enjoyed being deployed on Lothal , feeling that the hardships that the planet ' s people had suffered made them more genuine , and considering his squadmates there good people . He began to become slightly disillusioned with his work however , having expected morality to be more black and white but finding it increasingly grey as he was ordered to burn villages for the greater good of the Empire . Despite these doubts he always followed orders and took no issue with his captain executing civilians in order to draw out the kyber crystal thieves . Instead of despair he felt pride when he was fatally wounded on Lothal , knowing that he had started the girl who killed him on the same path in life that he had taken , only on the opposite side of the Galactic Civil War . Equipment . As a member of the Stormtrooper Corps , TK - 462 wore standard stormtrooper armor and carried an E - 11 blaster rifle . Behind the scenes . TK - 462 appeared as the titular character of the short story " TK - 462 " , which was published in " Star Wars Insider " 166 in 2016 with illustrations by Drew Baker . The stories author Sylvain Neuvel was also interviewed by James Andrew Rosen for the issue of " Insider " and stated in the interview that he wished he could have fleshed out TK - 462 ' s life and character more but did not have space , lamenting that the stormtrooper never even got a girlfriend . The dates for both Xea and TK - 462 ' s deaths were provided by Neuvel on ; however , since Xea ' s death occurs in the same year as Wilhuff Tarkin ' s promotion to Grand Moff , Neuvel ' s approximate date of eleven years before the Battle of Yavin contradicts the novel " Tarkin " which states that the promotion occurs fourteen years before the Battle of Yavin . This article assumes that the novel instead of the tweet is correct , but still uses the date provided by tweet for TK - 462 ' s death .