Gallandro/Legends

Gallandro was a renowned gunslinger in the years before the Battle of Yavin, known as the fastest draw in the galaxy and a ruthless killer. A Human born on Ylix, as a child he saw terrorists from Goelitz kill his parents before his eyes. As soon as he came of age, Gallandro enlisted in the Ylix militia. In the course of the war, Gallandro became addicted to the rush of battle and the joy of the kill, evincing complete disdain for the lives of others. When the rival planet's forces were defeated, Gallandro left the military for a career as a gunman for hire. Gallandro made a fearsome reputation as a gunfighter, performing numerous acts of daring and skill, among which was the extermination of the five notorious killers of the Malorm family. That act drew the ire of the Assassin's Guild, forcing Gallandro to hold off Guild assassins for ten years. He finally forced the Guild to back down after personally slaying half that body's Elite Circle; the only time in history that the Guild had defaulted on a contract.
Eventually tiring of life on the fringe, Gallandro accepted a secure position on the right side of the law as an elite field agent for Territorial Administrator Odumin of the Corporate Sector Authority. There he lived a life of comfort between bouts of action until, in 1 BBY, he encountered the smuggler Han Solo. Investigating a ring of slavers with Odumin, he covertly made use of Solo, who was seeking revenge against the slavers, to expose the ringleaders. During the course of the plan, Gallandro had to back down from a duel with Solo on Ammuud twice due to circumstances outside his control. Solo's cocky attitude and parting insults galled the duelist, who longed for a rematch.
In 0 BBY, he finally got his chance to prove himself against Solo on Dellalt. On hearing that Solo and a group of treasure hunters were on Dellalt, he proceeded there and waited for them at a mining camp. As Solo arrived, an army of war-robots attacked. Gallandro and Solo were forced to put aside their differences to survive; when Gallandro learned that they had a line on Xim the Despot's fabled hoard, Gallandro partnered with the others to get into the vaults. There, he turned on Solo and forced a duel. Gallandro outdrew the younger smuggler, but in attempting to finish off fellow treasure hunter S. V. Skynx, he strayed past the warning lights Skynx had disabled and into a no-weapons area. Gallandro was struck down by the ancient automated security systems. He was survived by his infant daughter Anja Gallandro.
==Biography==
===Birth of a legend===
Gallandro was born sometime in the forties or low fifties BBY to an unremarkable family on the minor Mid Rim world of Ylix. The planet was embroiled in an ancient feud with Goelitz, a nearby colony world. Terrorists and revolutionaries periodically struck at Ylix with acts of isolated violence which had by then become routine. With Galactic Republic forces tied up in other conflicts, it fell to the Ylix militia to defend their homes. The intermittent violence had no effect on Gallandro's childhood until one day when he saw his parents die before his eyes as they were caught in the crossfire between the militia and a Goelitz attack. He spent the rest of his youth in a workhouse for orphans, nursing a violent hatred of Goelitz.
As a teenager, Gallandro saw his best prospects in the militia. He enlisted as soon as he came of age, was trained, and deployed into the war raging between Ylix and Goelitz. He thrived on the thrill of combat and excelled in the field. He earned distinction and drew notice as a war hero as he battled across dozens of worlds in the wide-ranging war against Goelitz. Some, however, felt his actions showed him to be a killer without conscience, and he met with condemnation as well as praise for his actions. He volunteered for ever more dangerous duty, seeking increased hazards to maintain his adrenaline rush. Gallandro chafed at downtime, which he found painfully boring, and constantly pushed to be in the thick of the action. When he was not battling, he was honing his skills, ever fearful of receiving the same fate as his parents. He practiced with his blaster until he had a lightning draw and dead aim.
In one instance, Gallandro led his unit in an assault on a hospital. Taking point in the rubble, he heard a blaster charge. He made his fastest draw yet as he turned and cut down an old woman attempting to protect a group of children. As he looked at the orphans, Gallandro realized he had no sympathy for them despite his own background. He lived for the kill and did not truly care about others, even his deceased parents.
At last, Ylix defeated Goelitz. Gallandro returned home, where he could not bear the monotony of peacetime military service. He retired from the militia. A loner with no interest in Imperial—or any other—ideology, he declined to enter Imperial service. Instead, he decided that he would make a living with his skills and his gun wherever the pay was good and the jeopardy exhilarating. At some point, Gallandro killed Mantellian gangsters who had killed the parents of two young girls, Amaiza Foxtrain and Jodelle Foxtrain.
===The gunman's life===
Gallandro took jobs as a hired gun, doing whatever was excitingly perilous, living for the rush of adrenaline that came with combat and the satisfaction of the kill. He served as a contract killer, enforcer, mercenary, bounty hunter, bodyguard, soldier of fortune, and assassin. He also occasionally put his skills to personal use in holdups or bank robberies. He lived a roving life, seeking out points of conflict and galactic hotspots where his talent with a blaster would be most in demand and the greatest thrills could be had. For a period of time, Gallandro was under a death mark on over one hundred planets, but no one dared attempt to collect the bounty.The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia He gained many enemies in the course of his career, but rivalry with Gallandro was generally a fatal condition.
Determined to be the best, he worked on his quick draw until it was both blindingly fast and pinpoint accurate, gaining a reputation as a top blaster artist. Though he preferred the blaster pistol, Gallandro was also fond of archaic guns, and proficient in the use of heavier weapons, explosives, throwing knives, and his own body in combat; it would not do to be less than expert in all fields of combat lest he be bested. Combat piloting and the operation of various ground vehicles were also in his repertoire of skills designed to save his life and end others'.
Gallandro built a legend as a fantastically dangerous lone gunslinger through a series of single-handed exploits. When the opulent passenger liner Quamar Messenger made its maiden voyage, Gallandro hijacked it all on his own in a stick-up of grand proportions. He personally seized control of the pirates' nest at Geedon V without backup. Gunfighting was not Gallandro's only field of accomplishment; he spent time as a fighter pilot in Marso's Demons and racked up an unrivaled kill count as a member of the notorious gang.
When Odumin, an up-and-coming Corporate Sector Authority Territorial Administrator, put out word that he was looking for elite warriors to bring down the famed killers of the Malorm family, offering good pay and a general amnesty good in both the Corporate Sector and the Galactic Empire, Gallandro saw it as a good opportunity. He signed on, and Odumin was so impressed with Gallandro's expertise that he placed him in charge of the team of top talent sent to eliminate the Malorms, who had hijacked the Galaxy Wanderer and ejected thirty passengers into space. In that position, Gallandro was one of very few people to learn the true identity of the Tynnan Odumin, who kept himself shrouded behind layers of secrecy to present a more menacing image. Gallandro put a plan into action, luring the Malorms to Matra VI. There, with his team disguised as an Authority Counter-terrorist Security Team, he ambushed and gunned down all five Malorms, collecting full bounty.
That action helped build his reputation yet more, but it also drew him negative attention. A Malkite Poisoner and member of the Assassin's Guild confronted him, claiming that by killing the Malorms, he had forced the Guild to default on a contract for the first time in history. When she threatened him with the Guild's vengeance, Gallandro shot her dead. This began an epic feud between one man and the entire Assassins' Guild, whom Gallandro disdained as cowards and sneak-killers without real combat talent. The Guild spent ten years attempting to kill him, during which Gallandro gunned down half their Elite Circle one by one, in addition to a profusion of lower-ranked assassins, in retaliation. At long last, seeing Gallandro survive the full force of the Guildsmen's fury while they lost their best talent, the Guild relented. It called off its quest for revenge and instead offered the gunslinger membership. He was uninterested.
===Odumin's enforcer===
Gallandro eventually tired of the hardship, stress, and constant danger of the blasterman's life. After twenty-five years of slaughter and ten years of an Assassins' Guild death mark, he had little to show for his efforts other than a fearsome reputation throughout the underworld. Looking for something that would allow him comfort and stability, he was offered a retainer by Odumin. He accepted, becoming a highly valued covert operative and high-ranking field agent for the ambitious executive. Gallandro found that he liked life inside the law, wielding power, respect, and credits in comfort while still finding dangerous work to keep his edge keen. He finally had luxury alongside his stimulatingly perilous gunwork.
Gallandro still traveled outside the Corporate Sector. He frequently visited Ord Mantell, a notorious hive of criminal activity near his homeworld, both before and after accepting Odumin's retainer. While working for Odumin, he found cause to visit nearby Anobis. There, he encountered a woman in a mining village with whom he carried on a relationship. Gallandro returned to her whenever he was in the area, and around 1 BBY he conceived a daughter with her, Anja Gallandro.
In 1 BBY, when Odumin became aware of a slaving ring with ties reaching even into the highest ranks of his subordinates, he called on Gallandro as an independent resource. The two worked together to investigate and break up the criminals. On Bonadan, Odumin and Gallandro came across Han Solo, a smuggler captain who appeared to be working as an agent for the slavers. Gallandro checked the man's background, and found that he was an independent smuggler, not an associate of the slavers; he had in fact killed one of their agents and was attempting to collect money the syndicate owed him.
Odumin hatched a plan to use Solo to draw the slaver leadership into the open and gain needed information. The House Glayyd, the most powerful of the competing clans of Ammuud, had been providing ships to the slavers and maintained records vital to the investigation; Solo was going to Ammuud to seek the same. Gallandro traveled to Ammuud while Odumin went undercover aboard Solo's Millennium Falcon as a skip tracer. Gallandro saw a route to put Solo in a better position. He spoke with the rival Reesbon clan, and led them to the idea that they could hire him to assassinate the young Mor Glayyd, leader of the House Glayyd. Gallandro arranged admission to a Glayyd reception. There, he contrived to take a walk with Ido Glayyd, sister of Mor Ewwen Glayyd, during which he pretended outrage at a comment and slapped the young woman. Due to the honor code of Ammuud, Ewwen Glayyd was obliged to respond with a challenge to a death-duel. As Mor, he was the protector of his family, and no other Glayyd could take his place; a failure to fight Gallandro would result in disgrace and diminish his influence. It was only after issuing the requisite challenge that Ewwen Glayyd discovered his foe was in fact a notorious gunfighter and suspected he had been maneuvered into his death, but by then Gallandro had Glayyd trapped. Gallandro knew that while no other Glayyd could take the Mor's place, an outsider with a stake in protecting the Mor could substitute for the clan leader. He intended Solo to be that man.
Gallandro permitted the distressed Mor to postpone the duel twice as he awaited the arrival of Solo and Odumin. When Solo landed with Corporate Sector Authority Assistant Auditor-General Hart-and-Parn Gorra-Fiolla, who was independently investigating the slavers, the gunman finally came to call with his second, provided by the Reesbons. He prepared his weapons and chose a fast-draw format, but when the Mor finally arrived, Gallandro feigned surprise that he would not be facing Ewwen Glayyd. Solo, having arrived to speak with the Mor, took Glayyd's part by virtue of his interest in tracing the slaving ring. Gallandro sized up Solo, himself a quick draw and veteran gunslinger. He had some interest in testing his skill with Solo, in whom he saw something of his younger self. Though Gallandro disliked turning his back on a challenge, he had to content himself with allowing the plan to play out. Gallandro backed out of the duel, offering an apology, while the others believed that he no longer had interest now that he would be unable to kill the Mor Glayyd. Ido Glayyd accepted the apology and pardoned the assassin. When Solo blustered in response to Gallandro's parting intimation that they might meet again, Gallandro felt a demonstration of his skill in order, and swiftly bulls-eyed four holotargets with a quick draw before striding away.
Gallandro departed the planet, but returned later that day with an Authority Victory-class Star Destroyer under his command. On arriving, he found the slavers' command ship in the process of capturing Solo's Millennium Falcon. Gallandro ordered both parties to surrender and forced the two ships to land as the Star Destroyer hovered over them. While Security Police subdued the slavers, Gallandro was lowered in a safety cage to the Millennium Falcon. He forced its passengers and crew outside, where he greeted Odumin and they explained their plan to Solo, Fiolla, and Solo's first mate Chewbacca. While Odumin took Fiolla back to the Star Destroyer in the safety cage, Gallandro intended to force Solo and Chewbacca to fly the Millennium Falcon back to port, hoping to spark a showdown with Solo that would fulfill his need to prove himself against the younger gunman. Gallandro followed Solo to his quarters aboard ship, where he wished to recover a data plaque Solo had taken from the slaver Zlarb. As Solo handed over the case containing the plaque, he allowed the case's security system to go off, sending a paralyzing electrical current along the gun hands of each man. Each acknowledged that Solo had evened the odds, and prepared for a left-handed showdown. Gallandro, however, ultimately decided that this would prove little, and declined to draw. Chewbacca arrived to keep Gallandro under watch as Solo fired up the ship and snatched the safety cage containing the two high-ranking Authority officials. With the pair as hostages, Solo forced Gallandro to negotiate terms with the much larger ship, which saw the executives and Gallandro returned in exchange for time to fully repair the Millennium Falcon and a cash payment. Gallandro felt humiliated.
===Showdown with Solo===
Gallandro remained vexed by his run-in with Solo, desperate to test his skill against Solo and avenge his humiliation on Ammuud. He began asking around the underworld, seeking to trace Solo for another confrontation, as well as bending his Authority resources to the task. His sources eventually indicated that Solo and Chewbacca were on Dellalt in the Tion Hegemony. Gallandro left the Corporate Sector for the backwater world, where on landing he learned that the local mine operators, J'uoch and R'all, had seized the Millennium Falcon before supposedly killing Solo and his companions in a dispute. Checking the site where their stolen craft was supposed to have gone down, he found evidence that the party had survived, launching the ship on autopilot while they stayed behind. In town, he found yet more rumors of a brawl at the lake ferry docks, which he connected with Solo's group.
Inferring that the group was headed for J'uoch and R'all's mining camp, Gallandro flew to the mines. There he learned from J'uoch, the real boss of the operation, that she believed Solo and his fellow treasure hunters to have a log-recorder from the legendary Queen of Ranroon, the great lost treasure ship of Xim the Despot, presumed lost before it could reach Xim's treasury vaults on Dellalt. He struck a bargain with her to obtain the log-recorder, which could offer the secret of the priceless treasure's location, in exchange for assurances that Solo would be preserved for a duel. When Solo and his companions finally reached the camp, Gallandro was present. As J'uoch's enforcers surrounded the party, Gallandro came forward to attempt to negotiate with the pinned-down Solo. J'uoch, simple-minded and violent, sought to simply kill Solo, sending her brother R'all in a strafing run with a spaceboat. Gallandro, annoyed at her breach of the bargain, attempted to talk her down, but she could not be dissuaded. As Gallandro expected, Solo used his Kell Mark II heavy assault rifle to shoot down the light-duty craft, killing R'all. Before J'uoch could give in to homicidal rage, one thousand of Xim's war-robots arrived at the mining camp, a threat of which Solo had attempted to warn them.
As the war-robots overran the camp, bent on destruction, Gallandro and the mine enforcers turned all their attention to holding off the hulking, thickly armored droids. As the miners were relentlessly killed, Gallandro used his precision aim to disable the droids coming against him, as his light blaster lacked the firepower to punch through the droids' heavy armor. With the odds against him formidable, Gallandro made a long-distance shot that destroyed a war-robot menacing Solo and his friends some fifty meters away, sparing them to continue fighting. Solo returned the favor by pointing out a droid sneaking up behind the gunslinger, who quickly dodged its attack and disabled it. Against overwhelming odds, Gallandro battled through the droids, but was eventually forced to play dead in order to survive.
As the droids moved on, he made his way to the Millennium Falcon, which had been spared from destruction by the droids BLX-5 "Bollux" and Blue Max, who had appropriated the control podium technology which was used to command the droids. As the pair of droids used the technology to manipulate the war-robots into marching on the bridge to the barracks area of the camp, their weight and resonance collapsed the bridge, sending all of them plummeting into the chasm. Gallandro powered up Solo's ship and took it across the chasm to pick up the treasure hunters. Tempted by the lure of Xim's riches, he told Solo that he would drop their grudge if he could cooperate with the team in their search for the lost wealth and gain a cut for himself. Solo, as well as his companions Hasti Troujow and Alexsandr Badure, were suspicious, but agreed.
The Millennium Falcon overtook the leaders of the Survivors, the organization which had launched the war-robot assault. Solo's droid pair was able to overcome the hypno-imprinting to which the Survivors had been subjected, and their captives revealed the history of the Survivors. Descended from Xim's personnel of some twenty-five thousand years before, they knew the secrets of the treasure and maintained hope of someday rising again. They were reduced to a small, inbred band hiding in the mountains and maintaining ancient technology they no longer understood while their leaders lay low in Dellaltian society. The Survivors revealed that the treasure lay deep in Xim's vaults in the Dellaltian capital, widely believed to be empty.
The treasure hunters set out for the city, planning to use their ship's superior weaponry to take over the vaults before sending off for a ship large enough to carry off the untold wealth. As the Millennium Falcon made a hot landing, Gallandro and Solo led the way into the vaults with the academic expert Skynx while Badure and Troujow held the door; Chewbacca minded the ship with the droids. Gallandro gunned down the steward of the vaults as he attempted to resist before parting with the other two to explore the vaults. Solo cut through into the genuine vaults, hidden beneath the empty decoys. Gallandro followed him in, intent on the showdown he had long wanted.
As both men prepared, Gallandro vented his contempt for Solo, whom he felt to have a far inflated opinion of himself. The two squared off before drawing. Solo's quick draw was the best Gallandro had seen in many years, but Gallandro was quicker. He put a bolt in Solo's shoulder, spoiling his aim, then shot the smuggler in the arm to disarm him. Gallandro briefly gloated, intending to kill the rest of the treasure seekers, take Solo back to the Corporate Sector, and subject him to their unforgiving justice system in order to make an example of him. Having seen Solo's talent, he was somewhat regretful that he had had to defeat the cocky young gunslinger, thinking he might have made an excellent lieutenant had they met after the Corellian's brashness and idealism had faded.
Skynx had been with Solo and now fled deeper into the vaults. Gallandro followed him. On catching up with the Ruurian, he drew his blaster, intent on eliminating the academic, though he regretted having to do so and was apologetic, promising to make it quick and painless. The gunman was cut down in a blast of fire from dozens of blasters operated by the automated defense systems; Skynx had removed the warning lights indicating they had entered the no-weapons safety zone around the treasure stores. Gallandro died with his draw undefeated, the victim of speed-of-light defensive technology that left him a charred corpse.
===Legacy===
Though Solo and Skynx both survived to collect the treasure with the others, it turned out to consist of worthless materials, valuable twenty-five thousand years ago but no longer, preventing any of them from striking it rich with the exception of Skynx, whose academic career was made. The Corporate Sector Authority put out a warrant for Solo in connection with Gallandro's death, but never got its hands on the smuggler.
As Solo gained prominence himself, becoming a New Republic hero for his role in defeating the Empire, rumors and bombastic holodramas propagated the idea that he had outdrawn and slain Gallandro in the vaults of Xim. This tarnished Gallandro's reputation, subsuming it in service of Solo's legend.Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Among expert gunfighters, however, the memory of Gallandro's skill remained strong.
Gallandro was survived by his daughter Anja, only an infant at the time of his death. She grew up hearing such rumors on war-torn Anobis with her heartbroken mother, and blamed Solo for her father's death, though she refused to believe that Solo could have defeated Gallandro without shooting him in the back. Idolizing the father she never knew, she revered Gallandro's memory, learning of him both from her mother's stories and Corporate Sector Authority records. Anja eventually fell in with Black Sun crimelord Czethros, who addicted her to andris and stoked her hatred of Solo to manipulate her into his own plot for revenge against the smuggler, by then a general and the husband of New Republic Chief of State Leia Organa Solo. Anja Gallandro confronted Solo, but did not believe his explanations. She spent time with Solo's children Jacen and Jaina, pretending to have reconciled with them but secretly plotting against them on behalf of Czethros. Eventually, their good nature, combined with the revelation of Czethros's manipulation, convinced her to put aside her grudge and believe Solo's story. She no longer saw her father as a good man horribly wronged; she was willing to accept the idea that he might have been a flawed man responsible for his own death.Young Jedi Knights: Trouble on Cloud CityYoung Jedi Knights: Crisis at Crystal Reef
==Personality and traits==
As a boy, Gallandro was scarred by the deaths of his parents before his eyes. His hate led him to join the militia. There, he gained combat experience and found that he was an adrenaline junkie, living for the heat of combat and the joy of killing. Life without risk was boring. When the war ended, he sought employment as a hired gun, seeking out the thrill of the deadly contest between sentients which he made his business. Gallandro cared for nothing else and had no empathy for those affected by his actions. Though he was not given to pointless cruelty or killing without reason, he was apathetic toward the lives of others and studiously amoral. If he had cause, he would kill anyone without compunction. Cynical, he did not believe in luck, only in skill; he rejected what he saw as mysticism and superstition, as he did emotion.
Though Gallandro thrived on the ability to showcase his talent, as he aged he grew tired of living a life on the fringe, with his life constantly on the line and little stability or comfort. It was for that reason that he chose to accept a lower-profile but much cushier job working as Odumin's top agent. As an Authority employee, Gallandro came to enjoy the perks of a life of comfortable legitimacy in which he could still keep his skills honed and his love of mayhem indulged. He allowed himself to indulge in luxury, though not to an extent that it would compromise his skill. Still, he realized that he did sometimes miss the "zest" of bank heists and cantina shootouts. An unemotional man, he always presented an aura of calm and competence, acting the part of a polite, well-spoken, reasonable, and suave professional even when angered. A quick thinker, he had a talent not only for combat but for devising plots and carrying out deceptions as well as investigations.
Driven by the memory of his parents deaths as victims, Gallandro was determined to excel, to be the unconquerable best on the battlefield. To have any weakness was to die. In addition, Gallandro took a strong professional pride in his skill and reputation, which would stand no diminution. His preferred response to insults to his talent was a demonstration of his abilities, which was generally sufficient to quiet any detractor. If anyone seemed to offer a genuine challenge as a gunfighter, Gallandro was eager to test his skill against him or her and demonstrate himself the superior. His curiosity in such matters was insatiable; he was willing to draw with drained blasters simply to see who was faster. He could not stand not knowing whether another's draw might be swifter than his. If his talent was genuinely called into question, Gallandro would not rest until he proved himself and avenged the insult to his reputation. Those who felt themselves to be on his level drew his contempt and were sure to bring retaliation in a test of skill.
==Equipment==
Gallandro preferred to present a sophisticated image. He took to wearing fine clothing, preferring well-tailored gray slacks, a finely tooled black gunbelt, a white shirt, and gray jacket. A white scarf and a pair of gold beads adorning his long mustachios added dash to the outfit. He kept his clothing spotless and his boots polished to maintain his image as an elegant gunman. Gallandro used a Merr-Sonn Model 434 "DeathHammer" blaster pistol in combat.
==Behind the scenes==
Gallandro was created by author Brian Daley and first appeared in Daley's 1979 novel Han Solo's Revenge as one of several antagonists for main character Han Solo. Though Gallandro and Han twice nearly clashed in combat before it was averted, the characters suggested that they would eventually have to duel in the future. That promise was fulfilled in the sequel, Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, in which Gallandro once more opposed Solo before cooperating with him, only to turn on Solo in the novel's finale with the result of his death.
Gallandro received significant expansion of his backstory in 1993's Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook. His daughter was introduced in a 1998 Young Jedi Knights plotline that established further facts about Gallandro, and numerous novels have mentioned Gallandro in the wake of his death, Gallandro has not appeared in a narrative since 1980.Rebel DawnThe New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial
In the draft for the Star Wars Blog article So Uncivilized: Great Gunslingers in Star Wars, Part 2, Gallandro was given the first name of Inbar. However, it was removed shortly thereafter, with Ed Erdelac, the author of the blog, admitting that the first name was a mistake.
==Appearances==
*Rebel Dawn 
*Han Solo's Revenge 
*Han Solo and the Lost Legacy
*Star Wars: Rebellion 
*Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor 
*Young Jedi Knights: Return to Ord Mantell 
*Young Jedi Knights: Trouble on Cloud City 
*Young Jedi Knights: Crisis at Crystal Reef 
*The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial 
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
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