Guri

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Gender:
  Female

• Size:
  1.8 meters

• Vehicle:
  Stinger

• Affiliation:
  Black Sun

• Type:
  Human Replica Droid

• 

From the Expanded Universe

Prince Xizor, the powerful and decadent Underlord of the Black Sun criminal syndicate, had a taste for the best the galaxy had to offer. His lieutenant and chief enforcer Guri is a compelling example of said taste.

The deadly beauty was a human replica droid, a very rare advancement in droid technology. Human replica droids (HRDs) represent the pinnacle of numerous technologies, and are extremely expensive. Their outside appearance is flawlessly human. HRDs can eat, drink, and perform all the more personal functions of humans without anybody the wiser. But beneath the vat-grown clone flesh exterior are powerful synthetic muscles and composite armature giving them incredible strength. Their neural networks are cutting edge, boasting reaction times far quicker than human counterparts. Their eyes and ears serve as exacting recorders of their surroundings. While cursory scans will detect an organic being, detailed scans of HRDs will reveal their true nature, such as their less-than-human body temperature and the strange bio-fiber composition of their internal organs.

In total, Prince Xizor spent nine million credits for his enforcer. The brainchild of droid engineer Massad Thrumble, Guri was constructed by a reclusive outlaw tech named Simonelle the Ingoian. This brilliant engineer and droid technician operated out of the Minos Cluster. Working with captured blueprints of the long-delayed Alliance Project Decoy, Simonelle produced a number of droids culminating in his final masterpiece Guri. With the nine million from Xizor, Simonelle worked hard to build other droids, applying the valuable lessons he learned in Guri's construction. But Simonelle became one of Guri's first victims, as the deadly droid killed her maker.

Guri was a lethal assassin, capable of killing in the blink of an eye without even raising her ersatz heartbeat. Xizor sent her out on numerous missions to deal with those who crossed him personally or his organization. It was Guri who recovered the "Barani list," a detailed list of Black Sun operatives leaked in the Sisar Run. It was Guri who killed Vigo Green for masterminding the scheme that saw the creation of that list. It was Guri who killed the entire board of directors for the rival Ororo Transportation.

Xizor dispatched Guri to investigate Princess Leia Organa's interests in Black Sun, interests which stemmed from assassination attempts on Luke Skywalker and her goal of finding the carbon-frozen Han Solo. Guri served as a diplomat-of-sorts, luring Leia into Xizor's complex machinations. Guri was perplexed and concerned about her master's romantic inclinations towards Organa. She carried out her orders even though her own preference would have been to kill Leia and her companions -- testimony to her ruthless and efficient manner.

Guri provided Organa and her companion Chewbacca safe transport to Imperial Center. To facilitate their insertion into the heart of the Empire, Guri supplied both Rebels with disguises -- Leia as the Ubese bounty hunter Boushh and Chewbacca as the hunter Snoova.

Later, Organa and the Wookiee attempted to escape from Xizor's palace. In the confusion, Leia managed to momentarily stun Guri by hammering the back of her head with the heavy Ubese bounty hunter helmet. This gave Leia the time to escape from her quarters, and lock Guri inside. Guri broke through the door with repeated pummeling from her fists.

As Guri continued her pursuit, she came face-to-face with Jedi Luke Skywalker. Finally, Guri found the challenge she had sought after so many years of easy killing. Despite the fact that the palace was to explode around them in three minutes, Guri challenged Skywalker to a hand-to-hand brawl. With the Force as his ally, Skywalker defeated Guri, knocking her down with a hit that would have knocked a normal human unconscious. Guri conceded defeat. Skywalker offered her sanctuary with the Alliance.

"We can have you reprogrammed," Skywalker said. "No. If they can find a way around my brainblock, if somehow my memory is downloaded, it will be fatal for me," Guri responded. She told Skywalker to kill her, but Luke didn't. He fled from the building as explosions deep within the palace consumed the immense structure.

Guri didn't perish with her master, however. As the palace collapsed, and as Xizor died high in orbit under the guns of Vader's Super Star Destroyer, Guri escaped in a parawing glider and reclaimed her vessel.

Guri surfaced again about a month after the Battle of Endor. During the time, the fate of Black Sun was still in contention, as no obvious heir to the criminal empire became apparent. Xizor's long-lost niece, Savan, sought Guri for the valuable Black Sun files contained in her memory core. The key to Black Sun was getting the secrets contained in Guri's mind, so Savan hired bounty hunter Kar Yang to track down the HRD.

With no clear objective or direction, Guri fled to the backwater of the galaxy. She travelled to Hurd's Moon, to look up Massad Thrumble, who had become a local cantina owner. Guri wished to be reprogrammed, and knew Thrumble would be her best chance at that. Thrumble, seeking a challenge, agreed.

The first obstacle however was the recovery of Thrumble's creation, a one-of-a-kind medical droid named A-OIC. A-OIC was the only surgeon capable of the exacting neural restructuring that Guri needed. The droid had been kidnapped by the Pikkel sisters for delivery to Spinda Caveel, on Murninkam.

Guri slogged through the swamps of Murninkam, defeating deadly predators by hand, in her search for A-OIC. She infiltrated Caveel's compound, defeated the Pikkel sisters, and recovered the surgeon droid. While en route to Hurd's Moon, she was pursued by Kar Yang. Yang confronted the HRD while she was about to undergo the neural reprogramming. Guri killed the hunter, tearing at his heart with her bare hand. It was what she was programmed to do, and she didn't want to do it anymore.

Thrumble and A-OIC began the delicate process of eradicating her assassin programming. A simple miscalculation or error could result in wiping her memory entirely. Meanwhile Savan arrived on Hurd's Moon, pursued in turn by the Heroes of Yavin.

Guri awoke from the reprogramming, and did something she hadn't done in over a decade of functioning: she smiled. Guri remembered Massad Thrumble, and A-OIC. She remembered that they were to rid her of some "bad memories" but she couldn't recall what those memories were.

Just then Savan and her enforcers began storming Thrumble's compound. When confronted by a team of Savan's mercs, Guri was able to hold them off. Apparently her muscle memory was still intact -- Guri could still fight with deadly force, even if she didn't know where she learned how to do it.

Savan finally confronted Guri, and attempted to use a secret passcode that would place Guri in her command. But the passcode no longer worked. Guri knocked Savan unconscious. Finally free of her past, Guri stayed on Hurd's Moon, entering Thrumble's cantina not as a deadly assassin droid, but as an attractive young woman. It was purely fate that she caught the eye of smuggler Dash Rendar, who bought the woman a drink.

Guri has long, silky blond hair, pale clear blue eyes and an exquisite figure. Guri's voice and demeanor are cool and even. She traveled in an elegant custom vessel named the Stinger, provided to her by Xizor.

Behind the Scenes

Guri was developed for 1996's Shadows of the Empire, though the concept of extremely convincing human replica droids has existed for years previous in Star Wars expanded universe publishing. In "The Third Law," a tale from the Marvel Comics Star Wars series, an important dignitary from the banking world of Aargau employs a replica droid as a decoy. The Classic Star Wars series of daily newspaper strips by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson had Luke find a pair of amazingly lifelike humanoid droids hiding out on Hoth. In a series of children's books written by Paul Davids and Hollace Davids, the New Republic creates a human replica droid of Princess Leia as part of Project Decoy.