First Order stormtroopers assigned to execution duty carry grim tools of their trade: stout laser axes whose ends split into four emitter claws. A cycling ribbon of monomolecular energy pulses between each pair of claws, and can cut through virtually anything.

Clad in distinctive armor of salvaged chromium, Captain Phasma commands the First Order’s legions of stormtroopers. A tough veteran commander, she has no use for fancy titles or complex war rooms, preferring to lead her troops in battle against the First Order’s enemies. A determined survivor, Phasma betrayed the First Order on Starkiller Base. She managed to conceal her treachery, but fell in battle against Finn, one of her former soldiers.

A maintenance tech with a talent for tinkering, Rose Tico joined the Resistance with her sister Paige after the First Order devastated her home system. A chance encounter with Finn pushed her onto the front lines of the new galactic civil war – and her sister’s death caused her to redouble her efforts for the Resistance cause.

FN-2187 was trained since birth to serve the First Order as a stormtrooper, but a skirmish on Jakku awakened his conscience and drove him down a different path, one that proved both heroic and dangerous. He helped Poe Dameron escape the First Order – picking up the nickname Finn in doing so – and then sought his own freedom alongside Rey and BB-8. Finn helped the Resistance destroy Starkiller Base, but had to decide his true loyalties: Would he continue to fight alongside the Resistance’s soldiers, or seek to reunite with Rey and flee the galactic conflict? At first Finn tried to flee the war, but a mission alongside Rose Tico convinced him that he had to commit himself to the Resistance’s cause.

The First Order’s infantry units wear stark white armor derived from that worn by the Republic’s clone troopers and the Empire’s stormtroopers. Members of this new generation of stormtroopers are trained from birth, growing up with unit designations instead of names and fed a steady diet of First Order propaganda to ensure absolute loyalty. Where the Empire opted for numbing routine, the First Order’s training simulations and live-fire drills encourage improvisation on the battlefield, making these stormtroopers more dangerous than their Imperial predecessors.

The New Republic’s rise reduced the once-mighty Empire to a rump state hemmed in by strict disarmament treaties and punishing reparations. But in the galaxy’s Unknown Regions, former Imperial officers, nobles and technologists plotted a return to power, building fleets and armies in secret. This movement became the First Order, ruled by Supreme Leader Snoke, and is now ready to reclaim the Imperial legacy.