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.

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.

The son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, Ben Solo was seduced by the dark side of the Force and renamed himself Kylo Ren, becoming the First Order’s champion and Supreme Leader Snoke’s student. Kylo killed his father and seeks to destroy his mother’s Resistance and the remnants of the Jedi Order. Though a servant of the dark side, he still struggles against the pull of the light side of the Force.

First Order stormtroopers assigned to frigid planets such as Starkiller Base wear specialized armor and gear that let them operate effectively in icy conditions. Snowtroopers carry a backpack-style personal environment unit and wear insulated helmets with glare-reducing slit lenses, gloves, a kama, and a heat-resistant body glove beneath an oversuit of wind-resistant fabric. Snowtrooper teams scouted the planet that now houses Starkiller Base, eliminating native life forms that posed a potential threat.

Deep in the Unknown Regions, the First Order constructed a superweapon that used an entire planet as its weapons platform. The deadly Starkiller harvested energy from its system’s star, contained it within magnetic fields inside the planetary core, and then converted that energy into an ultra-powerful beam that blasted through hyperspace, able to sterilize the worlds of a distant star system with a single shot. Starkiller Base’s first shot obliterated the New Republic capital of Hosnian Prime. The planet was then destroyed in a daring Resistance raid.

The powerful flagship shared by General Hux and Kylo Ren, the dagger-shaped Finalizer is nearly twice the length of an Imperial-era Star Destroyer. The first of the new Resurgent class constructed in violation of treaties with the New Republic, the Finalizer’s heavy weapons are augmented by two starfighter wings, a hundred assault craft and a full legion of stormtroopers. Her turbolasers are more powerful and faster to recharge than Imperial-era weapons, a product of kyber crystals harvested in the Unknown Regions.