Kosh

This article is about the Imperial Captain. You may be looking for the tea of the same name or Imperial Admiral Kosh Teradoc.

"Captain Kosh is arriving momentarily, so stay sharp—there could be Rebel spies anywhere!"

―A sandtrooper in Mos Eisley^[1]

Captain Kosh was a Human Imperial officer in charge of a garrison of stormtroopers on the planet Tatooine. In 0 BBY, Kosh was tasked by Commander Nahdonnis Praji to search for the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, who were carrying stolen plans for the newest Imperial superweapon, the Death Star. Working in conjunction with Captain Mod Terrik's Desert Sands sandtrooper unit and the elite 501st Legion, Kosh's troops followed the droids' trail to the spaceport of Mos Eisley, but R2-D2 and C-3PO ultimately escaped.

Biography[]

Kosh was a Human captain^[1] in the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps who was stationed on the planet Tatooine in the years leading up to the Battle of Yavin. Kosh was the officer in charge of a local garrison of stormtroopers.^[3] In 0 BBY,^[4] Rebel Senator Leia Organa's starship, the corvette Tantive IV, was intercepted above Tatooine while in possession of the stolen plans for the newest Imperial superweapon, the Death Star battlestation. Led by Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader, Imperial forces seized the ship but found no trace of the plans. Organa was also captured, but she had hidden the plans inside her astromech droid, R2-D2, who, along with his counterpart, C-3PO, used an escape pod to reach Tatooine's surface. After he was informed about the ejected escape pod, Vader surmised that the plans were hidden aboard and ordered his forces to have the escape pod located and the plans secured.^[5]

ArtooThreepioTatooine-ANH — On Tatooine, Captain Kosh led the search for the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Vader assigned Commander Nahdonnis Praji to supervise the search and recover the plans. While Vader's elite 501st Legion was being prepared, Praji appointed Kosh's garrisoned troops and the newly arrived Desert Sands sandtrooper unit under the command of Captain Mod Terrik to lead the search for the plans. After a brief landfall, however, Praji delegated the overall command of the operation to Kosh.^[6] The Imperial troops discerned that the two droids had been aboard the escape pod and followed their trail, discovering that a young moisture farmer, Luke Skywalker, had acquired R2-D2 and C-3PO and was heading to the Mos Eisley spaceport to secure passage off-world.^[5]

The troops under Kosh's command searched Mos Eisley but found no trace of the two droids, who were deliberately hiding from them.^[1] Kosh himself^[2] soon arrived at the spaceport in a Sentinel-class landing craft to oversee the search. As he was disembarking from the craft, flanked by two stormtroopers, the rest of the troops greeted him and snapped to attention.^[1] Although the search for the droids continued, a delay in coordination between Kosh's garrison, the Desert Sands, and the 501st allowed R2-D2 and C-3PO to escape Tatooine^[6] aboard the Millennium Falcon, a freighter captained by smuggler Han Solo. The droids and the plans were eventually delivered to the Rebel Alliance, allowing the Rebels to destroy the Death Star during the Battle of Yavin.^[5]

Personality and traits[]

Kosh had fair skin.^[1]

Equipment[]

While serving as an Imperial, he wore a gray stormtrooper officer's uniform.^[1]

Behind the scenes[]

Captain Kosh first appeared in Heroes in Hiding, a 1996 children's pop-up book written and illustrated by Ken Steacy. In the book, he was identified as the officer in charge of the search for the missing droids.^[1] This created a contradiction, as in 1995, Decipher, Inc. had released its Premiere Limited set for the Star Wars Customizable Card Game, which identified the officer leading the search operation as "Commander Praji."^[7] Because the depiction of Kosh in Heroes in Hiding was very vague, the article The Empire's Finest: Who's Who in the Imperial Military—published in Star Wars Insider 96 in September of 2006—dismissed the inconsistency as easily reconcilable.^[2] However, the StarWars.com Hyperspace-exclusive article Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Praji, written by Nathan O'Keefe and published on February 5, 2009, provided a resolution of the contradiction, integrating both Kosh and Praji into the storyline.^[6]