The Stormtrooper who Became a Feared Crime Lord after the Empire’s Fall [Canon]

Stormtroopers weren’t exactly known for their individuality. For the most part, they were nameless, disposable soldiers of the Empire—until the credits rolled and they disappeared into history. But every rule has an exception. After the fall of the Empire, one stormtrooper refused to vanish. Instead, he rose through the criminal underworld, stole Tarkin’s old ship, and carved out a reputation as a feared crime boss. 

It’s a path that began with a simple trooper designation—TK-603—and ended with one of the wildest transformations in Star Wars canon told across the Poe Dameron comic series.

Stromtrooper to Survivor of Jakku

We know that the Battle of Jakku was the Empire’s last desperate stand—Star Destroyers crashing from the sky, stormtroopers thrown into hopeless fights, and the sands of the desert swallowing the old order whole. In the middle of that chaos was one trooper, TK-603, who would soon learn that surviving meant breaking everything the Empire had drilled into him.

On Jakku, the desert winds carried the death rattle of the Empire. Troopers were ordered to dig in and fight to the last man, nameless soldiers meant to vanish into the sand. Among them was TK-603, a soldier who had spent his life learning that individuality was weakness and obedience was survival.

When his officer barked the order to stand and die, 603 gripped his blaster tighter. That was the only way stormtroopers were supposed to end—buried under the weight of duty. But then a single shot cracked through the din. His squadmate TK-605, Corlac, lowered his smoking rifle. The officer was dead.

“Fight to the last?” Corlac scoffed. “The Empire threw everything at the Rebels—and lost. There is no ‘last order.’ There is no Empire.”

603 froze. To take off the armor was unthinkable. Stormtrooper training drilled into him that the armor was his identity, his purpose. Yet as Corlac began stripping away the white plastoid and burying it in the sand, 603 felt the truth pressing down heavier than the desert heat: the Empire wasn’t coming back. Hesitantly, almost in shame, he unclasped his helmet and laid it in the dirt.

For the first time in years, he wasn’t TK-603 the stormtrooper. He was just a man, standing in the wreckage of a fallen Empire, staring into an uncertain future.

Stealing Tarkin’s Ship and a New Identity

Escaping Jakku was only the beginning. TK-603 and his squadmate Corlac spent nearly a year scavenging in the desert, cobbling together a makeshift ship from scraps of Imperial wreckage—a clumsy “Ugly” with TIE Bomber engines welded to the head of an AT-AT. It wasn’t pretty, but it got them off the graveyard world.

Corlac had connections in the underworld and led them to new allies—two pirates named Wenda and Bett. Together, they spun Terex a dream he desperately wanted to believe: with his Imperial access codes, they could infiltrate the Rothana shipyards, seize the forgotten fleets, and restore the Empire to its former glory.

To a man still clinging to the idea of Imperial order, it sounded like salvation. But it was all a lie. Corlac and the pirates had no interest in reviving the Empire—they just wanted the ships and the wealth that came with them.

Inside the shipyards, TK-603 stumbled on something remarkable: the Carrion Spike, Grand Moff Tarkin’s personal vessel, a stealth corvette equipped with advanced cloaking and surveillance systems. As he worked to repair the ship, he overheard the others plotting to kill him once the job was done.

That was the breaking point. For the first time, 603 stopped thinking like a stormtrooper and acted for himself. Seizing the Carrion Spike’s weapons, he obliterated the control station and his so-called allies along with it.

In that moment, he let go of the fantasy that the Empire could ever return. But in its place, something new took root: the realization that without the Empire’s law and order, he could do whatever he wanted. With a stolen warship, his military training, and nothing to hold him back, TK-603 was no longer just a survivor. He was ready to carve his name into the galaxy as something far more dangerous.

The Rise of the Ranc Gang

With Corlac and the pirates reduced to ash, TK-603 finally stopped pretending the Empire could be rebuilt. The old order was dead. But where others saw loss, he saw opportunity. If the galaxy no longer had rules, then nothing could stop him from making his own.

He took the Carrion Spike as his flagship and made his way to the Outer Rim world of Kaddak—a rough, lawless place already teetering on the edge of chaos. There, the former stormtrooper reinvented himself as Lord-General Terex, a title that carried the weight of his Imperial past while signaling his new ambition.

From his base on Kaddak, Terex gathered outcasts, thugs, and pirates under his banner. With the Spike’s stealth systems and his military training, he crushed rival gangs and forged alliances with crime lords who respected strength above all else. Before long, Kaddak became a hub of vice and violence, and Terex ruled it with a mix of fear and charisma.

To the people of the underworld, he wasn’t just another ex-Imperial clinging to faded glory—he was a force to be reckoned with. He painted and reinforced his old stormtrooper armor, turning it into a suit that made him instantly recognizable. Where once the armor had stood for conformity, now it was a symbol of his authority. The nameless trooper TK-603 had vanished. In his place stood a crime lord feared across the sector: Lord-General Terex of the Ranc Gang.