Wil'm Grau

Wil'm Grau was a Human male who served as a commando in the Galactic Empire and held the rank of major around the time of the Battle of Yavin. Being sent in pursuit of an experimental vessel hijacked by members of the Rebel Alliance, Major Grau and his team eventually tracked it down in the Alashan system. The stolen ship crash-landed on the surface of Alashan, where Grau and another five commandos were waiting, but their main vessel―a Star Destroyer in orbit―had been obliterated by a Death Star-like laser beam. Grau and his men eventually discovered the wreck of the stolen vessel and decided to cooperate with its Rebel hijackers to get off of Alashan alive, and to investigate the origin of the laser beam, which had been fired from the surface.

Grau and his men, along with the Rebels Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, examined an old Rebel archaeological camp that was located a day's walk away from the ship's crash site. They were attacked again by the laser once they reached the site, though Skywalker pushed Grau out of the way of the beam seconds before it reached them, saving the major's life and winning his trust. The team briefly looked through the camp, finding the dead bodies of Rebel researchers, before going down into the tunnel that its occupants had excavated before their deaths. The tunnel led them to a vast underground city. However, the group was followed by the Sentinel, a large creature that fired the laser at them earlier. Organa and Skywalker realized that the advanced computers at the city control center they discovered gave the Sentinel its power and destroyed them, which killed the creature. Grau and the only other surviving Imperial, Anarine, helped the Rebels repair the downed ship and left the planet, later going their separate ways.

Text and facts from the “Wil'm Grau” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.