octuptarra droid

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Size:
  3.6 meters tall (at full height)

• Weapon:
  Laser turret cannons

• Affiliation:
  Confederacy of Independent Systems; Techno Union

• Type:
  battle droid

• 

From the Movies

Among the advanced combat droids flanking General Grievous in his secret headquarters on Utapau are the octuptarra droids. The stilt-legged spider-like automatons have large balloon-like heads atop their thin stalk bodies, armed with laser turrets. Their rotating multi-jointed assemblies allow them to change facing almost instantly, and it is nearly impossible to get a drop on the droids as all sides conceivably face "front." A larger cousin to the octuptarra droid, the tri-droid, was used in campaigns on Mygeeto.

From the Expanded Universe

These tripodal automatons, named for the eight-eyed gasbag-headed vine walkers found on Skako are generically referred to as tri-droids. Their rotating turret assemblies can fire from extended ranges, but in close quarters, the octuptarra is less effective. It is best employed from a distance, as its ball-shaped cognitive unit is too large and tempting a target for enemy fire.

Early in the war, that trait was employed in suicide runs by octuptarra droids towards clone trooper enemies. The Separatists had developed biological weapons that specifically targeted the identical genome shared by all the clone troopers. The central hollows within the ball-shaped brains of the octuptarra droid stored the virus in gaseous form, earning these droids the nickname of virus droids.

An example of the Techno Union's modular, scalable manufacturing techniques, enormous versions of the octuptarra model are unleashed on the battlefield as combat artillery, but the battle droid-sized antipersonnel model trades terrorizing scale for agility.

Behind the Scenes

The tri-droid design can be found in early sketches by Ryan Church of the Utapau environment. The digital model for the octuptarra droid was scaled up and modified to become the towering tri-droid on Mygeeto.