GSAD-43 was an Arakyd Industries AD armorer droid originally in the employ of House Salaktori after Arakyd failed to sell the design to the Galactic Empire. Assigned to help bounty hunter Janna Relasi, GSAD-43 personally bonded with her mistress. Relasi was killed while in service and, with her last words, asked the droid to capture the culprits of her death. Taking the order at heart, and to the embarrassment of Salaktori, GSAD-43 started tracking Janna Relasi's murderers through the hyperlanes and became a bounty hunter herself. Even after capturing one of the murderers, GSAD-43 assumed that others might still be at large and, with improved weaponry and skill software, she continued her relentless task, asking her victims the ominous question: "Are you one of them?"
GSAD-43 was an AD armorer droid built by Arakyd Industries along with several other units, on the assumption that the Galactic Empire would buy their new droid design. However, after a careful analysis of the model's efficiency, Imperial authorities decided against the purchase. Arakyd Industries had already manufactured a number of AD droids and sold some of them to guilds of bounty hunters. GSAD-43 became a property of House Salaktori, a member of the Bounty Hunters' Guild. Salaktori assigned GSAD-43 to Janna Relasi, a female bounty hunter working for the House. After working together in several hunts, Relasi came to consider GSAD-43 her old companion, and the droid was, in turn, bonded to her mistress.
During one hunt, Relasi was fatally wounded and barely arrived to her own starship. With her last breath, he asked GSAD-43 to catch the people who had injured her, as she would be unable to. GSAD-43 considered this to be an explicit command, albeit Relasi had failed to identify the murderers except for the fact that they were more than one. During the following weeks, GSAD-43 used the computer on Relasi's ship to research on her recent activities. She also improved the firepower and tracking abilities of her hardware. Once she was ready, she tracked and eventually captured one of the murderers.
This was not enough to satisfy the machine, as Relasi had specified "them", a collective, as the culprits of her death. GSAD-43 continued tracking people through hyperlanes, and looking for clues on the conspiracy that had killed her owner, with her activities and background anything but a secret to the chagrin of House Salaktori — the Guild was ashamed of the situation, as an armorer droid playing bounty hunter was laughable. During her travels, she met and impressed Devon Fuller, who later inquired about the droid's past and posted about it on Cynabar's Droid Datalog.
As an armorer droid, GSAD-43 had advanced skills to repair weaponry and military gear, including blasters, armors, jetpacks and repulsorlifts. It also had the common equipment of the AD armorer droids, including a Verbobrain, a repulsorlift unit with a flight ceiling of 1 meter and a communications link. The updates she installed on herself to work as a bounty hunters included a sensor pod to increase her searching skill and an internal blaster/missile launcher weapons pod. GSAD-34 was known to ask "Are you one of them?" to the individuals she captured.
Although her firepower and skills were considerable, the sheer idea of a violent armorer droid was treated as a joke by some, as happened to Grannt.
GSAD-43 was first mentioned in Galaxy Guide 10: Bounty Hunters, written by Rick D. Stuart. This was also the first appearance of the AD armorer droid model. The book included an image of GSAD-43, drawn by David Plunkett.
Following her role-playing stats, GSAD-43 also upgraded her skills on investigation, bureaucracy and law enforcement.
- Galaxy Guide 10: Bounty Hunters
- Cynabar's Fantastic Technology: Droids