Let's be real, it's 2026 and I'm still nursing a grudge against a fictional crime lord who double-crossed me harder than a Hutt on a bad day. I'm talking about Sliro, the pinstripe-wearing, vault-owning, Death Mark-issuing puppet master from Star Wars Outlaws. It's been nearly two years since the game dropped on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S (and even got that slick Nintendo Switch 2 port in September 2025), but I still break out in a cold sweat every time I hear the words "Zerek Besh." Don't get me wrong—the game had its highs and lows, but Sliro? That bloke was the absolute highlight, and criminally underrated by the fandom. So grab a cup of caf, and let me spin you the tale of why this Imperial-coded crime boss still lives rent-free in my head.
My first encounter with Sliro was classic "wrong place, wrong heist" energy. I was playing as Kay Vess, a scoundrel with more ambition than common sense, and we thought we were about to snatch a fortune from some posh mansion. Picture this: I finally crack the vault, heart pounding like a drum solo, and instead of glittering beskar ingots, I find—drumroll—a rebel named Asara Deyn. No credits, no jewels, just a damsel in distress and the dawning realization that I'd been played like a two-credit dejarik table. The crew I'd been running with, the rebels, stunned me and bolted, leaving me with nothing but a nasty headache and a very angry Sliro breathing down my neck. That's when I learned the golden rule of the Outer Rim: if you're going to botch a heist, don't steal the owner's prized starship, The Trailblazer, on your way out. But of course I did. Because I'm a player character, and impulse control is for protocol droids.
Now, Sliro didn't just get miffed—he went full scorched earth. He slapped a Death Mark on Kay and dispatched Vail Tormin, described as "one of the most expensive bounty hunters in the Outer Rim," which is basically the Star Wars equivalent of hiring a diva assassin who charges by the dramatic entrance. The next few hours of gameplay were a hilarious game of cat-and-mouse through the criminal underworld, with me constantly looking over my shoulder while trying to scrape together enough cash to survive. But here's the kicker: after we both got thrown into Jabba's Rancor pit and had to team up to not become a Hutt's snack, Vail just... quit. Straight-up told Sliro "I'm out, mate" and turned her blaster on him. Talk about a Yelp review gone wrong. Even his most expensive problem-solver couldn't stand the guy.
I thought I had Sliro pegged as your average crime lord with a superiority complex and a tailor on retainer. But oh, sweet summer child I was. Midway through the game, the rug got pulled so hard I nearly got whiplash. Sliro wasn't just some scummy syndicate kingpin—he was Director Barsha of the Imperial Security Bureau. Yes, the ISB. The same shadowy spooks who make Tarkin look like a teddy bear. Mind you, this revelation wasn't plucked from thin air; the comic book nerds among us had spotted him in the fifth issue of Crimson Reign, but seeing that connection hit the screen was pure "I knew it!" territory. The Zerek Besh, his entire criminal empire, was a front. A masterstroke of Imperial infiltration designed to gather intel on rebels, dissidents, and anyone else who didn't fall in line. Sliro even had the audacity to brag to Darth Vader that it was "the most groundbreaking intelligence network the Empire has ever seen." The absolute cheek of this man. He claimed his network accomplished more in weeks than the entire Imperial army ever did. Cue the collective eye-roll from every Stormtrooper ever.
Watching Vader put him in his place was chef's kiss. The Sith Lord casually used the Force to shatter display cabinets and aimed the shards directly at the cowering Barsha. It was a taster of the ongoing ideological slapfight between Vader's Inquisitors and the ISB, which we'd also seen in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Fascinerend, right? Even by 2026, that tension still adds a layer of bureaucratic pettiness to the Empire that I absolutely live for. Sliro thought he could play both sides; Vader thought otherwise.
But wait—the family drama gets even juicier. Enter Jaylen Vrax, the smooth-talking recruiter who first pulled Kay into this whole mess. You start thinking, "Okay, Jaylen's got a chip on his shoulder, what's the big deal?" Then the second heist on the mansion happens. We breach the vault again (because apparently Sliro never learns), and instead of the promised 157 million credits in unmarked beskar ingots—I can still hear Kay's shocked gasp—we find a codex. A dossier of dirt on every rebel and even high-ranking Imperial officers. The payout was intel, not ingots. And who was behind this bait-and-switch? Jaylen. He wanted to use that data to overthrow Sliro and take over Zerek Besh himself. Vader, ever the pragmatist, appeared on a Holocomm and dismissed Sliro with the coldest line in the galaxy: "You have outlived your usefulness to the Emperor." Ouch. Fired by a Force-choking hologram. That's a new low.
Then the truth bomb drops—Jaylen and Sliro are brothers. I'm not making this up. The Barsha family was supposed to build thousands of Star Destroyers for the Empire after the Clone Wars, but Sliro, nursing a lifetime of daddy issues, sold them out. He accused his own family of plotting against the Emperor just to snag a promotion. The fallout was a massacre carried out by ND-5, our beloved battle-hardened BX Commando Droid, who was sent to execute the entire family. Jaylen survived, and from that moment his whole life became a revenge sim against Sliro. Growing up, their father favored Jaylen as the true heir and called Sliro a "mistake." That's right—the most dangerous crime lord in the Outer Rim was basically a scorned middle sibling with generational trauma and an intelligence network.
Here's the kicker that still makes me chuckle: after all that tension, all that build-up, there's no climactic Kay-versus-Sliro showdown. Nope. Instead, we get a therapy session where Sliro vents about feeling like he only got scraps, and then ND-5—my droid companion from the start—just executes him. Bam. Done. Game over for Sliro. Jaylen then slides into the primary antagonist role, and poor Kay is left standing there like, "Well, that escalated moderately." It's almost anti-climactic, but honestly? It fits. Sliro was never the physical threat; he was the manipulator, the schemer, the guy who sent others to do his dirty work. Watching him get offed by a droid he probably helped deploy was poetic justice, wrapped in a layer of "mate, you should've seen this coming."
So here I am, in 2026, still shaking my head at the audacity of Sliro. He was a slimy, backstabbing, Imperial insider masquerading as a crime lord. He gave us one of the most memorable family feuds in recent Star Wars gaming, even if it ended with a fizzle instead of a bang. And honestly, I love him for it. He's the embodiment of a villain you love to hate—a posh git who messed with the wrong scoundrel and paid the ultimate price. If you haven't revisited Star Wars Outlaws on your Switch 2 or fired up the old save file, do it. Not for the open-world busywork, but for the sheer, unadulterated drama of Sliro Barsha. Just don't forget to send a thank-you note to ND-5.