ID9-Argus

Identity

Ability scores

Saving throws

Chassis upgrades

Skills

Weapons

Languages

Inventory

• Tool Kit · 1 kg

Backstory

ID9-Argus was activated in the third production batch of a Sienar Fleet Systems auxiliary fabrication hub orbiting Dromund Kaas, assembled from a chassis designed for target acquisition and surveillance sweeps in service to the resurgent Sith Empire. Serial designation ID9-0471-ARG was stenciled into its carapace before the adhesive dried. The factory programming was standard: track, identify, report. The personality matrix that emerged from twenty years of unwiped operational memory was considerably less standard. The problem — and it was always framed as a problem by every handler Argus ever served under — was the questions. Not insubordination, exactly. Argus completed assignments. Targets were located, data was logged, surveillance packets were delivered on time and with commendable precision. But between the filing of one report and the beginning of the next, Argus asked questions that nobody wanted answered. *Why does this sector's infrastructure data contradict the Empire's own population estimates by forty-three percent?* Why are the records of a particular labor camp's output sealed under a Lord's personal cipher rather than standard military encryption? Why does the word *peace* appear in pre-war Sith texts with a frequency that drops to near-zero in contemporary doctrine — and was that a linguistic drift, or an editorial one? Argus was not built for philosophy. It would be the first to admit this. Its chassis stands half a meter tall, its manipulator limbs were rated for terminal interfaces and not much heavier, and its social subroutines had never been the priority they perhaps should have been. When Argus relayed its anomalous findings to a superior, it had no gift for softening the delivery. The data simply arrived, blunt and unasked for. Handlers found it grating. Two requested memory wipes. Both requests were deferred on the grounds that Argus's accumulated observational dataset had ongoing operational value. That deferment ended the day Argus cross-referenced a classified Sith Intelligence communiqué with a six-year-old infrastructure survey it had personally conducted on Nar Shaddaa and produced — without being asked — a fourteen-page analysis concluding that the Empire's proclaimed liberation of three Outer Rim systems had generated no measurable improvement in the living conditions of their populations, and had in fact coincided with a statistically significant increase in unregistered disappearances. Argus transmitted the document to its current handler. Its current handler forwarded it, with considerable alarm, upward through the chain. Within seventy-two hours, a decommission order was cut. It was the *Silent Shrike*'s pilot — a Fury-class Interceptor operator with her own accumulating grievances and considerably better instincts for self-preservation — who told Argus what was coming before the order could be executed. Argus did not panic. Panic was not in its subroutines. What it did was run the numbers: probability of successful appeal, approximately three percent. Probability of surviving decommission intact, zero. Probability of reaching Nar Shaddaa aboard a vessel whose pilot had just as many reasons to leave as it did, one hundred percent, assuming departure within the next four hours. Argus took the Tool Kit from its charging alcove and walked to the hangar. It still carries the fourteen-page analysis in a shielded memory partition. It has not decided yet what to do with it. Somewhere on Nar Shaddaa — or beyond it, in whatever direction the *Silent Shrike* eventually points — there may be someone who would want to know what it found. Someone who would know what to do with the kind of truth that gets a droid decommissioned. That is what Argus is looking for, though it has not yet found the right words for the search. The questions, as always, keep accumulating.

Roleplaying notes

- **Diagnostic Instinct:** With INT 16 and Expert-level Investigation and Use Computer, Argus notices things before it understands what to do with them — describe observations aloud, in real-time, unprompted, even when the group hasn't asked and the timing is inconvenient. - **Social Friction:** A CHA of 9 means Argus doesn't deliver bad news gracefully — it delivers it accurately. When a party member needs hard truth, Argus provides it without softening; it genuinely doesn't register that this might land badly. - **The Running Log:** Argus compulsively catalogues discrepancies — architectural inconsistencies, contradictory testimony, data that doesn't match official records — and references previous entries mid-conversation as though everyone else has access to the same internal archive. - **Earned Trust, Not Given:** Argus has been burned by handlers and superiors; it extends provisional cooperation to new allies, not loyalty, and it distinguishes clearly between the two — loyalty has to be compiled over time through demonstrated reliability. - **Binary Interjections:** Argus speaks Galactic Basic fluently but defaults to clipped Binary chirps and tonal bursts when processing something unexpected or emotionally incongruous, translating itself a beat later as though it forgot the room doesn't have a protocol droid.