Standalone thread : Story of a vicious remote - or the second piece of Jedi equipment passed down on generation, despite not being as popular as the Skywalker lightsaber
Training remotes were a teaching tool Initiates spent a long time battling off. First with difficulty, because the hits stung and predicting where they would come from was hard. Then with boredom because the challenge they posed decreased but not enough they could let their mind wander, or meditate, or start thinking about their homework. Last with contempt, because the exercise was easy but the instructors insisted they did it again, while they were clearly ready for more. By the time they were padawan, they openly scoffed at remotes. Luke Skywalker was maybe the sole padawan to ever have difficulty with remotes – along his father when he first arrived at Coruscant Temple, but he did not know that – for he skipped the Initiate stage. But for all he had some catch-up to do, his rate of progression was also much quicker than a six-year old and by the end of the week he was firing off a Force-directed shot which destroyed a battle station.
It is not to say Luke discarded his training remote afterward, for he had difficulty maintaining this level of connection with the Force for longer than said firing. And the training remote was one of the sole inheritance he had from the Jedi and Old Ben in particular. But came a time the training remote was, while cherished, ultimately useless as a training exercise, and as such put into a box until he started to take students of his own. Then, when his burgeoning academy knew a tragic end at his nephew hands, Luke started to discard part of the Jedi lore he had painstakingly assembled in over two decades. One of the part he blamed was the combative skills, leading him to discard both his lightsaber and the training remote. Unlike the lightsaber, the training remote was never found by another Force-sensitive but by a being clearing the possessions of a deceased relative, who sold it to a junk dealer. It would have been taken apart had not an aging Rey found it, puzzled its use and decided it would make a good exercise for her own students.
The training remote nicknamed rancor did not came from the original Obi-Wan Kenobi. Instead, it came from the frustrated realization of Darth Vader that he lacked sparring partners. As a Jedi, he could always rope his old master into a friendly fight or take part to more or less official tournaments amongst other padawans and knights. During the war lightsaber battles were so frequent practice fights were hardly needed. But after Order Sixty-Six and removal of three limbs, the situation changed. Fights still abounded as in the first years of the Empire Jedi kept popping up. A Jedi master attempting a rebellion on Onderon nearly finished him off in those early days. Darth Vader was confronted to the humbling realization that his fighting prowess had decreased and he needed to revamp his fighting style to take into account breathing difficulties and stiff prosthetic limbs.
Going to the Inquisitors for a fight would have been a scream of weakness they would not have failed to pounce at. By then, Vader was also wise enough to know one did not bother Darth Sidious for a spar, and he quietly resented having been fooled by the kind façade of a man who would always give him time. Now he needed not to play the galaxy, Darth Sidious cared little for Vader as long as he did as was bided. The sole exception was a short tug-of-war when Vader tried to ameliorate his suit with his mechanical skills and Sidious opposed him. Vader quickly bowed out, understanding his master wanted him cowed and more a tool than an apprentice, and that he was not yet strong enough to oppose him. His second master was no more eager than the first to teach him to reach his potential, and more blatant in his refusal to allow Vader independent research.
After a tentative to build an assassin droid who would have made an adequate sparring partner, a project crushed midway by the Emperor, Vader settled on a training remote. They were near universally seen amongst Force-sensitive as a sign of dilettantism, and Sidious would not feel threatened by an admission of weakness. Indeed, the Emperor was supremely uninterested in the remote. Considering Vader had built a protocol droid and a pod at nine, kept flying a mismatch of pieces which to general surprise for mechanics was an excellent stealth ship during the clones war, and would have been able to build an assassin droid if he had not been stopped, it was an error in judgement.
The training remote who would become rancor was then known as RM-0T-1 and would know iterations until RM-0T-16. RM-0T efficiency was submitted to more conditions than most training remotes: it needed to be able to challenge a recovering Sith Lord and its hits should be felt through the suit. The first RM-0T had the firepower of a blaster. The second one gave electric discharges calculated to handicap the suit and was encased in a cortosis covering to not be sensed as easily in the Force. RM-0T-2 nevertheless ended up crushed up by the Force a day Vader was particularly irritated. RM-0T-3 was an ameliorated version of RM-0T-2, with a finer tuned targeting processor. It lasted until Vader found a text on Sith Alchemy and decided to incorporate his meagre knowledge on the subject in RM-0T-4. The less said about RM-0T-4 the best, as Vader had not envisaged all the implications of Sith Alchemy at the time. RM-0T-4 gave him more a challenge than most Jedi these days and nearly managed to kill him when it activated on its own and destroyed his hyperbaric chamber.
RM-0T-5 was built as a standby until he attained a greater comprehension of Sith Alchemy. Its sole variation was the return of the cortosis covering and an increased electrical discharge, as Vader was getting used to the voltage of the previous RM-0T. RM-0T-6 did not try to kill him unless activated to this purpose, so Vader deemed his foray in Sith Alchemy a success. The applications of the field were interesting enough for him and his limited fighting style and worrying enough in Sidious hands he continued to browse the subject. Alas, RM-0T-6 was victim of its success as Vader misjudged its resistance and the remote proved fallible in the end. RM-0T-7 was a jewel, in Vader mind. The Emperor had some pointed questions as of why Vader needed some of the rare and related to dangerous equipment components, but disinterested himself once he learnt Vader was only trying to make a remote capable of durable existence.
RM-0T-7 had the rarest and most efficient components, an increased speed, a sleek design and as a result its level of threat skyrocketed. To this date, RM-0T-7 was the only remote to last longer than six months. But he pushed Vader to improve to the point he became redundant. RM-0T-8 was bulkier than RM-0T-7 and most of its components were salvaged from its predecessor. Its processor had enough training sequences in it to properly challenge a Force-sensitive of his caliber. Its durability also increased in time before it needed to be recharged. Vader never deployed it against another Force-sensitive, but it would have given a Jedi Master difficulties if he had. RM-0T-9 was marked by an improvement in Vader comprehension in Sith Alchemy, allowing both a runic array and a cortosis covering. It was essentially invisible for his Force senses and able of limited precognition on its own. It became his companion of many years and once subdued an ambitious inquisitor without Vader input, which was how the Sith discovered its remote was starting to gain sentience.
A quick inspection later, Vader sadly discarded the remote as he envisioned its future betrayal. RM-0T-9 did not go down without selling at an heavy price its cortosis covering. RM-0T-10 was geared from the start to sentience and better treated than most of its predecessors. Vader had once made friend of an R2 unit and while RM-0T-10 developed an unexpected sadistic streak its loyalty was never in question. It was even its downfall, as RM-0T-10 purposefully interposed itself between Vader and his master a time he had displeased Darth Sidious. The event proved Sith lightning from a Sith Lord could vanquish fairly quickly an intrepid remote. The only upside was that the Sith Lord did not realize RM-0T-10 could have been much more dangerous had it not been nearly depleted of its energy, or that it had not zoomed here by happenstance.
Most of RM-0T-10 circuits were fried and as such it was more efficient to build RM-0T-11 with the same specifics but a whole new architecture and some additional runes to make it impervious to even Sith lightning, never mind rain, sand, snow, water and many other fluids. RM-0T-11 was quirky and often tested his patience but probably the sole thing in the universe to which he had an attachment at the time, and as such smothered under worry after the fate of its older sibling. It never failed to hide when ordered by Vader, or derange his meditation to zoom happily around his head. The remote was lost along his flag ship in a debacle twelve years into the Empire.
RM-0T-12 lived only the time to express its personality, because Vader did not need a murderous remote on the top of everything else. RM-0T-13 was oddly professional amongst his remotes and uninterested in developing further personality. Vader had scoured a few Sith Temples searching for holochrons to include other fighting styles in its data bank, and the remote repeatedly surprised him. It was so adapted for its purpose Vader made regular copies of its memory to put in the next version. As such RM-0T-14 was more an update of RM-0T-13 than a new remote. It had an electrical charge varying between hits to disturb precognition, a new runic array, an actual IA to analyze and navigate its environment and keep its findings in its databank, as RM-0T-13 had nearly drowned in a swamp once. The runic array proved unstable and corrupted RM-0T-14 previously impeccable professionalism, forcing Vader to discard it.
RM-0T-15 runic array was the stabilized version of its predecessor, meaning invisible in the Force, immune to Force manipulation unless one knew how to counter-act the array, which was the reason why most of it was inside the cortosis covering. Like its predecessors, Vader took it for journeys on hostile planets to better train its awareness. By the end of RM-0T-15 existence, Vader mused about the possibility to take the remote with him against Sidious. The remote retained some of the quirks induced by the new array, but at a manageable level and its loyalty circuits were more hardwired than RM-0T-14's. Its unpredictability could even be used against the Emperor.
RM-0T-16 was a built for that purpose, with a second level of threat including deadly electrical discharge close to matching Sith lightning and imbued with the Dark Side due to its runic array. Its covering was refined heavy cortosis with underneath a beskar flimsy isolating further the inside of the remote. The motor had been rewired to eliminate the slightest sound and eliminate the last defects in flight only one with increased reflex could have perceived. Vader had come short any further fighting styles to include in its data bank, but installed an energy source which should last for roughly a hundred years at full discharge. RM-0T-16 never served its purpose. He had been trained to fight alongside Vader for nearly a year, but was not deemed ready when a distraction short tailed its preparation. Vader had discovered the existence of Luke Skywalker. His son took precedence over the removal of the Emperor, and as such RM-0T-16 stayed a training partner rather than an instrument in Sith slaying.
Darth Vader death could have signed the end of the remote, as it was not geared to independent thinking and had no inclination to creative thinking unless provoked by exterior stimulus. As such, RM-0T-16 stayed untouched by the crew of the Executor until the ultimate fall of the Empire, having earned a reputation for blasting imperials attempting to claim legitimacy through symbols of either the Emperor or his designated heir. Some of the imperials were aware an heir actually existed in the person of Luke Skywalker, but the Jedi openly fought for the restauration of the Republic and was a puppet of princess Organa, and as such wholly unsuited. Besides, acknowledging the claim the Jedi had not formulated would go against their ambition.
The situation changed slightly when a cunning imperial pretender was made aware the Jedi was attempting to put a claim on personal possessions of Lord Vader but not the throne. The imperial decided such a claim was better unvoiced and arranged a meeting to discuss the passing of Lord Vader personal things no one had been able to touch anyway because of that blasted remote. Said remote may prove competent in dealing with the Jedi and put him closer to the throne. That bid to eliminate the annoying Jedi who was both an enemy proving near-impossible to kill and a symbol for the Republic as he shared the name of the Hero-with-no-fear failed.
RM-0T-16 had been at Lord Vader side during all his chase for his son, and well familiar with his appearance or his relation to Lord Vader. The maker had decreed him a target to never harm and protect if he came to harm way. It fitted perfectly the imperial attempting to back-stab its new owner when he realized not only the remote had not blasted the Jedi but was even a proof of legitimacy. Luke Skywalker had only come in contact with one remote beforehand and while he had slight doubts about the danger the training remote of a Sith Lord could present, he also easily rationalized that such a remote was naturally more dangerous in the aim of challenging its owner. Besides, the first proof of RM-0T-16 level of threat was to watch his back.
Seeking to inspect his new training remote, Luke Skywalker set a training period with it and was promptly twitching on the ground. RM-0T-16 which had been programmed to stop in this case unless against the Emperor accordingly stopped and hovered. He did blast the mechanic the Jedi had took him to inspect his inner parts, and the mechanic promptly refused the work. In the end, Luke had to set R2 to discuss things with the remote. RM-0T-16 subsequently decreased his discharge output to take into account his new owner lacked his covering. Luke had no correction to make to the rest of its programming as the remote proved suitably challenging. Luke was well aware he was far from being a Jedi master and lacked most tools and philosophy to become so. RM-0T-16 was not a Jedi training tool, but a Force-sensitive tool unrelated to the sides of the Force as far as Luke was aware. The faint Dark Side clinging to the remote was surely linked to its time with his father and closely resembled his Force signature.
Luke deemed himself proficient at lightsaber fight on a flight of some months in search for old Jedi Temples. He put the remote in one of the closets of the Millenium Falcon, intending to take it back later and store it somewhere. The Dark Sider attack in the Temple distracted him enough he forgot the remote, and when remembering it, shrugged as Han had by then been entrusted the remote for a few years and had no opposition to keep it longer as it was useful to unleash against pirates. When the Millenium Falcon was lost, the remote was in one of its closets. The scavengers of Jakku tried to appropriate the piece of scrap, but it proved too vicious for them. The sole reason it had not attacked Han was because it had puzzled Han under the category of "fight with, to fight against another target", a category programmed by Vader in preparation for the fight against the Emperor.
Later on, the "fight with" Han presented it Obi-Wan Kenobi. The category "student" was never a part of RM-0T-16 programming, unlike that of "pull him down then wait for him to rise before hitting him again" which had been Vader primarily tag, then Luke secondary. Obi-Wan Kenobi had not been labelled as "enemy" nor did his actions justify so. It fact, his waiting position closely matched those of his training partners. RM-0T-16 concluded "Obi-Wan Kenobi" was a "pull him down then wait for him to rise before hitting him again" unit. As most of its students had a moment or another bore the "fight with" tag, it was easy for R2 to convince him that such a tag was warranted. RM-0T-16 was unable to communicate back, but he could understand and analyze three languages: binary, Basic, and a slave language Vader knew and used when he feared being overheard.
RM-0T-16 had been programmed against a Sith, but by the time he was built, Jedi were a rarity. His data banks contained the contradicting information that Jedi were enemies of Darth Vader, but Jedi Luke Skywalker word was to be considered as second only to Vader. Later, Jedi Luke Skywalker had formed other Jedi, who were not to be considered as enemies of Luke Skywalker but "don't hit'. Furthermore, Luke Skywalker had said to consider "fight with" Han Solo words as orders in case of his absence. In Jedi Luke Skywalker absence, Han Solo had put a training tag on Obi-Wan Kenobi. After RM-0T-16 had hit "behavioral enemies" with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo had commented it was good they fought together. R2 had validated it was a tag.
Han Solo had never told RM-0T-16 to obey Obi-Wan Kenobi, but RM-0T-16 had been inherited once already. As it could not stay undecided between a yes-no answer on whether such a tag was warranted, RM-0T-16 based itself on its previous experience indicating that its new owner words were to be obeyed. Obi-Wan Kenobi used RM-0T-16 to "pull them down then wait for them to rise before hitting them again" numerous Jedi. Said Jedi had a rather bad opinion of RM-0T-16 as they failed to take into account the remote did not deactivate itself completely after a session and had more signal of activation than just using this word. As such, RM-0T-16 had sometimes initiated training sessions in corridors, accentuating Mace Windu chronic headaches.
To say RM-0T-16 was quirky would be inadequate, but it was firstly a combat remote before being a training remote, and adept to tag a target, whether as an enemy or an owner. The same system was used for both, and as such his constant following and assessing threat was deemed unusual for a training remote. Had the ability of speech been imbued in its design, its comments would have clued its later owners about its first purpose. But it had not be, and RM-0T-16 could only manage an odd binary in sequence of fire, which no one ever understood was a form of communication since Vader. Even if its later owners had, Luke did not understand binary with enough fluency to interpret the cryptic comments of the remote. The younger Obi-Wan Kenobi was a bit more fluent, but in a fit of paranoia Vader had decided the binary of RM-0T-16 would not be a Basic translation, but based on a slave tongue of Tatooine, for fear his master disdain of remote was a ploy.
As such, RM-0T-16 remained the silent witness of a teaching line many were eager to puzzle, but none ever thought the training remote was capable of a limited sentience and contained information other than its programming.