R5-D4 was a standard astromech droid who had only four masters but had gone through many changes in his relatively short time, for a droid, since his activation. Each master was drastically different from the last, each with their own specific needs and requirements.

Almost as soon as R5-D4 hit the showroom floor Captain Trega purchased him for his Wayfarer class freighter, Mynock’s Kiss. R5-D4 was programmed for maintenance and repair. He assisted Jor, the main engineer, in keeping the ship in working order so that the crew could complete their runs and make a profit. The two made an immediate bond and the mechanic started calling the droid ‘Arfive’. There were less than a dozen of organics who worked for Captain Trega, whom he rarely interacted with, and they ranged in their treatment of R5-D4 from Jor who treated his as a friend and equal to a gunner, Arn, who distrusted all droids so the human would avoid the astromech. Times were good for the many years he spent with Jor and Captain Trega.

His second master was the end of his time on the Mynock’s Kiss. The freighter was attacked by pirates along the Hydian Way. They were boarded and most of the crew was killed, including Jor. The human mechanic was defending his engineering bay when the pirates broke through the blast doors to gun the man down. They ionized Arfive and when he was reactivated he was aboard the pirate vessel, Marauder, a Gozanti class armed transport that had been modified with more weapons. He was now equipped with a restraining bolt and put in engineering to work on the engine. The pirates didn’t treat him very well and he would constantly cause the engine to malfunction until the captain, Darius Rathman, commanded that he have a partial memory wipe to rid him of his do right personality and data of his previous owners, but to keep his accumulated knowledge of mechanics and add the ability to hack into computers.

Because the wipe was to be so precise they were able to keep all they wanted but weren’t able to rid the droid completely of his previous personality. Arfive didn’t know what they had done to him upon reactivation but he would have flashes of his previous life and he ‘felt’ that the people he worked around didn’t fit with how things should have been. This caused confusion and there was always a void that he couldn’t explain, a feeling that there should be more to the interactions with the organics around him then he had with this current bunch. To fill the emptiness in him he started doing things to the organics to get a reaction, changing the temperature of the atmosphere in the ship, setting off the fire suppression system in the mess hall during meal time, and other pranks. The pirates didn’t take the jokes well and started mistreating and abusing Arfive even more.

This spiral of abuse went on for another three years until Arfive tired of the mistreatment and started to leave little clues behind after an attack. It took a few months but the CorSec operatives who had been investigating this sector of space finally were able to piece the clues together to locate their secret bolt hole on Nubia in the Corellian sector. A couple of these agents infiltrated the pirate gang, waited another half a year before taking action, and finally called in a raid on the group after a particularly big job. CorSec swiftly invaded and arrested the majority of the pirates, killing only a few before the whole thing was over.

He met his next master after he escaped from the CorSec agents who had taken him and the other captured pirates which included Captain Rathman, to their garrison in the nearest rural area, Rurdis City. They had hooked him up to extract the information and any other illegally obtained data and to perform another memory wipe. The tech had just pressed the button when Captain Rathman and a number of his pirates killed a guard and made to escape. This drew the tech away from Arfive and the astromech disconnected the cables and made his own get away. Two of the tech’s assistants noticed the little droid rolling away and pursued.

Arfive rolled as fast as his little wheels could go and he made it to the docking bays ahead of the two plain dressed techs following him. The droid selected the nearest ship to hide in and boarded the freighter, wheeled through the cargo bay and hid himself between a buffer panel and a resect coil in engineering. It wasn’t long after that the freighter took off and left the planet, taking the fugitive droid with it. The ride was a bit bumpy as they entered hyperspace and the engine kept grinding and making an awful grating noise. Arfive maneuvered over to the source of the noise and began to undo the paneling to reach behind the bulkhead. He disconnected the primary life support and began to repair the particle regulator for the sublight engines.

When the power went out a couple of the crew began to search the ship for the source of the power outage and discovered the droid with its tool arms manipulating the engines. They drew weapons and called the captain but Arfive continued to work because he knew that the remaining oxygen and temperature in the ship was getting low and would run out waiting to sort out why he was doing the repairs. He just finished repairing the engines and started to reconnect the life support when the captain arrived. He was a hulking Crolute, complete with slimy gelatinous flesh sagging out of every hole of clothing, named Undarr and was understandable upset to find a strange droid chassis deep in his ship’s inner workings.

A couple of Undarr’s crew grabbed Arfive around his cylindrical body and began prying the droid from the engine. Arfive connected the wiring to the life support and reactivated the engine and all the humanoid crew stumbled at the sudden reactivation of the systems. Undarr held up a hand and the crew released Arfive and checked on the engines as the droid moved into the open and stopped, waiting to see how the crolute would react. Instead of throwing the droid out an airlock or selling him at their next destination, the aquatic humanoid decided to keep Arfive on as a mechanic seeing as he fixed the one problem that no other mechanic was able to locate much less repair.

He has stayed on with Undarr even though the work he does is dangerous and could get him caught by the authorities and returned to CorSec for the crimes he committed while working for the pirates. He also has been able to keep his slicing past and programs from the blockade runner lest the organic think he might have data that could be used for profit. During his sojourn with the crolute smuggler, he met Riley a young pilot that Undarr picked up at the request of some Wookie friends. The woman quickly took to the astromech, and he to her, so when she decided to part ways with Undarr, R5-D4 petitioned to go with her.

Relationships: Comrades

Criminal (10)

R5-D4 is the standard height and design of typical R5 units although his faulty programming and substandard parts have since been replaced to make him more reliable. His paneling has been changed by Riley after their departure from Undarr and his blockade runners from red to green. He has also had some programming added to assist in slicing computer systems.