34

Restraining Bolt

Location: Kessel

Date: 11 BBY

Among the galaxy’s technologically advanced civilizations, droids were a regular feature of life. They performed a multitude of functions, including agricultural labor, working in the service industry, translating and interpreting foreign languages for dignitaries, and computing calculations to aid starship navigation. Certain factions, including the Empire, used droids for more controversial tasks, like torture and interrogation.

Campaigns to abolish droid servitude were rare; those in favor argued that droids were constructed to serve and nothing more. However, degrees of sentience identifiable within some droids’ circuitry presented a counter-argument. In addition, the long-term placement of droids within family units and on military frontlines also led to changes in prevailing attitudes. Some individuals came to regard these mechanized creations as beings with thoughts and feelings. However, a droid that enjoyed a certain degree of freedom and even friendship from its organic masters could easily be compelled to blindly serve another party with a restraining bolt.

At first glance, this small cylindrical device looks like it could be any nondescript droid component, perhaps part of a locomotion-system controller. When installed, it could turn even the most seemingly advanced droid into an automaton. Paired to a small device dubbed a “caller,” restraining bolts constrained a droid’s functionality to fit a new master’s liking. A droid controlled by such a device would have no choice but to cease all other tasks and report immediately to whomever held the controls. Most callers had three basic commands: “Come,” “Halt,” and “Orders,” the last of which compelled the droid to carry out a spoken command. More sophisticated restraining bolts had a wider range of controls.

For droids like C-3PO, who had a deep-seated “sense of self” and were unaccustomed to being regarded as robotic slaves, the effect of a restraining bolt was akin to horror. However, in more responsible hands, a restraining bolt could be utilized to prevent a rogue droid rampage, or a damaging uprising, or to deter a curious astromech—such as R2-D2—from wandering off to pursue its own agenda.

DK