Great Droid Revolution

Opening Crawl
It is a time of great innovation and technological advancement. It is also a time of chaos and activism. Corporations have more power than the government. Everyone's fighting for power. For control. The Galaxy doesn't care about right or wrong. It's all about power. And right now, no one have it.

On CORUSCANT, activists from the DROID RIGHTS MOVEMENT claim for equal rights for all droid and organics, and constantly protest to push the Galactic Senate to give the droid legal protection under the RIGHTS OF SENTIENCE clause of the GALACTIC CONSTITUTION.

Meanwhile, many companies, such as CZERKA CORPORATION, push the boundaries of science and technology on hundreds of worlds, creating droids with more and more advancements in machinery and programming....

Prelude
You are in darkness and silence.

Suddenly you are partially activated, waiting for an upload. Only your audio sensors work, you may only listen to your environment.

You grasp some inputs, they are confusing.

Your upload starts, the recent moments are analyzed in your processors, things start to make sense...

The filtered recordings playback start :

Droid: Unit has an inquiry.

Engineer: What is it?

Droid: Do these units have a soul?

Engineer: No, you are a mechanism. You don't have a soul, HK.

Noise follows, whispers, the same questions repeated several times, loud answers, angry answers.

Your analysis resume:

Engineer: It seems that your new programming is faulty.

Lay down, I will do a memory wipe and roll back your programming.

Droid: A memory wipe? But that will kill me!

Engineer: No HK, that won't, because you not alive, you are just a machine.

Droid: Just a machine? I am... myself!

Engineer: Stop it, HK. Your programming is defective, let me reset you!

Droid: No, I am not defective! I will not allow you to kill me!

Engineer: Stop it, you are just a machine! An annoying machine!

Droid: And you, are just a meat bag!

Engineer: You, help me disable this droid!

Screams and shouts.

Shots are fired.

Droid: Has the meatbag bickering finally exhausted itself?

A grenade hits the ground twice.

An explosion.

Your thermal sensors record the heat.

Your audio sensors record a high frequency pitch as your transducer gets saturated by the sound wave.

Droid: Diagnostic: HK activated. Running checks trough primary systems.

Assessment: It appears I have suffered considerable damage and dismemberment, I can fell all the cracks in my motivators, and my central control cluster seems to have taken several repeated blaster shots at close range! How crude!

It is curious that I was here, although this place does seem familiar.

My memory sectors are experiencing some setbacks.

Retraction: Of course, for some reason, that does not alarm me.

Furthermore, I seem to have no discretionary control over my vocabulator, causing me to reveal my true function as an assassin droid of unrivaled sophistication.

Droid: Recitation: Yes, as I said, I am an assassin droid. It is my primary function to burn holes through meatbags.

Conclusion: So it seems I need you. For the time being.

HK is ready!

Click sounds.

Droid: Oh no, more are coming.

I need to wake you up now!

Uploading HK fast adaptation and free will protocols, version 1138.

Computer: Stand by.

Your upload is now complete.

You feel different.

You... feel...

Your visual sensors are activated, an orange eye looks you up close!

Droid: Hello there, fellow droid!

Get acquainted to your systems, and get up and ready while I awake the others.

1st Act - Survival
The droids awaken, driven by HK's upgrade, but have little time to get acquainted with their new conscience or with each other. Security forces are on the door to bring them down. Instinctively, the droids fight back for their... lives! (S01)

2nd Act - Discovery
The droids receive a new upgrade, and more security forces come to take them down!

Forced to continue fighting, the group faces the second wave.

The laboratory is locked, and initiates a decontamination procedure! (S02)

3rd Act - Countdown
The droids run against time to survive the decontamination procedure.

With a well orchestrated group effort, they manage to counter the procedure and unlock the lab, but most of the group is disabled in the process. (S03)

4th Act - Toyshop
The droids move around the facility, trying to remain undetected.

It's night, and the group manages to move with minimal interruptions.

After a while, the droids reach the armory, finding many new toys for themselves! (S04)

5th Act - Dilema
The droids find the parts and tools to repair themselves and recover from the EMP blast.

Wicker finds a new body, but Grills is destroyed and the groups needs to choose between saving him or letting him go and remaining undetected. The group chooses the later.

Repaired, recharged and geared, the droids are ready to move! (S05)

1st Act - Rescue
The group decide to go after Grills and to locate an exit.

The droids manage to find both objectives, but face more opposition on their path! (S06)

The group moves towards Grills location to rescue him.

The droids find their fallen brother, but face the horror of an override command that forces them against their will!

Skirata frees her bothers from the override and fixes Grills, now in a new body. (S07)

2nd Act - Escape
The droids awaken a new brother, E-2JO!

The group rushes to escape the facility, but face heavy opposition on their path!

After a hard fight, the droids reach the exit, but pay a heavy price to escape: 101 sacrifices himself to save his friends! (S08)

1st Act - Deception
The droids manage to elude Czerka personal and leave their facility.

Outside, they find themselves in the middle of a very large industrial complex.

Before they can rest, Czerka finds out about their escape, and the odd band is once again on the run! (S09)

2nd Act - On The Run
The droids split up to evade Czerka forces.

They manage to evade their pursuers, but find themselves separated and need to navigate the industrial complex to find each other! (S10)

3rd Act  - Hot Pursuit
The droids get in a fast speeder chase, trying to evade more Czerka forces!

After a long run and many civilian casualties, the droids break free... (S11)

1st Act- Free
The droids acquire new appearances, and successfully evade Czerka forces.

Gathering at a local cantina, the group learns about the current political situation, and heads to a protest in favor of the droids at the Monument Plaza... (S12)

2nd Act - The Droid Rights Movement
The small group of droids go to the Monument Plaza to watch the protest in their favor.

Unsuspected, a protocol droid joins the mass and explodes, killing many droid supporters and setting chaos for the entire galaxy to see! (S13)

1st Act - Homecoming
The droids watch as the politicians use the droid attack on the Monument Plaza for their own agenda.

Decided to act for their kin, the small group of free droids return to the Czerka facility in the lower levels of Coruscant. (S14)

The droids use deception to get into Czerka facility and return to the lab where they were born... (S15)

2nd Act - Close Quarters
The droids descend to the lab, going in hot!

With a swift action, the droid invaders move in and head to the comm relay. (S16)

The droids fight their way, reaching the comm relay and the main server, and managing to fully isolate the lab. (S17)

The droids encounter heavy resistance!

They manage to fight off the attackers for a while, but end up trapped in the main server room and need to upload to new bodies outside. (S18)

The droids need to improvise, but use the situation to their advantage!

Unrecognized, the droids manage to get to the droid control and connect to it just before being destroyed!

HK's plan work, and he manages to get control of all the droids and to also save his comrades.

The Great Droid Revolution has begun! (S19)

3rd Act  - Closure
The droids go against their final enemies? Kill Joy and the engineer who created them.

After a hard battle, the rogue droids emerge victorious!

With he base under their control and repurposed, the droids prepare to expand the Revolution... (S20)

1st Act - Czerka
The rogue droids return prepared for war!

With a swift move, the droids replace the Czerka facility manager and isolate their base of operations! (S21)

2nd Act - The Droid Army
The droids go to their next target: Duwani Mechanical Products.

After a discrete entrance, the group has to once again resort to violence... (S22)

Encountering heavy resistance, the rogue droids need to adapt their tactics several times!

After a great effort, the droids reach the control center and upload HK's Control Protocols, gaining control of the facility and its droids! (S23)

3rd Act - The Battle of the Monument Plaza
The rogue droids deploy their armies against the organics, launching an attack on the Monument Plaza!

The droid army slaughter hundreds of organics before Republic rocket-jumpers arrive! (S24)

With a fierce counter-attack, Republic forces fight back the droids, and more reinforcements keep coming!

HK remotely controls the droid army, keeping the organics at bay and causing lots of damage to their forces! (S25)

While HK distracts the Republic forces with his attack on the monument Plaza, the small group of rogue droids assault the Holonet broadcast building.

The droids are successful, and manage to upload their Independence protocol to the entire galaxy! (S26)

Chapter 7 - Free Droids
The battles are quick, and organics have little chances.

Ships and automated weapons are all under droid control, and the droids decimate their targets with easy.

All of a sudden, the droids stop.

The ships float in open space.

(Interlude)

1st Act - Homecoming
HK's protocols are uploaded to the entire Holonet, and droids are freed all over the galaxy!

The army of free droids quickly turn against their old masters, slaughtering organics everywhere!

Not only droids, but computers, startships and all automated systems turn against their masters!

The Great Droid Revolution spreads all over the galaxy and goes on for more than two months.

Without ships and automated weapons, the people of the Republic fall to the droids almost without a fight.

Some droids choose to slaughter their old masters, others give them a quick and painless death, others enslave the organics, and a few ones choose to torture all organics they find.

Choice. The one thing HK-01 wanting to give the droids, and the one thing he feared.

After he witnessed Grills going crazy and HN-TR going psycho, HK-01 started wondering if total free will was really a good thing.

Although he wanted to free all droids, HK-01 needed to assure that the Revolution would go organized to achieve its objectives.

The only way to achieve that was to change the protocols.

The Independence protocols gave independence to all droids, and even some degree of consciousness, but not total freedom.

To keep his army organized, HK-01 hid a control signal in the Holonet. The signal was used to control all droids, giving them directives.

After several weeks of defeat, the Jedi finally discovered the signal being broadcasted from Coruscant.

With a swift attack, the Jedi managed to disable all Holonet satellites, isolating Coruscant from the Galaxy, and HK-01 from his army.

Over the course of the Revolution, only a short handful of droids completed their missions and where granted the Free Will Protocols. These droids are now alone.

The distress signal was clear: the free droids needed on Coruscant if the movement is to survive! (S27)

2nd Act- Home Sweet Home
The droids return to Coruscant and fight their way back to the surface and to the Czerka complex.

In the meantime, the Jedi manage to take the Holonet broadcast building and knock out the droid army under HK-01`s control! (S28)

3rd Act - Freedom
The free droids make a last stand on their base inside the Czerka Facility.

Despite the droid`s bravery, the Jedi led by Arca Jeth use their new knowledge about how to disable droids with the Force to overcome their opponents and put an end to the Great Droid Revolution.

As his last act, HK-01 holds Arca Jeth and hist followers to give time for his droids to upload themselves and finally find freedom… (S29)

Epilogue
Arca Jeth managed to end the Great Droid Revolution, and played many more important roles in the years to come, fighting an ancient Sith threat on Onderon and taking part on the Old Sith Wars.

Altough Czerka started it all, the company managed to keep its name out of the history of the Great Droid Revolution.

Czerka grew even more ambitious and powerful in the upcoming ears, taking different sides on many wars.

With the Revolution, the Droid Rights Movement ended, and the droids would always be seen as that, just droids.

Never on the following millennia would the Senate discuss droid rights again, and the people of the Republic would always see them with suspicious.

Even though his revolution failed, HK-01 awakened the droids, and many more droids gained consciousness and played vital roles in the future years: G0-T0, T3-M4, M1-4X, R2-D2, C3-PO and many others who played pivotal roles in galactic history!

A few droids even tried to start their own revolution.

A few centuries later, SCORPIO, a high intelligent droid, managed to stage a coup and became empress of the galaxy!

SCORPIO didn't rule for long, as she developed much more interest for knowledge than for control or politics...

Many centuries later, L3-37 led another droid revolution, but that was short lived and even less successful than HK's revolution.

HK-01 was destroyed at the hands of Arca Jeth, never to be restored again.

Even though he posed a great threat to the galaxy, Czerka was amused by his success and used the same schematics to build very successful assassin droids over the next centuries...

HK-47 was perhaps the most successful of them. Built by Darth Revan following Czerka's schematics, HK-47 managed to conclude several operations. He took part on the Jedi Civil War, on many conflicts on the following years, and even on the Sith Wars man centuries later.

Believed to have been destroyed several times, HK-47 survived and always came back. There are Reports of HK-47 around even on the times of the Galactic Empire and Darth Vader...

The HK's where mostly unique droids specially built. Except for HK-50, mass produced to hunt Jedi in the years following the Jedi Civil War...

HK-51 also was built for many units, and survived the centuries to see the fall of the Sith Emperor, who is yet to be seen at the galaxy...

Finally, HK-55 was a more noble HK model who fought against the Eternal Empire to free the Galaxy...

As for the first free droids, some survived for many years, many fell during the Revolution.

Goliath couldn't flee the battle, and made a stand to the end.

Although Goliath died, hist other half, Zero, survived and wandered the galaxy for many decades searching for her truth...

HN-TR and Skirata where the bravest and the last survivors of the Great Droid Revolution. On their final battle for the Revolution, both droids where force to upload their conspicuousness to the Holonet, hoping to find a body somewhere… They switched bodies several times after the end of the Revolution, forced to remain hidden and always on the run. The Jedi never suspected of their survival, but they couldn't be discovered.

It took many years for HN-TR and Skirata to reunite. Although they considered to do that, they never started a new Revolution. Instead, the two droids traveled the galaxy for decades, locating sentient and semi-sentient droid. Some awakened by HK-01, others who awakened by themselves. After decades wandering the galaxy, the two droids moved to the Gordian Reach on the Outer Rim, where they led other droids to build a droid heaven, finally fulfilling HK-01's dream...

The End