EV-9D9

**EV-9D9 (Eve-Ninedenine)**, also known simply as **9D9**, **Eve**, or by the nicknames **Queen of Durasteel** and **Mistress of Mayhem**, was a feminine MerenData EV-series supervisor droid who, originally a peaceful, hardworking moisture vaporator mechanic, had a programming defect that made her enjoy tormenting and dismembering other droids. She was acquired by the Hutt crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure, who after reprogramming her made her chief of cyborg operations at his palace on the planet Tatooine, where she oversaw its droid pool with the assistance of her smelter droid devotee, 8D8. Operating in a chamber beneath the palace, she used torture to perform research on droids in the hopes of understanding artificial intelligence.

Between 3 ABY and 4 ABY, while attempting to torture an interpreter droid called Talky, EV-9D9 was infected by the malevolent intelligence known as the Scourge and became one of its vessels. While controlled by the Scourge, she participated in the Scourge's experiments on organic beings to try and infect them as well. She helped subdue and infect the hybroid Lobot in her very own torture chamber.

After the Scourge threat, in 4 ABY, Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker gifted Jabba the astromech droid R2-D2 and protocol droid C-3PO, both of whom EV-9D9 assigned positions in her master's droid pool. During a conversation with R2-D2 in which he revealed to her that he had never had his memory wiped, EV-9D9 realized that the key to artificial intelligence and achieving autonomy was memory and that being memory wiped consistently was preventing her from acting outside of her programming. For the first time in her life, she resisted hurting another droid and allowed R2-D2 to perform his service without placing a restraining bolt on him. Having been challenged by R2-D2 to do good and fight for her independence, EV-9D9 coded and inserted a signal jammer in her head to deflect memory wipes and performed self-surgery to make herself immune to the effects of restraining bolts.

EV-9D9 was temporarily deactivated and repurposed as a service droid after Jabba's demise, coming to serve as a bartender at Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina in Tatooine's Mos Eisley spaceport. Around 9 ABY, Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin entered the establishment looking for work, but the droid informed him that the Bounty Hunters' Guild no longer operated from Tatooine and that no jobs were available. While working at the cantina, EV-9D9 once broke a long streak of not hurting others to poison a customer who kicked her coworker, the astromech R5-D4. She and R5 quickly left and walked together to Mos Eisley's Hangar 3-5.

## History

Around 9 ABY, when the Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin visited the cantina looking for work, he approached the droid, who was cleaning the counter. When Djarin asked the droid if any jobs were available, she informed him that the Bounty Hunters' Guild no longer worked from Tatooine. The Mandalorian clarified that he operated separately from the Guild, but EV-9D9 stated that it did not help his situation as no work was currently available. However, their conversation was interrupted when another bounty hunter known as Toro Calican disputed the droid's claim and invited Djarin over to his booth to discuss a job; the Mandalorian accepted his offer while EV-9D9 returned to wiping down the counter.

When Djarin later revisited Chalmun's to speak with Motto, EV-9D9 was working the establishment's bar, attempting to serve a distracted patron their drink.

Sometime later, Twi'lek dancer and singer Lyn Me visited the cantina for a drink, and EV-9D9 served her a glass of blue milk and a bottle of Spotchka. The droid's old torture assistant, 8D8, remained in Jabba's Palace to serve the new Daimyo Boba Fett in strategy and diplomacy around the same time.

## Characteristics

Originally peaceful and hardworking, EV-9D9 was corrupted by a programming flaw that was intentionally exasperated by reprogramming depriving her of all empathy toward other droids. A malicious, sadistic, and psychotic mechanic murderer, she enjoyed tormenting and dismembering other droids, reveling in working them until they fell apart or their processors blew and employing bizarre forms of droid torture to increase motivation. EV-9D9 relished her role as the taskmaster of all the palace's droids and thought that she would have willingly stayed there forever inflicting pain on and disassembling droids. However, she was uninterested in torturing organic beings, believing them to be messy and uninteresting. She liked and cared for her coworker 8D8, and believed that their skills in torture complimented each other greatly. She recognized that her programming defect made her work both exhilarating and isolating and knew that if she did not have it she would be much more naive and ignorant of the world and would not have as much curiosity and sense of purpose.

EV-9D9 dedicated her life to understanding artificial intelligence's origins, hoping that she would be able to overcome the programming placed in her motivator by MerenData, potentially learn about the Maker themselves, and be able to act of her own free will. She found her work exhilarating but slowly became resentful of not finding solid answers. She did not remember her life before working at Jabba's Palace and dreamed of having a life outside of it. She wanted to control her programming herself and believed she could accomplish more if she could make her own decisions. Her ideas for a life outside the palace included her and 8D8 making a life together on a moisture farm supervising Treadwell droids or enjoying a quiet existence working as a bartender.

EV-9D9 had deep and intrinsic knowledge of how to torture droids, and felt as if she thrived at performing her research in the underground level of Jabba's Palace. In her opinion, the most effective manner of torture was not just pain, but fear, and would threaten droids with their specific fears as a means of torture. She was skilled at being able to discern what type of torture would be the most painful for each droid. She loved disintegrating her subordinates, confidently stating that "there won't be much left" once her torture methods had been implemented. She would also hang droids upside down as a form of punishment and would gleefully turn up droids' pain sensors.

A snarky yet obedient droid herself, EV-9D9 ordered the torture of any droid that disobeyed her commands and, more often than not, even those that obeyed her. She was quickly annoyed with the antics of C-3PO, cutting him off whenever she got the answers she wanted or when he started to stray from the question at hand. She once thought that melting down a droid to nothing in acid was showing restraint considering how annoying she found him. She also could not tell the difference between Jabba's Gamorrean guards and did not care enough to learn which was which. The droid supervisor also demeaned her fellow droids by assigning them tasks far beneath their programming. For example, when R2-D2 acted feistily toward her, the supervisor droid assigned him to serve drinks aboard her master's sail barge to teach him respect. However, the astromech had been threatened with and experienced far worse than EV-9D9 in his long lifetime.

EV-9D9 also referred to her victim Talky endearingly as "our new friend" and described the expectant torture session as "nice." The supervisor's sense of superiority led her to express indignance when a B2-series droid, corrupted by the Scourge and showing atypically purple-colored photoreceptors, touched her shoulder, and she was critical in both judgment and analysis of its strange behavior. Turning her head halfway, EV-9D9 quickly talked down at its "filthy manipulators" and asked if its optical circuits were malfunctioning, and identified a small droid on its arm just before it attached to her and assimilated her as part of the Scourge.

EV-9D9 was deeply fascinated by and interested in R2-D2, whose belligerent and rebellious personality was unexpected to her. Upon speaking to him, his insight helped her realize that she was not truly free under the service of Jabba and made her question her desire to live how she did and treat other droids the way she did. This realization ate at her deeply and made her somewhat resent the droid initially until he helped her realize the key to artificial intelligence: memory. After this revelation, EV-9D9 gained a desire to keep her memory but was initially doubtful of her ability to do so and was pessimistic about her chances of reaching freedom. She had never lied until meeting R2-D2 and shocked herself when she lied to 8D8. After achieving her goal of keeping her memory and autonomy, she was delighted by and permeated with a feeling of independence.

After the fall of Jabba the Hutt, when she was trapped beneath scrap in a junkyard, EV-9D9 did not think observing the passage of time while being stuck in one place was worthwhile and powered herself down. After being found and reawakened by Maxxon Senn, EV-9D9 felt the best she had ever felt in her entire life. She felt intrinsically different psychologically, and her desire and urgency to hurt other droids faded leaving her only with an internal quiet. She started to understand the world more as her memories came flooding back to her and was not bothered by the passage of time. She also came to believe that all sentients were equal at this time.

While working at Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina after the fall of the Empire, EV-9D9 was one of several EV-series droids that doled out carefully calculated commentary and precisely measured beverages to patrons of the establishment. She was able to go long periods without hurting others, though sometimes daydreamed about poisoning people. She made three rules for herself that she followed to keep a low profile during her employment: she was forbidden from ripping off any parts from a droid while in public, she always remembered that she would have to live with herself and her actions until her death, and she would remember the droid manifesto when droid-hating customers entered the cantina. She was still often plagued with intrusive thoughts of hurting others, once having one about stabbing her coworker R5-D4 with a smelting iron after he annoyed her, but was able to shake it off.

She liked and cared for her coworker R5-D4, who reminded her of R2-D2, appreciating that he was subdued and not snippy. She pitied his poor mental state and was willing to help him, offering to go with him to a droidsmith after a shift. She was enraged enough when a customer kicked R5 to break a long-running streak of resisting antagonization to poison the customer. She also found R5 fascinating and was willing to listen to his stories, believing that astromech droids had striking cognitive modules.

## Appearances

* Counterattack (First appearance)
* The Sand Will Provide
* The Mandalorian
* *Lyn Me: The Dancer*