The irrigation pump
Keep a farm working when replacement parts—and permission—are hard to find.
01 / The country worksBuilt to repair.
Built to repair.
Built to endure.
Barclay Automata Works began with practical problems: a pump that needed checking, a repair manual worth saving, a neighbor who needed a delivery. Its founder—Big Bob’s uncle—built machines people could understand, repair, and improve.
Then the Solar Federation assumed control. Approved alloy air-cars filled the skies. The Motor Laws outlawed fossil-fuel cars, and independent, unlicensed droids became contraband. The country shed went quiet. The uncle disappeared.
Days later, Bob opened the doors. Beneath a dusty cover waited a Red Barchetta. Beside it stood unfinished droids, handwritten diagrams, and a little black machine named Q5.
“Start with the little black one.
And don’t throw anything away.”
The note was still there. So was the work.
02 / Field machinesNot an army.
Not an army.
A helping hand.
Recovered from Q5’s unfinished job list.
The next neighbor
Carry medicine to the next farm. Useful work comes before grand plans.
The repair archive
Recover the manuals before the public archive erases the knowledge inside them.
03 / Restricted inventoryTwo forbidden
Two forbidden
machines.
A covered Red Barchetta. An unfinished black-and-copper droid. Neither belonged to the Federation’s approved future.
When a gleaming alloy patrol air-car swept past the fields, Bob closed the shed doors. Q5’s small indicator kept glowing beside the bench.
Open the recovered bench note
“No machine is worth somebody getting hurt.”
His uncle’s rule stayed above the bench. Bob would keep a human override—and keep building.
04 / From a shed to the starsA name inherited.
A name inherited.
A future unwritten.
Barclay Automata Works
The uncle’s original company. Repairable machines, shared knowledge, and jobs left unfinished.
BigBob’s Robotic Workshop
Bob takes up the work. One little black droid becomes the start of something much larger.
A future still unwritten
Industrial Automaton manufactures the R-series and BB-series astromech droids in established Star Wars lore. Whether the uncle’s recovered ideas ever reach that company remains an unanswered thread in our fan story—not its official corporate origin.
Recovered notebook / Unfinished studiesA round idea.
A round idea.
An open question.
Among the uncle’s papers, Bob finds rough studies for an unnamed spherical companion droid. A rolling body. A balanced head. More questions than answers.
Our lore reference: Industrial Automaton and the BB-series on Wookieepedia. Established lore and our fictional archive remain distinct.
05 / The living legacyGrow your
Grow your
droid’s brain.
The uncle’s machines could be repaired. Bob’s revival takes that idea further: start with the essentials, then add a Cortex as the work grows.
Network Cortex
The connections between the workshop’s machines.
Body & Dome Cortex
The movement and mechanisms of the little black droid.
Optical Cortex
New ways to see the world and help with the next job.
BB Scout and BB Command carry the workshop’s mark into the field. In the real project, these are portable display concepts and developing features; the workshop website explains their release status.
Unresolved transmissions / the missing uncle
A repair logged at a distant settlement. An unfamiliar workshop signature. A message with its destination missing. These are clues, not answers: his fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
Bob is an independent maker who becomes a reluctant rebel when keeping useful machines alive breaks the Federation’s laws. He is not an Imperial officer. The story takes place in our imagined precursor era, with its place in galactic history still unresolved. The Solar Federation and Motor Laws belong to our crossover story, not established Star Wars history.