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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Basic yes and no only,” Greef cautioned as he handed the small device to Din. “It’s rudimentary, I know, but I think the droidsmiths found the request to be a bit… simplistic for their tastes. They’re used to repairing and creating advanced technologies capable of droid intelligence, after all.”
“You’re saying they think helping me find a way for Grogu to communicate more effectively is beneath them?” Mando’s frustration was very nearly fully concealed by the helmet’s voice modulation.
“No, no, of course that’s not what they said, Mando! More like I think they viewed the request similarly to… if I were to ask a seasoned bounty hunter like yourself to go catch an eight-legged piper bug that had set up house in the corner of the kitchen.”
“They were bored by the request?”
“Perhaps. Or their pride might have been a bit hurt. Grogu did try to kidnap one of them, after all.”
“He wasn’t kidnapping them, he was- you know what? It doesn’t matter.” Din looked down at the device in his hand. “Please tell them thank you for the communication device; we appreciate their… efforts.”
Despite its simplicity, Grogu seemed pleased to accept the small device from Din. Whether it was because he liked having two words of Galactic Basic ready to use as necessary, or because he liked pressing the buttons… Well, Din wasn’t sure. But either way, it made his kid happy.
At least it did for all of a day, until Grogu was playing his new favorite game of levitate-the-aquatic-creature by the pond on their homestead and discovered that the creature in question had a couple of friends nearby. When the two other animals jumped out at Grogu and startled him, the floating creature and Grogu wound up getting dunked in the pond.
Din was able to scoop up a sputtering and mildly incensed Grogu from the water none the worse for wear, but the same could not be said for the communication device. Grogu, ears drooping as he futilely pressed the two buttons, could only get it to emit a few gurgled hisses before dying completely.
“This one’s waterproof,” Greef assured them as he handed it to Grogu on one of the child’s revolutions spinning in Greef’s office chair. “It can also handle temps as low as the Hoth average and as high as Tatooine’s highest recorded temperature.”
“YES. YES. YES.”
Greef smiled down at Grogu as the child happily tested out the device. “I’m glad you approve.” He turned to Din. “Try to keep this one functioning for at least a week, okay, Mando? The droidsmiths had quite a few choice words about your ability to care for their work after what happened with the droidmecha and the first communication device.”
Din sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The replacement communicator was simple, but Grogu was happy to have it, and it only seemed to enhance how adorable most people who encountered the kid found him.
“Are you full, kiddo?” asked the bartender, already raising his ladle for a refill.
“NO. NO. NO.”
“Can’t let a growing tyke like you go hungry. Let me refresh your bowl with some stew, there you go. And here, have a sweet. My son baked them fresh this morning.”
“YES. YES. YES.”
Mando reached into his credit pouch but accepted it when his attempt to pay was rebuffed. Again.
“I can’t charge when I’m already being paid in such good conversation, can I, kiddo?”
“NO.”
“You’re darn right.”
The device did, indeed, last longer than both the first one and the IG-11 mecha, surviving over a month, and through two bounty hunting missions and a recon job. In fact, it was only when they stopped for supplies in a medium-sized spaceport town with a market that they ran into trouble.
A duo of petty thieves decided to try a smash-and-grab job in the bar where Din and Grogu had stopped for a meal and information. While Grogu was charming the bartender with yes/no answers to her questions, one of the thieves tried to take advantage of her distraction and grab the till, apparently not realizing that her species literally had eyes on the back of their heads.
The second thief panicked, spooked when the bartender raised the alarm. She began to fire as the cook lumbered out of the back holding a heavy metal pan. Fortunately, her aim was terrible and no one was hit by the time Mando and the cook had subdued them. Unfortunately, there was a scorch mark on the table where a stray shot had hit Grogu’s communication device, leaving it nothing more than a smoking pile of slag in the corner.
Grogu’s drooping ears as he gently prodded at one of the blackened bits of communicator with a claw tugged at Din’s heartstrings.
The head droidsmith maintained a serious expression on his face as he used a tool to nudge the new communication device closer to Din on the worktable.
Din picked it up and examined it as the droidsmith unleashed a flood of speech. While Din was getting better at untangling the Anzellans’ unique brand of Basic, this many words flying at him at this speed? Maybe in another couple of visits. He noted that the communicator was slightly heavier than its predecessor, although he didn’t think Grogu would struggle with the increased weight. He prodded it with a gloved finger and noted that the buttons were smoother and sturdier, too.
Once the head droidsmith finished speaking, Din turned to Greef and cocked his head.
“He gave a thorough explanation of the changes they’ve made to the communicator’s construction,” Greef supplied. “Copper will send you a data file with the details.”
“Yes, High Magistrate,” the droid agreed readily.
The head droidsmith made a harsh sound, as though clearing his throat, and narrowed his eyes at Greef, who held up a hand.
“Yes, yes, I wasn’t finished,” Greef replied, and turned back to Din with a grave expression on his face. “He also emphasized that no handheld communicator device is going to be blasterproof, and recommends that you keep the device, and the kid, out of firefights — which frankly, Mando, I agree with. I know Mandalorians are a hardy people and that you start training the kids young, but I really think it would be better to wait a while before you let Grogu join in on the more dangerous parts of your missions.”
Din stifled a sigh and counted to three before replying. “Thank you for your advice. Grogu and I appreciate your concern and I certainly would prefer that he remain away from danger as much as possible.”
Din thanked the Anzellans and returned to collect Grogu from his visit to Marshall IG-11. When he handed him the communicator, Grogu accepted it with a coo of happiness.
By the time they arrived back at their homestead, however, Din’s mood had degraded sharply. In previous versions of the device, the Anzellans had used standard droid speech files. This time, however, they had programmed the communicator with a variety of voices, tones, speeds, and sound levels, which seemed to rotate through its library at random.
Grogu was fascinated and was treating it like a game, pressing the buttons repeatedly and giggling whenever a particularly egregious “ YES” or “ NO” emerged from the device.
Din was… probably going to snap within two hours if the kid didn’t lose interest soon.
Grogu did not lose interest.
It didn’t feel right to take away Grogu’s only source of verbal communication just because Din was developing a migraine, though it was incredibly tempting, so Din grit his teeth until Grogu finally fell asleep.
First thing in the morning, he and Grogu returned to the droidsmiths and Din requested that they reprogram the device to a more conventional vocal output.
The head smith just laughed at him and scurried back into the workshop, and Din heard a lock engage behind him.
Great.
He tried Greef next, asking that he intervene on Din’s behalf, but Greef initially balked at the request.
“You and Grogu have been asking for a lot of work from the droidsmiths, Mando. I can’t ask them to interrupt more lucrative work for something that’s primarily just a… personal preference, if you will.”
Din, half expecting this response, nodded. “I need you to keep an eye on Grogu for me today while I work on a job that might get a little too hot for him.”
When Greef narrowed his eyes and started to protest, likely suspecting something in Din’s lack of objection, Din reminded him of their conversation from the day before.
“You did tell me to be cautious about which jobs I take the kid with me.”
Greef sputtered slightly, but that was all Din needed.
“Be good, Grogu. I’ll be back tonight.”
“YES YES YES.”
When Din returned that night, he found Grogu in possession of a brand new, bright green communication device with standard vocal programming.
Copper, Greef’s droid assistant, informed Din that the High Magistrate was, unfortunately, unavailable due to having taken a painkiller and retiring to bed early, but it assured Din that while Grogu had been initially disappointed in the change to his communication device, when offered the chance to choose its color, he’d been satisfied.
Din thanked Copper, requested that the droid pass along his and Grogu’s appreciation to Greef once he was feeling better, and set out for home.
“Good job, kid.”
“YES YES YES.”
Din really would prefer Grogu avoid the truly dangerous jobs, but that didn’t mean avoiding all jobs. He was a Mandalorian foundling, after all, and in need of training and guidance.
So when a fairly standard tracking job came along courtesy of Carson Teva, Din treated it as an official training run for his foundling son.
The smugglers they were hired to track each had relatively small bounties, but that wasn’t the primary reason they were there. This particular smuggling outfit ran occasional jobs for a sect of Imperial remnants the New Republic was supposed to be keeping an eye on, and Teva had a hunch the Imperials were into something dirtier than contraband cargo or undermining New Republic rule.
The cave system the smugglers liked to use as their base was natural, but the multiple creative additions to its twisting corridors and caverns weren’t.
Din guessed that these had been created by previous inhabitants because the smugglers didn’t have any but the most obvious access routes and hiding spots under surveillance, which meant that while a full grown human in silver Beskar armor would be easily noticed, a small green child in brown clothing scuttling through a narrow tunnel above Din’s height? Far less conspicuous.
All Grogu had to do was sneak into the area where the smugglers stored gear, plant a few trackers, and then sneak back out. From there they’d be easy for Din and Teva to surveil and would eventually lead them to the Imps — if they ran another job for them before discovering the trackers in their foolishly infrequent security scans.
Then, once they’d gotten as much information on the Imps as they could, Din could bring the smugglers in for their bounties and Teva and the New Republic could decide what to do with the Imps.
It was a straightforward plan, and at first it seemed to proceed without a hitch; Din crouched behind some boulders beside the tiny accessway to the hidden tunnel Grogu was creeping down. It all went to hell when Grogu came back visibly upset and frantically trying to tell Din something that he just… couldn’t understand.
Grogu babbled and waved the communicator around, alternating between “YES” and “NO” several times and growing increasingly frustrated.
Finally, after several minutes of quietly trying to glean what Grogu was trying to tell him with yes/no questions and a liberal helping of “NO. NO. NO.” Mando felt a tug at his waist. He whipped around in a panic thinking they’d been heard despite dialing Grogu’s communicator to as low a volume as it could go, but found no one.
When he continued to feel tugging at his waist and then noted the narrow-eyed expression that was becoming familiar to him when it crossed Grogu’s face, Din located the pouch that Grogu was trying to access with his powers and opened its clasp. Grogu then levitated out the spare comm Din stored in there and left it floating in front of Din’s helmet.
Dank Farrik, why hadn’t Din thought of that, oh, say, months ago?
He quickly linked the spare comm to the one in his helmet and handed it to Grogu to tuck into his robe, lifting Grogu back into the tunnel and watching him run off into the darkness again.
After a few minutes the sounds of Grogu’s feet shuffling along the tunnel began to fade as he slowed down and voices in the distance became audible. Rowdy voices. Apparently the pirates’ gear cave also served as their drinking cave.
At first, Din could only catch a few clear words in a dozen, though as Grogu crept closer and Din adapted to the variety of accents he could hear, he could make out more and more of the conversation, which sounded like alcohol-fueled boasting about their recent jobs for the Imperials. As Din listened, his blood ran cold when he realized what he was hearing. Another minute and one of the drunken idiots even spilled the location of the Imps next pickup of cargo, which would be happening the next morning.
Din clicked the comm and received a click back from Grogu a few seconds later, and in time he heard Grogu’s shuffling gait speed up to a run as the kid got further from the smugglers towards the entrance to the tunnel.
Thank goodness for Grogu’s swift thinking with the comm, because otherwise Din would have just spent the next few days tracking these nerfherders around instead of being able to report that the Imperial remnant group Teva was interested in was apparently collecting children from far Outer Rim planets with little protection and fewer consequences, and whisking them away for unknown but undoubtedly horrifying purposes. And now Din knew where and when the next “shipment” could be intercepted.
Grogu and Din had a lot to do.
When the dust settled from that mess, though it was ultimately a successful mess, Din requested a meeting with the Anzellans. When he briefly explained the issues from the job with the pirates and requested a new version of communication device for Grogu with more capabilities, the droidsmiths agreed. All three had come to greet him this time, and they actually appeared to be intrigued by his request, if their excited mumbling was any judge.
Several weeks later, Greef asked Din and Grogu to visit him in his office. Once there, he presented Grogu with an old-model datapad that was nearly half his size. The head droidsmith and Greef reviewed the functions of the device and all the upgrades the droidsmiths had made to it, and Grogu began using it with ever-increasing excitement.
In spite of the age of the original datapad, it was a far cry from the devices Grogu had been using thus far. In addition to the hard coded buttons for yes, no, unsure, and danger — Din gave the droidsmith a long look at that one, but the Anzellan didn’t flinch or sneer, so it might not have been dig at Din’s parenting skills — there were a series of buttons that could be changed according to need, and an expandable menu of words and phrases that could be assigned to said buttons.
“LEFT. RIGHT. FORWARD. BACKWARD.”
As Grogu tested out various options from the menu, Din thanked the head droidsmith and asked about compensation for the device. He was surprised when the droidsmiths fee was similar to that of the previous devices and turned to Greef for confirmation, wondering if he’d lost all the progress he’d made in communicating effectively with the Anzellans.
“HUNGRY. FOOD PLEASE. I AM TIRED.”
Greef laughed and confirmed the cost. “This has turned into a bit of a challenge for them, Mando, and that translates into very reasonable fees.”
Mando nodded and handed over the requested credits. He was just about to thank the droidsmith again when the words currently emitting from Grogu’s communicator sunk in.
“POODOO. KRIFF. DANK FARRIK.”
“Grogu!” Din said, shocked, before swinging around to the droidsmith who was now clutching his belly and rolling on Greef’s desktop as he laughed.
Din swiveled his head between the Anzellan and Grogu several times before he dropped his head down towards his chest and sighed.
Din had “the talk” with Grogu on the way back to their homestead, acknowledging that while Grogu had, on occasion, heard Din himself use language like the words programmed into his communicator, those words had a distinct time and place, and they weren’t for casual use until Grogu was older and commanded a better grasp of language overall.
Once home, Din watched as Grogu wrestled with the datapad, managing to carry it inside himself with a moderate amount of effort.
Over the next few days, Din was able to acknowledge that, around the homestead, in flight, or in other situations where Grogu could be stationary and had enough space to have the datapad set up comfortably for his use, it worked great. He and Grogu had even managed to carry on a few genuinely two-sided conversations — and yes, Din did feel a small twinge in the general vicinity of his heart when he thought about what a milestone this was for him and his son.
When they were on a job or on the move, however? It just wasn't practical, not at that size, which left Grogu using the basic model when they were on the move. After such a broad expansion to his communication abilities, such regression obviously bothered him.
Din was clearly going soft in the heart since officially becoming a father because he imagined that even the basic communicator’s voice sounded dejected when Grogu was restricted to “YES” and “NO” when they were away from the advanced version.
His request for a communicator with more advanced programmable abilities yet in a small size was met with chattering from the Anzellans, but ultimately agreement. They warned him that the price for this one would be higher than previous models, because in order to achieve smaller sizes while maintaining high capabilities, they’d have to look to newer materials and probably Core World sourcing, which could get pricey.
Din winced, but agreed.
He and Grogu fulfilled a series of smaller jobs, and a couple of those led to more lucrative ones. By the time he received a comm from Greef saying their order was ready, they’d collected a nice little stash that Din was putting aside for Grogu’s needs as he grew.
The newest communication device was sleek and shiny, noticeably newer tech than any previous model. It was crammed with buttons and a tiny dial, and Din couldn’t imagine what it had been originally intended for before being modified by the Anzellans.
Din’s first impression was favorable — the device had lots of options and was adaptable with the ability to quickly program new words and phrases as needed from its central library. The library wasn’t quite as expansive as the reprogrammed datapad device — and Din had searched for all the curse words he knew to check — but it was a far cry from any of the previous mobile models Grogu had used thus far.
It didn’t take long, however, for Din to recognize something that the Anzellans probably hadn’t considered. Given the droidsmiths’ size, having a device crammed with tiny buttons and dials wasn’t a barrier for them — they could easily press and manipulate the device.
Although Grogu was also quite small, his fingers were somewhat larger than the droidsmiths’ and he also had both claws and the dexterity of a child. This led to a lot of button-mashing and incomprehensible conversations as Grogu struggled to press the buttons and program the device with his needs, growing ever-more frustrated.
Ultimately, when they needed to dismantle the device for parts to repair a comm when a job went sideways, neither Grogu nor Din were especially disappointed.
Din stepped out onto the porch of his home when he received the ping of something crossing the perimeter sensors. When he saw that it was Greef approaching on a landspeeder with a small entourage, he relaxed somewhat and waved Grogu out with him.
In addition to Copper, Greef was accompanied by all three Anzellans and what appeared to be Grogu’s hover pram covered by a gauzy piece of brightly colored cloth. Din had been wondering how long Greef intended to monopolize the pram since he’d “borrowed” it several weeks prior.
“Hey there, Mando, Grogu! Forgive me for dropping by unannounced, but I had some time today and when the droidsmiths told me they were done with your surprise, I couldn’t resist bringing it over immediately. Come on over, Grogu, let me show you something special.”
“Oh?” Din wasn’t suspicious, exactly. Or, well, he wasn’t excessively suspicious. Greef had proven to be one of their staunchest supporters and Din did trust him these days. Mostly.
“Oh, lighten up a bit, Mando, it’s nothing bad. The droidsmiths and I have been working on a special project for Grogu here.”
All three Anzellans burst into a flurry of annoyed chatter, lasting until Greef held up a staying hand.
“Yes, yes, I know that you did all the hands-on work, but I helped by getting you the pram and providing the funds to make this possible, didn’t I?”
The head droidsmith crossed his arms but gave a grudging nod.
“There, see? It is a group effort. Anyways, Grogu, come over here and check out what we have for you.”
With that, Greef pulled off the cloth to reveal a hover pram. At Grogu’s lifted arms, Greef picked him up and settled him into the pram, then began talking slowly and pointing as he described the features.
It was… impressive. In addition to all the typical benefits of the pram itself, the droidsmiths had added a number of advanced communication capabilities, far beyond even those available in the adapted datapad. It also came with a portable communicator with a matching sleek finish.
The portable version was just the right size for Grogu and had the usual basic speech buttons — a nod to earlier versions, Greef claimed — and its own reasonably-sized word library that could be assigned to the programmable buttons. It also boasted recording abilities, a high durability rating, and it interfaced seamlessly with the hoverpram, allowing Grogu and Din to continuously update the portable version from the hover pram’s far more expansive storage.
Grogu was thrilled and immediately began to explore his new communicative abilities by unleashing a flood of “chatter” from both the pram and portable device.
Din was… overwhelmed. And relieved that his creed allowed him to hide his features behind the helmet because he could only imagine what his expression would have revealed right then.
The past few months had really underscored how much more Grogu was able to communicate with those around him when given the correct tools, and this? This would open his world up even more, in all the best ways.
“Greef…”
Greef turned from his observation of Grogu’s antics and waited for several seconds before apparently realizing that Din couldn’t continue.
“Don’t worry about it, Mando. You and Grogu are practically family, aren’t you? And you make your home here on Nevarro — we take care of each other here.”
Din could only nod.
Ultimately, it was the recording function that Grogu seemed to like best. He collected fun new curse words with each new planet they visited. Din just reiterated his speech about the importance of learning the time and place for such language, and hoped for the best.
He also collected recordings from most of the people he interacted with even semi-regularly, keeping them stored away in the pram and rotating them out to the portable device as needed.
If Din were to count the number of times he’d been reminded in Peli Motto’s voice to “Get that baby some food, Mando!” he would swiftly run out of appendages to count on. And if he were to get a credit for every time Greef’s voice reminded him to “Be careful, Mando” he wouldn’t have to take a job for at least a month.
He had a stash of recordings of Din, the Armorer, and a variety of other Mandalorians intoning “This is the way” that he rotated through when joining in with their conversations. A few in the covert were a bit taken aback, at first, but Din had a feeling that they’d slowly grown amused by the child. Bo-Katan had even told him, once, that she’d won a bet on whose voice Grogu would select for that day, so apparently that was a thing that was happening.
The thing that really got to Din, though? Grogu’s recordings of Din.
“Good job.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“You’ve done well.”
“Thank you.”
Not only did Grogu use Din’s words to praise others - which caused no end of alternating amusement and sentimentality to Greef - but Grogu also used them on Din himself.
Hearing his own voice praising himself, but knowing it came from his kid? It was deeply weird, but Din wasn’t about to ask Grogu to change a thing.
No. He wouldn’t change a thing.