Razor Eater

While working on Balmorra in 31 BBY, bounty hunter Jango Fett was nearly killed by a Razor Eater, which inflicted him with lingering scars and memories. Fett had tracked a wanted spice dealer to the planet, and a race through the capital ended just outside Rigorra the Hutt's castle, where Fett shot and killed the spice dealer. Alerted by the exchange of fire, the Hutt's security guards deployed one of Rigorra's recently acquired droids—an assassin droid purchased from Holowan. The droid, which Jango later learned was a Razor Eater, nearly took off his head, but he managed to cripple it sufficiently to make it back to Slave I, setting his ship to autopilot towards Wild Space and his residence at Kamino before passing out.

Holowan had tried to sell more than one Razor Eater to Rigorra, but the Hutt never saw any need to own more than one, especially since he knew it was stronger than the slightly inferior models that his brother Groodo had purchased for his own fortress on Esseles. And unlike the other Razor Eaters, Rigorra's was equipped with a vocabulator.

Fett's recovery time of three months on Kamino certainly wasn't worth the bounty he'd collected on the spice dealer, but the knowledge and experience he gained from his traumatic encounter with the deadly droid was: for he'd discovered, through his vicious tangle with it, the Razor Eater's weak spots.

In 23 BBY, Fett again encountered a Razor Eater in the mammoth enclosed hangar of Groodo Starship Yards, which orbited the planet Esseles (where was fabricated the replica of the ancient colonial transport, the Sun Runner). He incapacitated the droid by seizing the controls of the hangar's tractor beam projector and trapping the automaton mid-air within the projected force field, where he left it suspended.

Groodo the Hutt's palatial compound on Esseles was also patrolled and defended by a squadron of four Razor Eaters, which Fett was forced to contend with in his Darth Tyranus-commissioned search of the Hutt and his accomplices, Holowan and Senator Rodd of Fondor. One of the droids at the compound (named "") Fett eliminated using an antique music player called an Audiobulb, the battery of which was highly combustible; two were deactivated by Fett's pulling of a remote-control switch; and the final droid ceased functioning by a voice-command from Groodo's son Boonda: "Night-night, Metal-mouth!" In the encounter with Groodo's Razor Eaters, Fett captured Senator Rodd.

Bounty hunter Zam Wesell also encountered one of Holowan's Razor Eaters at the droid engineer's own laboratory in the House of Holowan in Kuat City. Confronted by Wesell, whom Jango Fett had subcontracted to bring Hurlo in alive at the request of Darth Tyranus, Holowan activated a hidden switch that caused a Razor Eater to ascend from an exposed pit. "You need a dentist!" Zam taunted. The droid attacked Wesell, but the Clawdite quickly responded. She fired at its photoreceptors to blind it, then jumped at the droid, knocking it off balance. The Razor Eater fell back into the pit and was crushed by the closing floor-hatch door. After Hurlo hurled one last expletive and desperate trick at Zam—unleashing a monstrous, genetically altered felinx that retreated to its cage when Wesell stunned its jaw and hind leg with her KYD-21 blaster pistol—the bounty hunter clamped Holowan with binders and hauled her away to rendezvous with Fett at Commenor to collect her bounty.

For the second time in his life, Fett would again encounter a Razor Eater on Balmorra, at the castle of Groodo's brother, Rigorra. Simply anticipating yet another confrontation with Holowan's twisted creation where he'd first encountered it caused the bounty hunter's stomach to tighten. But the nervous feeling Fett quickly dismissed as being foolish, for since his first run-in with a Razor Eater, he'd battled many others and defeated them without even getting scraped. And while Jango realized he might have benefited by fellow hunter Zam Wesell's offer to accompany him to Balmorra, he was determined "for too many reasons" to capture Groodo on his own. But Fett's initial foreboding did not prove unfounded, for the Razor Eater he later encountered was the very same Razor Eater he'd confronted originally eight years before.

Rigorra's prized Razor Eater, despite being hit by Jango's well-placed blaster shots to the knees and torso, was nonplussed, as the energy bolts merely ricocheted away. Gnashing its metal teeth, the hulking droid lurched toward Jango, who was about to aim for its neck when fellow hunter Aurra Sing appeared and fired her Czerka Adventurer slugthrower rifle at the droid. The projectile sailed under Fett, passing between his legs, before it struck the Razor Eater square in the chest and detonated. The Razor Eater's entire body exploded to bits.

Fett had allowed his clone son Boba to join him on previous hunts, but those had been minor jobs. The hunt for Groodo and his accomplices was one in which Jango had hoped to teach Boba how to fight and survive. And with the distinct possibility of running into more Razor Eaters, though he instinctively wished to protect his son, Jango knew that Boba would definitely learn from seeing a Razor Eater in action. He also knew that Boba was as resourceful as he was brave, and there wasn't anyone he trusted more: if Jango ever needed help, he'd want it from Boba. But in the end, the younger Fett's encounter with a Razor Eater would never happen, for Jango was forced to return the boy back to Kamino when he came into contact with the Trandoshan hunter Cradossk, whose acute olfactory sense affiliated Boba's "scent" with Jango. Boba was the most important thing in the galaxy to Jango, and the last thing Jango wanted was for word to leak out that the notorious bounty hunter Jango Fett had a son. Fett would not further endanger his son by the allure that ransom (or being able to get to Jango by hurting or killing Boba) held with those of the Bounty Hunters' Guild.

To further throw Cradossk off the "scent" of his son, Jango commissioned the Kaminoan cloners to create a non-living replica or decoy-clone of Boba, a brainless genetic construct, to make it appear that he was no longer alive and to dissuade the Bounty Hunters' Guild from any further inquiry or pursuit of Boba. After Groodo, Holowan, and Rodd were delivered alive to Darth Tyranus on Geonosis, Jango continued on to Trandosha to deliver the bound and unconscious bounty hunters Bossk and Skorr to Cradossk. And while the head of the Guild, taking advantage of the situation, again sought to seduce Fett to become a member, Jango once again refused. Fett feigned to entertain, however, Cradossk's outrageous proposition that Jango take on the Trandoshan's son Bossk as an apprentice; this Jango agreed to do if Cradossk, likewise, would take on as an apprentice his own son Boba. Both agreed, and in accord with the exchange, Jango went back to his ship to retrieve a long plastoid box that he'd acquired when he took Boba back to Kamino. Peering into the coffin-like container, Cradossk, to his consternation, beheld the lifeless body of what appeared to be Jango's son. When he asked Fett why, the bounty hunter explained that the boy had disobeyed an order on Esseles. Jango then asked Craddosk if he was still committed to an exchange. Cradossk's carefully reconsidered response was that he would have to "think about it." Turning away, Fett began to walk back to his ship, when the Trandoshan, in alarm, protested that Jango had left Boba's body-filled coffin behind: "Keep it," Jango replied, without looking back. Because it was blindingly apparent to Jango that Craddosk genuinely believed that Boba was dead, Fett knew his son would thereafter be safe from the Bounty Hunters' Guild. Satisfied with the outcome of his somewhat dramatic, yet superbly protective measure, Jango returned back to Kamino ... and to his son.

• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia