"Having a soul is more about having a mind than about having a particular kind of body. Anything you can mage-sense the mind of has a soul. Like Bar; Bar is made of magic in about the same way as droids are made of tech, but they still have a soul."

"Interesting. Droids don't have a Force presence, but plants do, if a weak one. I am not sure what the result of the experiment would be."

She nods. "I'm not sure either, but I won't be surprised if they do. Milliways only gives doors to people, so I don't know if droids that are people are more or less common than droids that aren't, but I've met more droids here than kobolds. And a droid that was more like an animal than a person might not be able to get a door but still have a soul."

"We can find a droid when we get back, if you like."

"Sure," she grins. "They might vary, too; if there are more and less personlike ones I should check both, or at least a more personlike one."

"All right." Hand?

Hand.

And back to Tython. Does the kobold want to wait for her translation necklace before getting a droid?

Nah, this is straightforward enough. Lead on!

It'd actually be easier to get the droids to come here. The Jedi fiddles with their comlink, and shortly, two droids show up, one astromech and one translator model.

The kobold smiles and bows to them, and then trances, checking the astromech first and then the translator.

Both droids display a low level of intelligence, more on par with an animal than a person. The translator is slightly more sophisticated than the astromech.

She examines the difference a little - she's seen some weird things, with droids, and doesn't want to miss something important here - but she's not really expecting much.

The translator has a more coherent concept of itself as a definite entity.

That definitely counts as something important, yep. She comes out of the trance and offers the Jedi and the translator droid her hands.

They both take one.

And here they are in Milliways. She addresses the droid first: "Welcome to Milliways. Bar," she gestures, "can explain it to you if you like, they can hear you if you talk and will answer with napkins with notes on them. I'm going to want to talk to you in a few minutes but I don't mind waiting if you're in the middle of something when I do."

The droid doesn't make a move to the bar. "I see, honored kobold. I will remain here until you have need of me."

The kobold clamps down hard on something, emotionally, at that response, and just nods to the droid, "okay." (No, no it is not.)

"So, they both have souls," she says to the Jedi. "And I'm not sure whether this one is a person, but they're at least closer than the other one was."

"Interesting. So possessing intelligence seems to be the determining factor for whether something has a soul, but that is not necessarily linked to personhood. This unit is not appreciably smarter than the other."

She nods. "They're almost always linked in biological life, but technological and magical minds are different, since they're made - it's possible to make something that's very smart without having a soul at all, if you do it just the right way, but it's a lot easier to accidentally wind up with a person instead." She eases up on that whatever-it-is just slightly, as she speaks, and then turns to the droid again. "Do you think you're a person?"

"I am a translation droid, model number C2-N8."

...and there's a lovely traumatic childhood memory there that the Jedi hopefully isn't getting too much affect from. Joy. The kobold takes a moment to pull herself away from that, and another moment to decide what to do. "All right. I'd like to talk to you about that some more, sometime," she says to the droid.

"Yes, honored kobold."

The Jedi looks concerned.

Sigh. "Being a person surrounded by people who don't think you're one is very damaging, at least for biologicals - it almost killed me, once. The droid might be fine, they might not be a person in the first place to be hurt by it at all, but I can't assume that. Not and be able to sleep at night."