"Then we're in an awkward position until my comm can translate for me," says Callida, and she retrieves the comm in question. She didn't bring much with her into her meditation chamber - no rations, no canteen for water, no thermal blanket - but she carries her comm almost as religiously as her lightsaber.

She holds up a hand in a gesture to wait, and then she gets to setting it up for learning rudimentary translation. It won't learn as quickly (or as well) as a protocol droid, but it would do better than she would, at least at first. In the long run... Well if she doesn't have access to a protocol droid, it'll be better for her to just learn the language herself.

"This," she says, pointing at the comm, "will let us," she motions between the two of them, and then points to her mouth, "speak." Pause. "Okay? Speak," mouth motion, again, "to this." Comm point.

The statue's stone face looks mildly puzzled, but it shrugs and directs its next incomprehensible utterances at both Callida and her comm.

Awesome. Her comm will need some time to start translating, but it seems to have recognized a new language well enough. She smiles and nods encouragement.

One of the other statues becomes active and starts conversing with the first one.

Even better!

Callida... does not actually want to stand here while her comm figures out how to translate. She offers the comm to the nearest statue to hold while it figures out the language. She can go looking for food and water.

A third statue calls something after her that might be a farewell.

This underground complex is very well built, a little worn down, and kind of littered with bodies. The area around the forge, including the room she was nestled in and the room containing the glowing man and his suffering, is mostly clear; but once she gets past that part, gosh those sure are a lot of recent corpses. Most of them, and all the most recent ones, are the same kind of creature from the dragon's army. Some of the older bodies look more like the glowing man.

Her options for food seem to be: carrion, plausibly edible mushrooms that might be toxic, different more suspicious-looking mushrooms that might be edible, and rocks. There's plenty of rocks.

Her food options are all depressing. She'll - she'll look for sources of water first. That seems straightforward.

She can do that with the Force! C'moooon, water. Where are you.

Water is... thataway! When she manages to navigate the variously blocked tunnels and find it, it even looks and smells reasonably clean and appetizing!

Hmmm! Except she is noticeably not clean. She hesitates to clean herself in this water, and she hesitates to even try to drink it for fear of contaminating it. Is there perhaps less clean and appetizing water that would work better?

There's this, and two more sources of approximately equally clean water if she looks, and then a fourth one that may once have been just as nice but now has a dead darkspawn lying in the pool where the water collects as it trickles from a crack in the stone.

She'll take that one! She pulls the darkspawn out and then carefully cleans her face and hands. The rest of her is - well, the rest of her will have to wait. Good thing she's in armor. She can pretend she's sort of clean.

And then she goes to one of the others, and drinks. She'd boil it first, if she had literally any water container, but she doesn't. And she's going to need to spend time meditating to keep the dragon soul in check, anyway, she can spare a little longer to tell the local equivalent of dysentery to go away.

Now. Food. Is it really just carrion, mushrooms, and rocks? Nothing else alive in these tunnels at all besides the darkspawn?

The immediate vicinity - the forge, the larger complex, right out to the massive stone gate - is pretty devoid of non-mushroom life. All the darkspawn are dead, and she already knows about Armor Man and Suffering Dwarf and their Statue Friends, who are still patiently talking past her comm in the forge if she checks.

Whatever the hell that thing with the tentacles and the excessive number of breasts used to be, it's dead too. Maybe that's where darkspawn come from. What a pleasant thought.

Once she's closer to the gate, she can actually detect signs of animate life out there. Would she like small, medium-sized, or large?

She will just. Ignore the tentacle thing for now, how about. She's trying to find lunch, not lose it.

Small, easier to carry. If the Armor Man, Suffering Dwarf, and Statue Friends want food, they'll have to let her know and help carry it back.

In that case she can try these little hairless mammals.

Two of those little hairless mammals can get a carefully aimed blaster bolt to the face. They die without issue, and then she carries them back to the forge. She can gut and cook them there, in case her allies are amazed at her ability to kill things for food and want some too.

Her allies are still talking to the comm. They don't seem interested in the food.

Well, then it'll just be for her. You can, actually, field dress and cook a kill with just a lightsaber, if you know how. Which Callida does. She does the actual gutting of the animal away from the Statue Friends, because it can be a bit gross.

But Callida's a Sith, and pulling the guts out of small animals is really just a Tuesday for her.

She tests a bit of the animal the way the Standard Imperial Survival Procedures Book laid out for strange fauna on a foreign planet, deems it not poisonous, and then she has delicious small mammal cooked carefully over a lightsaber. Nom.

The small mammal is actually legitimately delicious. How surprising.

Very! She was expecting sawdust and sulfur. Excellent. More enthusiastic noms.

Meanwhile, the comm has finally begun to figure out this incomprehensible conversation.

How useful of it! What's it saying?

The Statue Friends are discussing the merits of various primitive weapons in some sort of combat-focused sport, it sounds like.

Huh. Cool. At least they're having fun. She'll leave them with the comm a little longer to see if it'll figure out all of its glitches before she starts trying to use it to talk to them, though.

And then she's out of food, and out of obvious things to do.

How's the Suffering Dwarf doing?

The Suffering Dwarf has ceased to whimper, but not to glow. He is curled up quietly in his nest.

... That seems better! She hums thoughtfully, then decides that since she's not using the blankets in her blanket nest anymore, he could borrow some of them. She goes to fetch them.