First, the new galaxy—the Star Wars galaxy—had to be cleansed of infidels. And so began their invasion plans. A relatively small number of agents was sent to infiltrate worlds and not only learn the lay of the land but also begin to recruit supporters. Now the first of the actual troopships is about to arrive, to install beachheads on several worlds in preparation for the arrival of the greater warrior troops.
The Yuuzhan Vong should usually be referred to by the full name of “Yuuzhan Vong,” not “the Vong.” In narrative, the only exceptions are the occasional active fight scenes where it becomes too awkward to constantly use the full name. In dialogue, diplomatic types will almost always use the long form, “Yuuzhan Vong.” And the Yuuzhan Vong never shorten the name when referring to themselves.
THE YUUZHAN VONG CULTURE:
Everything these aliens do is for the greater glory of their gods, and to follow a path of personal evolution designed to bring each successful individual ever closer to godhood—in essence, to remake themselves in the shape of their gods. Much sacrifice and/or penance is involved, because the Creator sacrificed pieces of himself—with great pain, culminating in a “death” leading to high exaltation—to create the lesser gods, who in turn created the Yuuzhan Vong through the mixing and matching of parts from other creatures. Thus, sacrifice, when required, is sacred; death is inevitable—but how one dies is all-important.
The Yuuzhan Vong are horrifyingly barbaric to our eyes—beginning with the ritual tattooing and scarification of the lower ranks, and on up to the grotesque mutilation and reshaping seen in the higher ranks. All this scarring, etcetera, is a highly ritualized system under the aegis of the priests; at each rise in rank, the subject makes one more physical change along the path to remaking him or herself in the shape of one of the gods. Toward this end, they might graft other parts onto themselves—either parts from another creature, or bioengineered parts; they would never maim themselves in any way that might hinder their abilities to function, only in ways that might be functionally neutral or—at higher ranks—improve their functions. Those poor souls whose changing ceremony fails, leaving them maimed, are shamed forever, demoted to the lowest rank of the lowest caste.
The Castes:
The Shapers: These are the scientists, the bioengineers who create the living machines and tools that power the Yuuzhan Vong society. Being closest in purpose to the Creator god, they are the highest caste below the supreme overlord.
Shaper ranks: master, adept, initiate
The Priests: These are the holy ones who serve and speak for the various lesser gods; only the supreme overlord has the ear of and can speak for the Creator. The priest caste is not really lower in rank than the shapers, but sort of a free-floating entity, the members of which command the respect of everyone.
Priest ranks: high priest(ess), priest(ess), seer, novice
The Warriors: These are the ones who fight the wars, who plan conquests of other species, and who, often, will take over the administration of conquered species and worlds, with the support of the priests.
Warrior ranks: warmaster, commander, subaltern, warrior
The Intendants: These run the economy, seeing to trading and commerce, and administrating slavery services. Like the supreme overlord, intendants can come from either the warrior or the shaper caste.
Intendant ranks: high prefect, prefect, consul, executor
The Workers: The lowest caste, consisting of those born to it, those forced into it (such as the Shamed Ones), and the members of conquered species.
The Pantheon:
Yun-Yuuzhan, the Creator: Male. The parent god, the source of all life, occupies the center of the cosmos. This is the overlord god who, through great sacrifice and pain to himself, created the lesser gods and thus, by connection, the Yuuzhan Vong—and so, when he is appealed to directly, death sacrifice of some sort is always involved.
Yun-Harla, the Cloaked Goddess, or the Trickster: Female. Composed entirely of borrowed parts, cloaked by a borrowed skin (for example: her bones are yorik coral, her eyes are villips, and so on). That which is seen hides the unseen. Lying and deception for the greater good. The goddess who oversees the shaping/changing ritual. She is appealed to for success in the changing ritual, as well as any types of undercover or illicit activities, and the appeal might occasionally involve sacrifice- or shapechanging-in-effigy—but not killing.
Yun-Yammka, the Slayer: Male. The god of carnage, who commands warlords and prefects. His image is a bulbous-headed, tentacled, octopus-jellyfish hybrid who is the inspiration of the yammosk, the war coordinator. Appeals to this god often require death sacrifice.
Yun-N’Shel, the Shaper (or Modeler): Hermaphrodite: both male and female. The god of life creation, who governs childbirth, art, design, innovation. A gentler god, overseeing the gentler aspects of Yuuzhan Vong life. No sacrifice is involved, though voodoo-doll-like modeling might be done in ritual appeal.
Yun-Shuno: The thousand-eyed patron deity of the Shamed Ones, those ambitious or overly eager Yuuzhan Vong whose bodies have rejected living implants or creatures used in rituals, and who have either died or become ill or deformed in some way that is inconsistent with expected results. It is believed that the Pardoner can intercede with the Modeler and the Creator to improve the lot of these Shamed Ones, only if they are deserving enough.
Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q’aah: The Lovers. Twin gods, one male, one female. These are the patrons of love and relationships. They are the most capricious gods and require no sacrifice.
YUUZHAN VONG, THE JEDI, AND THE FORCE:
Jedi cannot perceive the “aliveness” of Yuuzhan Vong through the Force. The Yuuzhan Vong are not luminous beings but, rather, blank spots within the Force in somewhat the same way that a ship can be cloaked and undetectable.
BELIEFS:
• The Great Doctrine.
• “the breaking”: a common procedure, mental torture over physical torment, often involving a yammosk.
• taking perverse pleasure in pain.
• belief in the importance of ancestry/ancestral remains.
• belief in a strict hierarchical structure of society.
• attack on pride is normally the call for a death duel.
• reference to others as “infidels.”
• sacrifice: as important a rite as could be found among the Yuuzhan Vong.
• “peace”: willing and appropriate submission that flows from a submissive underling to a conqueror, never in both directions.
PERSONAL GEAR/WEAPONS:
• ooglith masquer: living “second-skin” that masks physical features
• ooglith cloaker: like the masquer, but with a transparent facial mask that reveals disfigurements. The cloaker can also protech the wearer from temperature extremes.
• gablith masquer: like an ooglith masquer, but enables the wearer to masquerade as a Duros.
• cognition hood: a headcloth worn by coralskipper pilots and other soldiers that relays the dictates of a yammosk.
• gnullith: a soft, star-shaped creature with a central tendril that snakes down the wearer’s throat, allowing the wearer to breath underwater. It itself breathes from water in the host’s body, while the host draws in oxygen.
• baton of rank: a narrow version of the amphistaff, yet requiring more skill to wield.
• coufee: a large, double-edged knife.
• amphistaff(s): can resist lightsaber blows. A living creature. Highly adaptable—can change shape; can shoot out poison seven meters from one head. Amphistaffs are always in flux, able to change characteristics, such as going from rock solid to snakelike. Thus, it only seems that a lightsaber can’t cut through an amphistaff: in fact, the amphistaff merely heals so quickly that it actually repels the lightsaber, or stalls it. The head is the weakest point.
• vonduun crab shell-plated armor: dark, impervious to small-arms blasterfire. Thin, feathery membranes fill the armor, analagous to gills. It is capable of self-repair, but has an “
Achilles’ heel” depression beneath the armpit.
• thud bugs: creature-weapons, living missiles.
• razorbug: a living, dark-blooded, return-to-hurler throwing weapon that makes a whirring buzz as it hurtles through the air. The bugs have a carapace, several pairs of legs, and fragile wings.
• blorash jelly: used to immobilize an opponent in battle. Although it seems almost sentient, it’s not really. It’s more like a plant: it can physically move to hold someone in place, reacting to the proximity of the warm body, but it can’t make active decisions or think on its own. It’s always lowercase.
• plaeryin bol: a venom-spitting organ resembling an eyeball.
• tizowyrm: a living translation device, worn inside the ear.
• surge-coral: living appendages containing tiny dovin basals, affixed to bone to serve as tranmission/reception devices, or the equivalent of “restraining” bolts.
BIOTECHNOLOGY:
• yammosk (see below).
• villips (see below).
• dovin basal: a blood-red heart-shaped organism with deep blue spikes, capable of creating gravitic anomalies. Provides “propulsion,” as well as “retropropulsion” for worldships, warships, and coralskippers, by attuning itself to specific gravity fields, to the exclusion of all others. Adult three-meter-sized dovin basals can also foil the shields of starfighters, by creating mini black holes.
• yorik coral: the somewhat self-repairing stuff of worldships, warships, and coralskippers. It can be cultivated on world that have undergone molecular changes consistent with Yuuzhan Vong biotechnology.
• coomb spores: biotoxin that is neither self-propagating or contagious. It can be detected by the shlecho newt. Other spores include the brollup and tegnest spores.
• grutchins: half-meter-long, black-winged weapon-creatures resembling a grasshopper. Not bred to be rational thinking beings, but living instruments of destruction. Cannot reproduce without a queen. Too deadly to try to capture or control once released. Flight capability, even in space and hyperspace. Able to eat through metal and survive an incredible amount of punishment.
• dweebit: reddish brown beetle with hooked mandibles and a single protruding tubular tongue, used to make worlds suitable for the sowing of yorik coral and other organics.
• ngdin: a slug-like creature that sops up blood.
• gricha: bioengineered insects that eat sand and excrete shell material to patch holes in the floor of a grashal or minshal.
• grashal: grand shells for habitation.
• minshal: small shells for habitation.
• surge-coral implanter: a small, gray, three-eyed creature with six legs that allow it to sidle side to side. It possesses four additional appendages, all raised like flags; two are stout, two are slender, and double back on themselves. The latter are capable of slashing through skin and cartilage; the stout ones hold and implant surge-coral seeds, which rapidly grow to become fist-sized calcifications.
• oggzil: a bioengineered creature with a long tail and grabbing appendages. Paired with a villip, the oggzil enables the Yuuzhan Vong to transmit villip-speech over New Republic frequencies. A metal-rich diet deposits conductive material in the oggzil’s vertebrae, creating a living antenna. The oggzil surrounds the villip like a husk that dangles a long straight tail.
• molleung: brownish, cofferdam-type worms that link ships with underwater bases.
• tishwii leaves: smoldering, used for presacrifice purification of victims.
• tkun: furry, red snakelike constriction creatures used as garrotes for sacrifice.
• ychna: an enormous creature with blowhole (fitted with a breathing apparatus over that hole) that can attach to an orbital city and cause massive external destruction.
• Tu-Scar and Sgauru: a symbiotic pair, known as the Beater and the Biter. The former is segmented, chitinous, and female, with a Sarlacc-type maw, stubby front legs, a powerful pair of rear pincers for clamping herself in place, bringing enormous power to bear against whatever she is eating. She can butt and bash against buildings. Her pincers attach to Biter without causing him any discomfort. She eats inorganics (especially stone), and—through pores along her sides—excretes a concretelike substance used in building. Biter is sleeker, more snake-like, and eats Beater’s organic rejects. He coils around a building, and his faster-moving head grabs fleeing “organics.”
VILLIPS:
Villips are a mollusklike species capable of parasitizing certain plants, creating galls at nodes that look like large berries, often growing in pairs. They are the Yuuzhan Vong biotech equivalent of comlinks and other communications devices. Hatchling villips are moist and have a larval pallor; mature ones are ridged, and have a rich suede or leathery surface. They can range in size from baseball to football. It is the basic nature of a villip to assume the likeness of the person on whom it has “impressed” or to whom it is “conscious-joined.” The transformation is prompted by stroking the villip’s ridge or “eversion stoma,” which results in a break in the villip’s membranous tissue. A hole that resembles an eye socket puckers to life and the villip inverts, mimicking the aspect of those at either end of the villip link.
Villips are cultivated in paddies, as described in Onslaught:
“On a lake floated plants with a tripartite arrangement of large blue triangular leaves. From the center grew a stalk and two berries the size of a man’s head. Smaller ones were for tactical use. The larger were dedicated villips. They murmured to one another.”
Villips operate by opening hyperspace portals to one another, so that in most instances communication is instantaneous. Transmitting villips project tachyons onto their reception counterparts, which in turn fashion 3-D images and sound waves based on the tachyon patterns. The compressed transmissions can be neither be interrupted nor monitored by ordinary eavesdropping or decryption techniques.
Villips are often displayed on yorik-coral blastulae of varying size. Among the elite, it is not uncommon for a female subaltern to serve as a villip mistress, caring for the creatures, keeping track of which are dedicated and to whom, and fetching them when necessary.
Partnered with an oggzil (see YV Biotech, above), villip-speech can be transmitted and broadcast, in Basic, over New Republic frequencies.
There are essentially two classes of villips. The first (including master/subordinate, dedicated, and tactical villips) operates by creating a 3-D likeness of the sender. The second (including villip-choirs or “villids”) communicates by showing what the sender sees.
Master/Subordinate Villips:
A large villip capable of generating or “budding” numerous smaller villips. Commanders, high-level intendants, and priests—anyone of sufficient rank with need to communicate with underlings—would possess a master villip, and would bestow subordinate villips as needed—an event enacted with some degree of ceremony. The owner of the master villip can activate the subordinate(s) at will, but subordinates can only request communication with the master villip. Acceptance of the communication is at the discretion of the owner.
The master villip sends to its subordinates the aspect of the person on whom it is “impressed,” meaning that the subordinate villips always assume the aspect of that person. The master villip, however, assumes the aspect of whichever underling happens to be using a subordinate villip at the other end.
A master villip can communicate with only one subordinate at a time.
A subordinate villip can be activated by a master villip to spy on the owner of the subordinate.
Anyone in possession of a subordinate villip can use it—providing that the high-ranking personage activates it at the other end.
Genetically linked, all master villips can communicate with one another, but not necessarily with the subordinates of another master villip. Communication with another’s subordinates could only occur indirectly, through the master villip itself.
Dedicated Villips:
Pair-bonded villips that f
unction analagously to walkie-talkies tuned to a specific or proprietary frequency. Impressed on the owners—via genetic-encoding overseen by shapers, and directed with grand ceremony by priests—dedicated or consciousness-joined villips are incapable of sending or receiving extraneous audio messages.
Dedicated villips impress on a person like a baby duck does on its mother. A hatchling villip is harvested and delivered to the appropriate person, who keeps the villip nearby for a period of time while the villip absorbs his or her image/thought patterns. Then it can “transmit” these to its partner/master at the other end.
In Vector Prime, Prefect Da’Gara dispatches a dedicated villip to the ship bearing Danni Quee, on its approach to Helska 4. During the conversation, the dispatched villip is “impressing” on Danni, but not to the extent that Da’Gara can “see” Danni at his end of the link.
Also in Vector Prime, Da’Gara’s dedicated villip—then in the possession of Yomin Carr— does not respond to Luke or Mara, but acts only as a one-way communicator.
Tactical Villips:
Small (softball-sized or smaller), nontransforming portable villips of a generic sort, which are often worn—by high-ranking Yuuzhan Vong warriors or any communications specialist (see Ruin)—on the shoulder or the forearm, and serve as the equivalent of real-time audio visual communicators (live camera feeds or videophones).
A variant of the master/subordinate class, tacticals act far more independently, sometimes trasmitting what the villips themselves see. The “battle master” has a master villip that relays to him what the soldiers’ villips see, and the little villip on the soldier’s shoulder relays the battle master’s orders to the soldiers.
Villip Choirs or Villids:
One type of choir is made up of numerous subordinates, which act in concert to fashion facsimile visual images, analagous to holographic displays or 2-D visual signals viewed on monitors. The nontransforming villips of a choir receive information from villip beacons or relay beacons, which are the equivalent of remote cameras. The choir responds to the prompts of a Yuuzhan Vong maestro, in the same way a communications or scanner array would respond to input from a communications officer or technician.
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