Post by Solaris on Feb 28, 2013 20:48:41 GMT -5
This is a work-in-progress. I need to do their history, and I'll have to edit this into the new format.
Still, it's basically the way it'll be. This is the core of the Yuuzhan Vong faction.
The terms NeoVong and Yuuzhan Vong are largely interchangeable. Outsiders refer to them as NeoVong, while they still call themselves Yuuzhan Vong.
Image by chrisscalf.
Still, it's basically the way it'll be. This is the core of the Yuuzhan Vong faction.
The terms NeoVong and Yuuzhan Vong are largely interchangeable. Outsiders refer to them as NeoVong, while they still call themselves Yuuzhan Vong.
Image by chrisscalf.
- Physical Description: Yuuzhan Vong are a bipedal mammalian species superficially similar to Humans but unrelated to any known species in the galaxy. They are, after all, descended from extragalactic invaders who crossed the intergalactic void a millennium ago. Despite this, they have surprising genetic similarities to Humans. Yuuzhan Vong lack kidneys, and have a highly conductive nervous system that's very sensitive to pain. They have a lifespan about three times that of the average Human as well, though they take a similar length of time to mature. They average at about 1.8-1.9 meters tall and are typically stockier than Humans, though the species has a wide range of physical builds and they often employ a combination of genetic engineering and organ grafting called shaping to modify themselves. They have reduced their selective breeding programs, in some cases eliminating them altogether, and as a result the species has diversified greatly. Yuuzhan Vong skin ranges in color from pale gray to violet to a yellow that is almost tan. They have sloping, almost ridge-like foreheads, and some have pointed ears. They have short, stub-like noses that can make their faces appear skull-like, though some have noses that almost appear Human-like. The Yuuzhan Vong have black hair, though generally in lesser amounts on both the head and body than Humans. Some Vong have small blue sacks beneath their eyes, which are considered a mark of beauty and expand and contract as part of the Vong's facial expressions.
Though they have a much higher incidence of voids in the Force than any other species (about six percent of the total population), the Yuuzhan Vong are no longer cut off from the Force thanks to Zonama Sekot adopting them in place of their lost homeworld of Yuuzhan'tar and restoring the damage dealt them by their homeworld's destruction. In fact, they even have Force-sensitive members of the population, who the Jeedai caste eagerly searches out and indoctrinates. Likewise, their biots are not at all absent from the Force. Much like Hutts and Epicanthix, however, the Yuuzhan Vong are extremely resistant to mind tricks and mental manipulation.
Thanks to their shaping practices, Yuuzhan Vong have a large number of subtypes among their population. Following their defeat at the hands of the galactic natives, the Yuuzhan Vong population splintered into dozens of subsects and subspecies scattered throughout the Unknown Regions and the murkier parts of the Outer Rim Territories.
Most Yuuzhan Vong, never leaving their ships save for pilgrimages, eat only the nutrient slurry the ship's life support biots produce. Some regard the food as the best part of their spirit quests. - Personality: Yuuzhan Vong are not merely xenophobic, but are thoroughly convinced of their own superiority.
Yuuzhan Vong are a strong-wiled, stubborn, and conservative lot. - Communication: Yuuzhan Vong communicate verbally and physically, in much the same way as most species do. They speak a guttural language, one deceptively nuanced and advanced. Their faces are hard and inexpressive, relying in part on the bluish sacks beneath their eyes to convey emotion. Those Vong who lack the eyespots are somewhat stigmatized and considered ugly for their people.
- Planet: The Yuuzhan Vong homeworld is the living planet of Zonama Sekot. However, they are nomads who live aboard ships ranging from small corvettes to enormous world-ships the size of small moons. Only the ships' captains and the ships themselves know the jealously-guarded secret of Zonama Sekot's location,
- Culture: The nomadic Yuuzhan Vong live aboard great living ships. These ships, being grown from seed-partners from Zonama Sekot coupled yorik coral and Vonduun crab-shell hulls and other more traditional Yuuzhan Vong biots, are central to the Vong culture. Each ship has a tribe of Yuuzhan Vong living aboard it, with the tribe's leader acting as the ship's captain. The captain alone is able to command the ship through its cognition hood, and by both tradition and as a practical matter has near-dictatorial control over his crew. The larger ships have councils that organize and direct the crew's efforts, typically including representatives from each of the castes. Being a member of the crew is somewhere between being a member of the family and being a coworker; the Vong do not divide personal and professional lives as Humans are wont to do.
In addition to the pseudo-tribal division of the ships, the Yuuzhan Vong are also divided into Domains. While a Yuuzhan Vong may leave one ship to join another, they must join a ship within the same Domain. To do otherwise is highly unusual and typically ostracized. Domains are analogous to clans, though the largest ones might be more accurately compared to nation-states. Regardless of power, though, each Domain owes at least nominal allegiance to the Supreme Overlord. They are expected to muster forces at the Supreme Overlord's command, but unless something threatens the Vong as a whole the Domain leaders are left to act on their own. True to the Vong's feudal culture, the Domains are typically organized in a hierarchy of intendants, each either captain of or representing the captain of a ship. Smaller ships owe fealty and tithe to larger ships, which in turn act to protect the smaller ships from outside threats and organize the smaller ships into fleets for concerted strikes. Though civil war between Domains is expressly forbidden except at the command of the Supreme Overlord, internecine conflict among the ships within a Domain is fairly common.
Yuuzhan Vong belief in the Force is tied into their reverence for the cycles of life and death. They believe that the flow of the Force is propelled by birth, growth, and death, and that so long as something dies in an ecosystem it is not consigned to oblivion but rather reborn through the Force into all things that feed on its death. They do not mourn death, but rather rejoice in those who have returned to the Force with the accumulated experiences of their lives to enrich all life. For this reason, the Yuuzhan Vong either feed their dead to their ships, or if they die away from their ships cannibalize the corpse. To others this may seem ghoulish, but to the Vong others are unpleasantly obsessed with death and unnaturally focused on the finality of it as it pertains to the individual rather than the life that necessarily stems from death. The Yuuzhan Vong do not believe in the Light and Dark Sides of the Force as the Jedi do, but rather that light and dark are found within living things and concepts found entirely within the imagination.
'Feeding the ship' is the preferred form of execution in Yuuzhan Vong society, as the ships are distantly related to Sarlaccs and thus able to draw sustenance from their prey for centuries while holding them in their extensive stomachs. The ship also links to the minds of those helped captive in its stomach, able to download information from them as they endure its slow, agonizing digestion. Dead Yuuzhan Vong also feed the ships, though corpses don't last nearly so long and the ship cannot tap their minds nearly so well. Well-fed ships grow larger and stronger, while starved ships suffer stunted growth as they're forced to exist solely on photosynthesis and space debris collected through their dovin basals. This encourages the Vong to launch on periodic raiding campaigns, though in truth the ship does as well with pretty much any organic material. Far more shameful to the Vong is to have their bodies cast out into the void, dooming them to spiritual oblivion rather than allowing them to continue in the cycle of rebirth. The Vong do this only to the most heinous of criminals, those whose spirits have been so irredeemably tainted and corrupted that they cannot be allowed to contaminate the rest of the Force.
The Yuuzhan Vong are divided up into castes: Warriors, intendants, shapers, workers, and the Jeedai. Young Yuuzhan Vong are raised in age-segregated creches without regard for who their parents were or what caste they were, and indeed inter-caste marriage is possible though still uncommon. The Jeedai actually quietly encourage inter-caste marriages, believing it essential to breaking down the barriers among them and between them and the rest of the Galaxy, though there is a good deal of resistance in other areas of Yuuzhan Vong society. The caretakers keep track of whose children belong to who, though most young Yuuzhan Vong do not find out who their parents are until they hit puberty. The extended family is important to the Yuuzhan Vong, and ties of blood are often more important than those of duty or caste.
Warriors serve as the armies of the Yuuzhan Vong and were formerly one of the largest castes; they are now among the smallest, being less than ten percent of the Vong population. Warriors wear Vonduun crab armor and wield a variety of organic weapons, most famously the amphistaff. They are fierce combatants who adhere strongly to a code of honor, one centered around the principles of courage, martial prowess, benevolence, respect, honesty, virtue, wisdom, and loyalty unto death. This code allows the violent existence of the warrior to be tempered by wisdom and serenity. They do not value their own lives, but take great shame in defeat and failure. To a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, ritual suicide by feeding himself to the ship is considered an acceptable means of penance for serious failure. Yuuzhan Vong warriors are divided into ranks ranging from the Warrior at the bottom all the way on up to the Warmaster. Curiously, despite being an elitist caste that looks down on most others in Yuuzhan Vong society, the warriors are strangely the most accepting of outsiders. Even in the darkest days of the Yuuzhan Vong War, the warrior caste accepted experienced slaves into their lowest ranks and treated them as brethren - something no other caste would have done. They care little for someone's origins or appearance, only that they are honorable and fight well.
Intendants keep Yuuzhan Vong society functioning. They are the merchants, bureaucrats, traders, politicians, and managers of Vong society. Yuuzhan Vong intendants favor Yun-Harla the Trickster goddess. Intendants are the aristocracy and skilled professionals of the Yuuzhan Vong, and despite an often fierce rivalry between the warriors and the intendants they also have most of the economic and social power, second only to the sway the Jeedai hold over the workers and many warriors. Ranks of the intendant caste include Attendant, Executor, Consul, Prefect, High Prefect, and the Supreme Overlord. Intendants are about thirty percent of the Yuuzhan Vong population.
Shapers are the caste responsible for creating all of the biots and biotech used by the Yuuzhan Vong. They are the equivalent of engineers and scientists, and where they were once religious fanatics they are now keenly scientifically-minded. The Yuuzhan Vong learned well the lessons of the Yuuzhan Vong War, and they saw how the innovation and advancement of their enemies led to their defeat. Indeed, many of the shapers have begun to question whether the so-called deadtech is really all that bad of a thing. The ranks of the shapers are riven with heresy, though they are careful to keep such thoughts a secret - particularly from the intendant caste. Ranks of the shaper caste include Shaper Initiate, Shaper Adept, and Master Shaper. Shapers are about three to five percent of the population, depending on the ship.
Jeedai have replaced the old priest caste, and though the Vong have not abandoned their gods they have grown from absolute worship of them. Exclusively Force-sensitive, the Jeedai are simultaneously the smallest and most influential caste in Yuuzhan Vong society. The Jeedai studied at the feet of Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order, and are the spiritual descendants of the Jeedai Heretics who were instrumental in bringing down the Yuuzhan Vong war machine a thousand years ago. They abide by the Jeedai Code as laid down by Luke Skywalker, though the traditions of the Yuuzhan Vong and their deeply religious nature have led to some startling changes. The Jeedai are the advisors and mentors in Yuuzhan Vong society, working most closely with the warrior and worker castes. Ranks of the Jeedai caste include Initiate, Junior Apprentice, Senior Apprentice, Jeedai Knight, Jeedai Master, Councilor, and Grandmaster. Each ship has at least one Jeedai on it and most with a population over a thousand boast at least a small enclave, but only the largest star dreadnoughts can boast a Jeedai Council. The Jeedai are just under one percent of the Yuuzhan Vong population.
Workers are by far the largest caste of Yuuzhan Vong society, serving as servants and laborers. Those non-Vong who are taken into Yuuzhan Vong society are workers unless they submit to vongforming to become more like the Chosen People, and even then few of them escape the worker caste save to become warriors.
A big part of the Yuuzhan Vong culture is their coming of age ritual, a symbolic journey through the land of the dead. In the ritual, a group of young Yuuzhan Vong depart the ships they were born on to embark on a pilgrimage. The exact details of this pilgrimage varies by the individual, but most travel under the guise of an ooglith masquer to prevent their identification as a Vong. During this pilgrimage the young Vong are permitted, even encouraged, to interact with dead technology and foreign cultures. This is because the Vong are considered dead until they return to the fleet. When the young Vong return, they are expected to bring back something of value - whether it be resources, an undiscovered species, or a particular skill. Should the pilgrim fail to do so, no ship's captain would accept him aboard and he is considered dead to his people until he succeeds. Upon his successful return and acceptance onto a new ship, the Yuuzhan Vong is assigned his new caste. Most of the time, the pilgrim is allowed to request a caste, but his ultimate assignment is up to the domain leadership and the ship's captain. Yuuzhan Vong who wish to change from one caste to another must undertake a new pilgrimage, as they cannot change castes in life - only in symbolic death and rebirth. - Technology: The most defining characteristic of the Yuuzhan Vong is their employment of biotech to the exclusion of the more common 'dead' technology. In truth, biotech is often weaker in a direct comparison to dead technology. Yorik coral and Vonduun crab-shell, for example, are weaker than durasteel and can withstand far less stress than deflector shields before failing. Neurons are slower than superconductive wires, and modern laser technology significantly outperforms the yaret-kor plasma cannons at range while proton torpedoes are significantly more dangerous. Even their infamous superweapon of the millennial Yuuzhan Vong War, the dovin basal, is not nearly so potent when pitted against modern inertial dampeners as it once was.
That's not to say that their biotech is without advantage. The Vonduun hulls of the living ships can rapidly regenerate in a matter of hours, even minutes, and recover their shielding very quickly compared to even the regenerative shielding of Mon Calamari vessels. Thanks to the fact that they're living vessels and the cognition hood allows an in-depth connectivity all but impossible with deadtech ships without extensive cybernetic implants, most Yuuzhan Vong vessels require but one crewman to operate - their captains. Dovin basals are quite dangerous to the unprepared, and yaret-kor plasma cannons shred armor and shielding at close ranges. They also employ blue plasma much like that of the Gungan energy balls in grenades and other munitions, technology which a young member of Domain Shai brought back to the fleet nearly six hundred years ago. Yuuzhan Vong warriors and biots are justly feared in hand-to-hand combat as often being the equals of a Jedi Knight thanks to the bioengineering of the shapers, though the Vong warriors tend to do poorly in situations wherein they cannot close into melee range with their foes and can use neither their biot warriors nor their blaster-dampening aerosols to screen them from enemy ranged attacks.
Yuuzhan Vong excel at biological and chemical warfare, ecological engineering, terraforming, organ grafting, medicine, and genetic engineering. - History:
