Lit Reading NJO...Again

I don't find that odd. Yal Phaath and his aides did interbred the Vornskr and the Fery Xyn from their Vong-Homeworld. But such interbreeding may not always be successful. My guess: Maybe there was just one successful hybrid Voxyn, while all other tries to melt the genes of both species did not work. Thus they had just one template and had to clone it. Otherwise Cilghal would have found more genetic diversity.

 

What I find strange is how they were able to make the voxen grow into full size in a short time* and have all the knowledge, instinct and reflexes needed to be a highly effective predator.

* do we know how fast they grew?

 

@Gamiel,
Thrawn did breed/clone stormtroopers in one year with the Spaarti clone cylinders in the TTT. And as Commander Chine-kal told Ganner Rhysode: Also the Yammosk is a creation, not naturally grown, that he may have all the knowledge to distinguish a Jedi and to guide the coral skippers - by implantation of knowledge without going to school or academy or whatever.

 

But the Vong don't have anything like that kind of technology. I'm wondering how they did it with their bio-tech, or are you saying that the voxen creators committed heresy and used non-bio-tech?

 

Predators can mature quickly. And the YV clearly do have the capability to personality-program their slaves and creatures - the only real difficulty with the Yavin project is adapting the Qah protocol to a human mind, and they produce entire legions of reptoid slave-infantry, apparently from nothing more than information in a qahsa. Because the voxyn are based in part on creatures from the Yuuzhan Vong bestiary, they may be able to "program" them with little difficulty.

This also, incidentally, explains why the voxyn cloning project is so important, and solves something that's always been a continuity puzzle about the Myrkr mission. They could easily clone more voxyn from the ones that they have remaining (a few of which last until at least Destiny's Way), but they can't replicate the personality programming, which was destroyed in the damutek...

,
Mac

 

not large ones and the voxyn are at least the size of ponies

but do we know how they do it?

 

Yeah, could he growth hormones, but it is odd. Unless they were developing them since before the invasion and they just matured now ( though I think the books exclude this idea.) it seems like they just grow really fast?

They do have training grounds, so maybe they just have a rushed crash course in Jedi hunting?

Seems like the more we examine the Voxen the less sense they make.

 

That's less relevant to the "knowledge, instincts and reflexes". A quick check around the internet suggests that many predators - wolves, tigers, cougars, hyaenas - become adult in about two years. Some, like bobcats and jackals, can mature in under a year. Foxhounds - trained, domesticated pack-predators like the voxyn - are "cubbed" at half a year old. Other people will be more knowledgable about this than me - but I supect the point is largely moot, as we can proabably imagine the voxyn having the equivalent of fast-production clone-troopers' "flash-print" skillsets.

They have a technique called the Qah protocol. Technically speaking, the science is probably not that different than "flash-printing" of clones, but the technology simply uses biots rather than machines. This allows them to implant memories and program reflexes. Copying those memories in the first place is easy enough that a Master Shaper can literally steal them from one of their adepts in their sleep. The only challenge with the Yavin project was adapting the technique to a species outside their own shaped bestiary that wasn't covered by the protocol. The Wookieepedia page on the topic is not really accurate.

Voxyn, as they are based on creatures from within the bestiary as well as vornskrs, may be simple to program using the Qah protocol and the existing fero xyn behaviour template.

There's an implication that the voxyn project only began after the ex-stormtrooper officer commanding the Peace Brigade mercenaries on Yavin mentioned Karrde's vornskrs to the YV. Certainly, Viqi's delivery of some vornskrs is implied to have provided them with their genetic material. Both possibilities could be put down to coincidence or part of a wider and longer narrative, but they suggest that the creatures were developed rapidly.

On the other hand, there's also a reasonably long gap between novels before Star by Star, so the schedule doesn't have to be too implausibly intense...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Well they may be based on biological lifeforms, but the Vong are going to make sure they are keeping "production" levels on track. They had a civilization to sustain and a war to wage after all.

 

I don't think the ships work as a clear example, since aren't they grown from coral, not a living animal in and of itself.

Making some planets grow quickly is different to having an animal grow and do something as difficult as sense and hunt jedi.

I wonder if the Vong have production lines. I would have been neat to see, an artificial ampistaff growth.

 

Amphistaffs are created in "groves", which we see in Traitor and I think Star by Star (at least, Jacen in Traitor remembers encountering some earlier on Myrkr, though I can't find that passage quickly) - they're grown off root-creatures, six to fifteen per root in their wild form. Much of the YV equipment (lambents, villips, larger coralskippers, even in a sense yammosks) seems to be created in plantations, which are an interesting example of the pattern of wrongness within their society - they function exactly like colonial plantations in the real-world imperial systems of the seveneenth-to-nineteenth centuries, crudely exploiting occupied territories and enslaved populations for the benefit of the "master race" in a way that's morally utterly abhorrent (and also, I'd argue, largely incompetent and unnecessary as well - I've long been convinced that plantation systems are an inefficient way of doing things, as well as an ugly one, but that's perhaps too heavy an argument for a Star Wars fan discussion).

As an aside, I'll note that Harrar's justifications about how the YV are being virtuous in their colonial plantations by encouraging biodiversity and "repaying" what Jedi would call the Force for the damage they've caused shows how the YV can construct sef-justifications that allow them to overlook what they're really doing...

And all this leads on to an interesting thought about Yuuzhan Vong socio-economics. The plantations we see in the NJO - even the special ones aboard the Traitor seedship - are generally run using large gangs of newly-imported slaves (again, exactly like real colonial plantations). Makes me wonder if the YV previously used their reptoid infantry-creatures for that role too, or if they have other slave-species in the bestiary for the purpose. The implication is that the rarely-seen "worker caste" don't actually do this sort of work - rather than the generic labourers we generally assume, they do the low-end jobs within the "imperial" society that benefits from the plantation slave-economy.

The one place we get a decent discussion of them - the New Jedi Order Sourcebook - supports this, describing a range of roles such as scholars educating young YV of all castes, and technicians keeping captured infidel machinery working as necessary in occupied systems (an interesting insight - the YV scientists who study infidel machines are part of the worker caste), with garbage collectors at the bottom and personal attendants to higher-caste élites at the top, and a major aim among members of the class being social mobility via sponsorship from a warrior or priest to upcaste themselves; the NJOSB also says they can be statted as thugs which suggests they might provide at least the muscle of the YV equivalent of organized crime and - because organized crime often involves smuggling - raises the possibility that they might be involved in some way in "trade", but (speculating even more wildly for a moment) the typical examples might be more like cargo handers and shopfitters in a big city than any of the above. Or in other words, like a lot about the YV the caste system works as a metaphor.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Coral is, however, constructed by animals - polyps - which live in the coral structure. Hence the term is often used to collectively refer to both the structure and the polyps that are living in it.

Not all corals have this exoskeleton, but since Yuuzhan Vong ships are often referred to as stone or stony, it's safe to say that they're stony coral rather than soft coral:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral

 

Bandolier form? Can you expand on this?

Instinct yes, but knowledge and reflexes is something you train in.

According to the Wook' so are voxyn 1 m at the shoulders, making them around the size of tigers (but they seem to have more body mass); while bobcats, jackals and foxhounds are notably smaller with the foxhound being larges with it's 64 cm as highest.

That probably means that in some kind of "natural state" so would they take around 2 years to be full-grown, and they are going to need a nutritious and constant/semi-constant diet during that time.

How much IU time is that in practice? Asking as one who has no clue about this.

Do we know if they are spawned in those groves or if the groves function as nursing chambers for them to grow in (and possibly receive "programing")?

That's a interesting way to say that they are destroying the native biodiversity by introducing highly dangerous invasive species.

You say slaves, the vong probably say "bio-tech that has not been fully trained jet and need some more turns in the breeding program".

Of course, the non-vongs lifeless constructs are not creation by some rational science known to vongkind and the scientists have better stuff to do than to try to understand those alien dead-tech.

since all vong equipment are supposed to be alive do I take that garbage refer to carcases and droppings.

But you do have to agree that AusStig point about the ships not being a single organism and grown instead of birthed.

 

So...does anyone want to carry on my question of Vong mythology?

We know what the Vong thought about how the universe came to be, how would they think it would end? How would they see their role in the broader cosmic picture.

They are the children of Yun-Yuuzhan but what theologically does that mean?

 

Warriors armed with "bugs" normally carry a dozen of them on a shoulder-slung belt over their armour. The best description is of the blast bug bandolier in Traitor - a "linked belt of hexagonal germination chambers", in which the blast bugs are apparently created.

The Praetorite Vong prison guards who Jacen rescues Danni from in Vector Prime also use their bandoliers to carry "clublike melee weapons" - perhaps the shorter tsasisi baton version of the amphistaff?

Or if you're a YV, you can program them in using a Qah protocol.

But my point is that even if they do need to train the voxyn individually (and I personally doubt this), natural predators can mature within a year, and domesticated pack-hunters can be active even quicker...

Well, as they're clones, I'd imagine that everything is vastly accelerated. The ones in Destiny's Way are already considered past their best.

The question is, I suppose, about the creation of the "prime clone" / "voxyn queen" - did they start with a fero xyn, created from genetics and skillset templates stored in the qahsa, or with an actual wild vornskr, and somehow manage to remake that pre-existing creature with traits from the other type, creating a hybrid down to the genetic level with consistent DNA that could serve as a cloning template?

Or was even the "prime clone" created from genetic tinkering with DNA in a lab?

Either way, I don't think there need to have been any voxyn that were grown as voxyn at a natural rate...

Going by the internal chronology of the novels, at least a year and a half after Balance Point - the twins were seventeen and a half then, and they're nineteen in Star by Star. Possibly over a year after the end of Edge of Victory: Rebirth. This is a tricky topic, though - I may have more precise details noted somewhere...

The amphistaffs seem to be a renewable resource collected off the root-creature when mature. Even the wild variety are fully functional as weapons (as Jacen uses wild amphistaffs in Traitor) - so their "programming" presumaby comes from the symbiotic way they work with the root-creature to catch prey, like a very sophisticated sort of flytrap.

Yes, exactly. I'd have hoped that was already clear from the rest of what I went to say immediately after what you quoted...

I'm not sure how serious you are, but I'm not sure that would necessarily bring a change in status - Shedao Shai still thinks of their fully-trained and genetically optimized reptoid infantry-creatures as "slaves"....

That's the point - the Shapers don't do machine tech; but the reference to worker caste "technicians" whose role is to understand and where necessary use and maintain infidel machine technology is not only a fun continuity detail, but also seems like a very striking indication of what that caste actually do - "lower-caste" doesn't necessarily mean unskilled...

I assume this means that they're taking the trash to recycling or at least to landfill. This could include simple detritus like sloughed-off skin and shell, as well as the remains of creatures that have been used for various purposes, but plenty of vongtech, ranging from simple cutlery to the largest of their built structures, is not actually "alive", but either crafted from discarded or rendered organic materials such as shell or bone, or else made from naturally-extruded but inert substances that are similar to pearl, concrete and reconstructed stone. What matters to them is the process, and they could easily be as bad about disposasble waste as high-tech urbanism.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I now imagine an Arthur Weasley type Vong studying alien metalbased technology trying to understand it and the enemy for his superiors...

Of course that had been Nom Anors role for years, political unrest aside. Does he supervise that workforce of technicians given it is his specialty?

 

And I imagine Tsavong Lah as a kind of Professor Snape to safe Jacen. "He belongs to the Supreme Overlord."

Does somebody know, what exactly that Eclipse is, which is the save haven organized by Luke and Booster Terrik for the Jedi in NJO? Is that a planet or just the name of an organization?

 

This is complicated, as there are multiple separate secret bases:

Eclipse is a planet in the Deep Core, which is essentially a Jedi military base with a big hangar housing a force of seventy X-wings plus some Skipray Blastboats and other combat vessels. This appears only in Star by Star - the security of the base seems to be compromised by the end of the book, and we never hear of the place being used again.
Shelter is the old Maw Instillation on the Outer Rim, which is the main civilian refuge of the Great River network - this first appears in Edge of Victory: Rebirth, and remains a secret redoubt for the rest of the NJO.
The location referred to as the hidden Jedi base in Dark Journey is something of a puzzle. This is where L/M and then H/L relocate to in the middle of the novel (and actually Jaina, Lowie and Kyp's scenes in chapter 22 might be there too), but is never specifically identified, and might be either of the above, or the Errant Venture, which is where the Jedi Academy is based in the mid-NJO. I think there are deliberate games being played here about what's mentioned on the page and what isn't.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Eclipse is a planet in the deep core.

I had thought it might be tython. But it is never named as such and they never make a big deal about where they are (other than it being a place to hide), so it is likely just some planet in the deep core.

Anyone else find it odd how little the NR use the deep core once the core is occupied. I know e-9, but after that they seem to just ignore it. To me it seems like a good place to launch raids and aid resistance forces with in the core.

Or could that be why they don't use it, to not give the impression they ONLY care about the core.

 

Maybe 'Eclipse' is not a code name but the actual name of the planet?

 

yeah, that could be it, but the planet has so little info I assumed it was planet we had history with.

 

Any reason to why you assumed that? Just wondering.

 

no not really. I only know a handful of Deep Core worlds. and I just read NJO fully, after playing SWTOR, so I had Tython on the brain so to speak.

I also just enjoy the jedi returning to their old worlds and reclaiming them. Like they do with Ossus.

Although I fear the only reason that happened is because Legacy established it.

 

Now that is a nice idea, Eclipse being Tython makes sense, given the dark fate that befell Tython calling it Eclipse is logical.

But the Essential Atlas established them as two different locations in L-10 and M-11 respectively.