T'ra Saa, Ood Bnar, and the future of the Neti species

This is an analysis of existing text and comics referring to the Neti...and speculation on what a particular passage in YJK might mean in the light of the events of Republic 83. Humor me and read it?

So, what do we know about these treefolk?

We have three named individuals on record. Two are male, one is female, and all are Jedi Masters(oddly congruent to what we know about Yoda's species). It's speculated the species may have originated on either Ryyk or Myrkr, or left Ryll and moved to Myrkr, or left Myrkr and moved to Ryyk...anyway, T'ra Saa is from Myrkr, though she's not old enough to have been from Ryyk like Ood in any case.

First Neti I'm discussing is, indeed, Master T'ra Saa, who is female. She and Master Tholme have an interesting relationship. She's old...WOTC has her at "quite possibly the oldest Jedi still in the field", which would put her at a Yoda-like age. Jan Duursema (unofficial) has her at 300-400. She can expect at least another millennium in her natural lifespan according to Tholme. While she survives Order 66, her fate after that is unknown.

Or...is it? Weaving old and new canon together has turned up a very interesting possibility for a retcon, I'll get into that at the bottom of this.

The Neti are some kind of shapeshifters. We don't see them use this ability that often in the EU, and they don't seem to shapeshift in combat. T'ra has a resting form that we see in Darkness where her hair grows down around her, but it seems she might still be wearing her robes in that form and she doesn't seem to be any larger than normal.

Her usual form is probably not "normal" - there's no biological reason Neti would have breasts, for instance. T?ra?s normal form seems designed to interact with humans without causing much alarm, though she seems to have problems with the concept of a nose. The different appearance of Ood's normal form can easily be explained by Ood not caring as much about how he presents himself to non-Neti. Perhaps T'ra had an Ood-like appearance...before she met Tholme.

The first Neti we meet does shapeshift at one point. He is Ood B'nar, who is an enormous tree in Dark Empire II that wakes up and does some sort of Force-mutual-annihilation with a Dark Jedi. He's big and immobile. We see how he got that way in The Sith War - he's defending a cache of lightsabers from Exar Kun after the temple is evacuated due to a bad supernova-like thing heading its way. From dialogue, the transformation from vaguely-humanoid to giant tree is permanent. Kun shrugs and leaves him there. In Tales, we learn he was considered dead. For the next four thousand years he's stuck there, apparently completely unknown to other Jedi until the confrontation with the Dark Jedi that Luke witnesses. He dies, and leaves behind "a descendant". We do see him transform from humanoid to giant tree, but this is a special-case thing. and, I think, part of the Neti lifecycle.

So, in Tolkien terms, old Ents get treeish. Now, WOTC disagrees with this. Here's part of their racial description of Neti.

Special Qualities: Metamorph -- A Neti has the innate ability to alter its shape and size at will. A Neti can vary its size anywhere from Medium-size to Large to Huge. A Neti can also alter its form to be roughly humanoid, squat and quadrupedal, or solid and treelike. Changing size and shape is a full-round action...

I'

 

*Alternatively, Ood reproduces on Ossus vegetatively, through an offshoot from his roots. Many plants do this. In Dark Empire II, it seems the baby Neti found suddenly popped up when Ood died.

Rayf and Jem had been tied to Ood when Luke and Kam first first found them and had probably spent a fair amount of time around Ood. So they would probably have noticed his offspring before then. I have to agree that it seems like it suddenly poped up after his death, especially when you consider how desctructive his death was. Yes, Oood had essentially planted himself over the lightsabers, but quite a bit of ground was opened up. It seems likely that anything living would have been destroyed with Ood and Sedriss if it remained that close.

On a different note, would it be ok with you if I add this to the theories page of my website.

 

I can't say I'm that familiar with the YJK series, and I've only seen a little bit of Tra (like half of CW volume 7), but I think the self pollination idea has merit. Or barring the aesexuality theory, it is possible that Ood was pollinated at some point before Kun's attack on Ossus and simply could not immediately gestate the seed. How awkward would that be?

Ood: I'll defend these lightsabers even if it takes *apple falls off of Ood*... well, this is awkward.

Another possibility could be that Neti rely on other sources for pollination, like how hummingbirds and bees pollinate earth flowers. It's possible that Luke or Kam rad recently come into contact of some sort (even just Neti pollen in the air on some planet) and their arrival on Ossus transferred the pollen from Luke's and/or Kam's clothes into Ood's pollen receptors. A flaw in this theory (improbability aside) would be that in DE II, Ood does not appear to be flowering, and if, according to CW, Neti flower when ready to breed, then Ood would not have been prepared to breed.

Or perhaps, Ood had a student in the ancient days of the Jedi whom Ood taught all of his secrets to, and Ood's poor Padawan fell to the Dark Side and got killed in his sleep by Sidious. In other words, Ood could manipulate midichlorions to create life, and he trained Plagueis. Another improbable theory, but there's no reason to believe that the man who knew the secret to immortality would live roughly 4000 years until the most dastardly and cunning Sith Lord killed him.

Three outlandish and highly improbable theories. One of 'em has gotta earn me a Golden Ewok.

 

Well, I find your theory plausible and think it sounds like a lot of fun. I'm tempted to squee, in fact.

I should probably confess, of course, that I don't have any familiarity with the canon on the Neti beyond what you just posted, and I do have a preexisting attachment to shapeshifting tree characters. (...Not just ents, but somehow I don't think this is the time or place for an explanation of fic based on one of Marvel's various far-future X-Men spinoffs.) So mine may not be a standard reaction, and I can't really contribute much offhand.

It does occur to me that if they're concerned about the gene pool -- since even in the optimal event that they both have flawless genes, with no possible bad combinations, and are immune to the ravages of environmental effects on DNA, a little variation might be desirable -- it seems that with enough information, technology, and/or knowledge of the Force, it might be possible to engineer a few of the natural alternate alleles back into their offspring.

 

Kun walks in. Odan-Urr just dies.

I almost laughed my sadow out when I first saw that.

 

I like it very much, great analysis!

For this you earn my very special: Harmony Award 1st class, in the category: "Treesex & dirty Tholme"

 

Well, for Ood to be seed-bearing, he has to bear some female or hermaphrodite flowers. As a plant with entirely male flowers he would produce pollen but no seeds. Seeds don't really gestate, either. They tend to develop on the seed-bearing plant, fall off when they're mature, and germinate there or in whatever location they end up in that's conducive to life.

It should take longer than a few minutes from fertilization to baby Neti in any case.

Hah! A liiiittle improbable, that one.

Well, T'ra does have a thing for Tholme, who is human, though he would be dead by the time period I'm talking about. I'm not saying Ood's offspring and T'ra would necessarily breed, just saying that the probable ability of the Neti to clone themselves means that the species could survive.

Awww....but can I change the name? T'ra and Tholme's love isn't dirty...it's actually rather beautiful, in its own way.

 

Treehugger...

 

Brilliant... I usually don't spend much time reading really long posts but I know so little about the Neti and found this SOOOO interesting... great theroy. The YJK Neti could be T'ra. Maybe she will still be alive by Legacy of the Force/Legacy?

Obiy

 

Tra being alive 'til Legacy era? How many Clone Wars Jedi do we need? I thought we were already expecting K'kruhk and the Freakin' Sweet Hat to make a legacy appearance. Might as well call it Clone Wars-era Jedi Reunion.

 

It's been said the Hat may make it, but I doubt K'Kruhk will show up in Legacy. T'ra makes more sense, as she's from a long lived species and barring accident or murder will live that long. I doubt we'll see her though - Dark Horse likes to leave loose ends around.

I would very much like to see an older T'ra...perhaps more gnarled and tree-like, perhaps just a Master Saa who could be T'ra or could be a relative. But...I doubt it will happen, for either K'Kruhk or T'ra.

 

I would love to see K'kruhk again, but I feel that we may only see the hat. If Neti live for thousands of years, why couldn't T'ra be there?

Obiy

 

Well, sure, though it seems reasonable that some of the clones might eventually engage in some pollination -- but part of what I meant to get at was that concerns about a limited gene pool aren't just about the possibility that inbreeding can allow bad recessives or other problem combinations to show up. Although it is perhaps unlikely with two such obviously resilient individuals, having only two genotypes in the entire population would seem to be a potential vulnerability -- say, to diseases, other new factors. I was just speculating that this might be something they could contrive to remedy.

 

you can choose between Trehugger Award or Plantlove Award^^ as names

 

Ok, so I'm looking through the EGtAS under the Neti species entry on page 88 and I found some stuff that might be of intrest in this thread. First, we have the second paragraph in the entry.

Like most plants, the Neti gained sustenance from photosynthesis and procreated by producing seeds. However, their seeds were produced once every hundred years, and then in small numbers.

Ok, so once every hundred years a Neti produces a few seeds from which their young are produced. This could also give us an idea of how long it takes a Neti to reach adulthood, assuming we say that adulthood is the point at which a species begins to reproduce. Assuming that, we have the Neti living a hundred years before they are adults.

The second item I found of intrest towards this topic has to do with a possible relationship between Ood Bnar and T'ra Saa. It's two paragraph's from Tionne's report in the entry on what she had learned of the Neti from the holocron.

Ood Bnar was apparently of a species called Neti that were native to the planet Ryyk, which was destroyed by a supernova not long before the Sith War, about 4,000 years ago.

Ood survived the cataclysm because he was on Ossus teaching students. According to Baas's Holocron, Ood was the only Neti not on Ryyk when it was destroyed. Only fragements of their culture still exist, which would explain how some documents have mistaken the name of their homeworld for that of their race.

Okay, so assuming that the holocron was right and Ood was the only Neti offworld when Ryyk was destroyed. We know from DEII that Ood leaves behind an offspring after he and Sedriss kill each other, supporting sabarte's idea that the Neti may reproduce through asexual means. Which would be especially helpful if Ood is, indeed, the sole Neti to survive the destruction of Ryyk. So, if that is the case, then it seems possible T'ra Saa may actually be descended directly from Oood, possibly even being his daughter.

 

You forgot Oss Wilum's original master, the ancient Neti Garnoo.

 

No, I didn't. He just isn't important, because all he does is die .

It seems to me like there was an unknown Neti colony-or-original-settlement on Myrkr that T'ra came from. I'm not sure about her being the descendant of Ood, because Ood's supposed to be incommunicado for four thousand years.

As for the Baas's holocron...which Baas's holocron? Vodo or Bodo? Bodo's 600 BBY, Vodo's Sith Wars era. We have to assume that either represents the knowledge of the time about Neti. T'ra's born somewhere from 350-1000ish BBY on Myrkr- and remember, the Jedi avoid Myrkr. We also don't know how long Neti 'childhood' is.

Power of the Jedi says that "A Neti reproduces by producing a few seeds, but this reproduction occurs only once every few centuries". I'm thinking seeds means sexual reproduction, since Ood seems to have the one descendant instead of a dozen or so we'd expect if he was popping out seeds every few hundred years. However, I could be wrong as the phrasing is quite odd...."A Neti reproduces". Almost as if only one is required .

An alternate reading would be that both the 'male' and the 'female' gender produce seeds, implying males have some female or hermaphrodite flowers.

So Neti puberty should be somewhere around 1-300 years, if they have such a concept.

Someone's drawn my attention to an interesting passage from the DEII audio book, which helps clarify things a lot.

I'd say it's almost certainly another 'clone body' for Ood growing back from existing roots. Otherwise the timing is just too convenient. Probably won't have Ood's memories, though. Interesting that the local people consider the tree the source of their magic, and that Ood apparently doesn't wake up when they're conducting odd rituals around him for many years.

 

A few thoughts/questions...

1.) This is brilliant!

2.) How old is Tr'a in the Prequel era? In Darkness, her recap of the Jedi Council's battle against Volfe Karkko (dated "a millennia" ago by Karkko to Quin) seems a little like a reminiscense...

3.) That could well be her in Jedi Under Siege; in which case, we should consider the sentient potplant with the cameo in Shadow Academy...

4.) ... Luke/Tr'a?!

5.) Ood Bnar's rootsystem? I like that a lot - makes plenty of sense...

6.) I would kinda like to keep the size-shifting thing... I thought the way you handled it in life-cycle terms in that fanfic of yours was brilliant, but I'm not sure that Ood Bnar's immobility couldn't be put down to age... and the rapid "tactical" metamorphosis could concievably be Force-fuelled... Neti may store a *lot* of energy...

There's also room for a general study of ruminant trees in Star Wars here, I think...

Zonama Sekot has the massive at-least-semisentient cyborg Jentari, and the spidery lim trees, which, surely significantly, it shares with Yuuzhan'tar - and do I remember the boras being migratory, too?

Also, I wonder if Keyes deliberately reintroduced Dagobah's knobby white spiders alongside the lim trees in The Final Prophecy: trees with a "larval" stage where they walk around on their roots...

And what about the Jedi who've been exposed to the Yuuzhan Vong - Tahiri contemplating becoming a knobby white spider; Jacen sitting under a tree... "greenish", "noseless", "dreadlocked", and "elegant" are words that could be applied to the faces of both Tr'a Saa and Mezhan Kwaad...



Turning to Myrkr, a few thoughts: 1.) "Droids, Technology and the Force" says that the iron that's present in such huge amounts in the Myrkr biosphere is specifically Mandalorian Iron, with its Force-damping effect; 2.) all the vornskrs can still scent Farmboy and Mara's force sensitivity on Myrkr in HttE; 3.) there's nothing to say that the Force-damping effect is caused only by the ysalamiri...

Not sure what any of it means...

Oh, and the lyrics to Duel of the Fates are a Sanskrit translation of a Welsh poem about an army of trees...

Anyone spotted a Neti with an eagle in its hair?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Do I get a Wooden Ewok?

Wellll... The Republic crew seem to think she's around 350, but that's unpublished. The canon source for her age is criminally vague, but implies she's far older.

Seems a little leafy to be a Neti to me.

I don't think he's quite...um...Tholmy enough for her

Both when he transforms and when he explodes iirc he's stated to be drawing massive amounts of energy "from the planet". Looking at the first panel we see T'ra in, she's not actually as tree-like as I thought...her silhouette reminds one of Ood, but she's pretty clearly still wearing her robes and her tendrils aren't abnormally long, just sticking out and obscuring her face. It's just that we can't see her arms. (I'm cool with slow-shapeshifting, I just don't see them turning back from Giant Tree if they take that route, as Ood seem to think it's permanent when he does it and evidently doesn't move at all once he does it)

The Jedi on Yavin goes through her reserves just to move much at all, but that could possibly be explained by the sun or soil not being optimal. Or maybe it takes a lot of stored energy to get out of a torporous state.

Hmm. Hmmmmm. I can't think of a retcon offhand that's even vaguely plausible, but I like where your thoughts are going here.

I'm wondering if there were any remaining Neti of T'ra's kin on Myrkr when the Vong showed up, and if so, what they did.

 

sabarte: Do I get a Wooden Ewok?

Of course!

*Jedi Padawaan Tholme Saa scrunches down to an Ewok shape for sab*



Wellll... The Republic crew seem to think she's around 350, but that's unpublished. The canon source for her age is criminally vague, but implies she's far older.

*nods*

Seems a little leafy to be a Neti to me.

They're metamorphs, and probably have different stages in their life-cycles...

I don't think he's quite...um...Tholmy enough for her

Hmm. I meant to ask... is Tholme baseline human... or Anzati? We know he was trained on Anzat, and he has the whole haircut and big nose thing...

Both when he transforms and when he explodes iirc he's stated to be drawing massive amounts of energy "from the planet". Looking at the first panel we see T'ra in, she's not actually as tree-like as I thought...her silhouette reminds one of Ood, but she's pretty clearly still wearing her robes and her tendrils aren't abnormally long, just sticking out and obscuring her face. It's just that we can't see her arms. (I'm cool with slow-shapeshifting, I just don't see them turning back from Giant Tree if they take that route, as Ood seem to think it's permanent when he does it and evidently doesn't move at all once he does it)

The Jedi on Yavin goes through her reserves just to move much at all, but that could possibly be explained by the sun or soil not being optimal. Or maybe it takes a lot of stored energy to get out of a torporous state.

Could be... I'm reminded a little of Luke on Dathomir, and I guess it's possible that Neti could ("naturally"?) draw on the Force through their roots. Is there geothermal Force energy?

Hmm. Hmmmmm. I can't think of a retcon offhand that's even vaguely plausible, but I like where your thoughts are going here.

*shrug* It could be as simple as Myrkr being Yuuzhan'tar...

I'm wondering if there were any remaining Neti of T'ra's kin on Myrkr when the Vong showed up, and if so, what they did.

Well, there's the Neti slave that carries the ysalamir around on board the ship that captures the YJK...

He nodded to the door guard, who stood aside and stretched the membrane back to admit what looked like a small tree. About the size of a grown Wookiee, the plant had a small but thick crown of foliage. In the center of its trunk was a single knothole with a glassy black orb, which it turned in the commander's direction. Duman Yaght pointed at the center of the hold, and the tree clumped forward on three gnarled root burls.

[...]

The tree continued to advance, and two meters later Jaina lost all contact with her companions. She reached out with the Force and felt nothing. Then, as the tree drew nearer and the rest of the strike team struggled to see what was cutting them off from the Force, Jaina glimpsed a lizardlike shape clinging to the back of the tree - no doubt trying to hide itself from the voracious predator clambering to get it.



- The Imperial Ewok

 

IIRC, the Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds sourcebook mentions a colony of Neti on one of the moon of Ossus...

 

hmmm....well, if Ood is producing seeds by himself, perhaps his loony cultists are planting them and there's additionally a grove of inbred Neti wandering about on Ossus? Wouldn't explain how they got to the moon if they're there, though.

-Good- call on the ysalamir trees in Star by Star. One thing is that there seem to be a lot of them and Neti are rare, but they're almost certainly either Neti or something evolutionarily related to Neti (would expect some of those if Neti evolved on Myrkr).

a thought....perhaps Ysalamiri are -cultivated- by Neti so that vornskyrs don't bother them? One grows on a Neti, shutting out the Force. Note that the YV ysalamir-on-a-tree has a smaller range than usual, perhaps due to blocking out its host...Presumably Neti have worked out a workaround...

Assumes vornskyrs would like to eat Neti, of course.

 

Well, Vornskyrs are like dogs, and there are some things dogs do on trees that most sentients wouldn't be too happy with, if you know what I mean.

And, Thrawn, if sabarte gets a wooden Ewok, there must be something up your sleeve for the Ood Bnar trained Plagueis theory.

 

Technically, Sabarte, we all came from seed, not just Bnar.