Bookworm
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To submit a more esoteric Sithspawn experiment
- Image Credit: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/best-regulus-the-heart-of-the-lion/
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
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- Name: Awata Rokatsa - High Sith for Phantom Light
- Designation: Semi-sentient
- Origins: Amaltanna
- Average Lifespan: Because they are a crystalline-based organism combined with the spirit of a starweird through alchemy, their lifespans are difficult to calculate as the crystals do not decay or age. Until the crystal that forms their body is destroyed, they can remain active although they will enter a state of extreme hibernation if they do not feed after some time and would require outside stimulation to reawaken.
- Estimated Population: Rare
- Description: From a distance, they appear much like any other star visible from a ship's viewport or from a planet's surface, just small pinpricks of light. Up close, they are a chunk of irregular purple crystal that pulsates as though it were a heartbeat. Force Sensitives would be able to sense the twisted and hungry spirit contained in the crystal, and their victims, unknowingly, presume it to be some sort of mutated starweird or phantom from the Netherworld.
- Breathes: As they are a crystalline creature, they do not require any atmosphere to survive and can even survive in the vacuum of space as their intended purpose is to lurk in a star system.
- Average Height of Adults: 0.3 meters
- Average Length of Adults: N/A
- Skin color: While they do not have skin, as they are made of crystal, they typically range throughout the color purple's spectrum.
- Hair color: No hair
- Distinctions: The most distinctive physical trait is just their general makeup as they are creatures made of crystal, but their more defining traits of their spirits and what phantoms and projections they create. The most common apparition they will create against their victims is the shape and form of a shifting violet starweird that is sparking with lightning, but they can also project images of their victim's fears or paranoia to incite them.
- Races: No other races
- Force Sensitivity: All
- As they were formed through alchemically altering a tsil, they retain their ability to channel and amplify light and life energy. They emit light from their bodies in a long range, and it is through this rather innocuous ability they form connections with their victims and prey. The light they emit is laced with Sith sorcery and allows them to form connections with the minds and spirits of beings or creatures that allows them to cast a heightened version of Force Phantom and cause chaos by linking their projections to others their light has touched. They are able to maintain multiple connections to victims at once and cause chaos when a projection is killed and another member of the crew would suddenly drop dead from the wound instead.
- Retaining some of the abilities of the starweird, the Awata Rokata can use Drain Life, Telekinesis, Force Lightning, and Force Sight either through their crystalline forms or through their conjured phantasms much like a Sith familiar can be used to channel Force powers through it.
- While their light is quietly insidious, strong-willed individuals can resist the sorcerous connections trying to be formed and trained Force Sensitives will have a sense of something trying to latch onto them if they have training in Force Sense.
- If the crystalline body of the creature is targeted by a kinetic munition or a strong enough force that would break rock or crystal, they will shatter and instantly be killed. In addition, any stored energy they held would be released through the Force and temporarily augment an individual's power if they are Force Sensitive.
- Diet: Force and Life Energies, Light, and Radiation
- Communication: They communicate telepathically among their own kind and with their master through senses and images rather than a spoken language, although they can understand commands from their bonded master spoken in the Sith language.
- Technology level: No technology level
- Religion/Beliefs: No religion or belief system
- General behavior: Awata Rokatsa are incredibly patient hunters and stalkers, combining their tsil origins and the predatory instincts of the starweird merged with them. They will quietly lurk within a star system, acting as though they are merely pieces of rock orbiting the system while shining their soft light to blend in with the starscape around them. As prey, designated by their controlling master, enters their territory, they will focus their light beams onto the passing ship with a focus on a ship's bridge or viewports near the engines as they attempt to cripple the ship's piloting or trajectory by projecting their phantoms through the crew members there. The creatures delight in the suffering and carnage unleashed by their projections, feeding off the fear and life energies of those they are connected to and that die within proximity of their phantoms.
Begun as a side project by Darth Arcanix as a way to create more insidious and innocuous guardians for Sith-held systems, focus on the project was renewed after the events on Odavessa. Acquiring the starweird subjects needed for the experiments was the relatively easy part, but the Lady of Secrets and her followers needed to find the proper host for their experiment. They wanted something that could lurk in space, but would not draw attention to themselves, ruling out such creatures as neebray and purrgil as hosts. It was Arcanix herself that struck upon using a species of sentient crystal from Nam Chorios, the tsil, as an anchor due to their abilities of manipulating light and the Force.
A secret mission was assigned to her apprentice and her associates to acquire tsil subjects from the Imperial controlled world and to be brought back to her facility at Amaltanna. Once retrieved, the sorcerous fusion rituals and alchemical alterations began by binding and combining the captured starweirds with the tsils, horribly twisting the minds and spirits of the peaceful crystals. The result were the Awata Rokatsa, the Phantom Lights in High Sith, creatures that could emit sorcery laden light and hide within the starscapes of a star system to project corporeal phantoms to those who fell within their light beams.
The first creature was quietly released in neutral space along a common stop for transports in the Outer Rim as a test, and from her spies embedded among the spacer community, word quickly spread of a formerly safe stop becoming haunted by ships filled with slaughtered crews and terrifying phantoms.
