Mawite Legend
Drudges of the Maw
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To reflect the BotM's development and the consequences of past threads.
- Image Credit:
- Top Image: Scorn concept art, by Filip Acovic, via Rock Paper Shotgun
- Description Image: Scorn concept art, by Filip Acovic, via Rock Paper Shotgun
- Bottom Image: The Mandalorian season 2 concept art, by Ryan Church, found here (no Tineye results)
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Brotherhood of the Maw, Moon Children, Strand Cast, Exegol, Invasion of Rhand, Invasion of Lao-mon
- Name: Drudges
- Designation: Semi-Sentient
- Origins: Brotherhood of the Maw, Exegol
- Average Lifespan: 1 Year
- Estimated Population: Inter-Planetary
Description: Drudges are tall, pale, hairless humanoids with glassy eyes and mouthless faces. They are oddly proportioned, with bulky torsos and virtually no neck. Their chests appear to be covered in an exoskeleton, but this is actually external muscle. The result is that Drudges are incredibly strong, with an insect-like capacity to carry objects far larger and heavier than they are. Many consider the Drudges eerie to behold; they are utterly silent, and stare unblinking either at their given task or the person currently issuing their orders. They do not vocalize from exertion or pain, and do not show any kind of emotion at all, though the strange, feathery sound of hundreds of Drudges breathing through their nose flaps can become quite loud in an enclosed space.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
- Breathes: Type 1 Atmosphere
- Average Height of Adults: 2 Meters
- Average Length of Adults: N/A
- Skin color: Grey-White
- Hair color: N/A
- Races: N/A
- Force Sensitivity: Non-Sensitive
Distinctions: As strand casts, Drudges are genetically identical, but often bear wear and tear on their bodies that sets them apart. While whipping or beating them is unnecessary, as they are unable to comprehend rebellion or freedom and simply work at their full capacity toward whatever task they are given, that doesn't stop some Mawites from striking the eerie clone workers for fun. Others are damaged in battle, or emerge from the vats with slight imperfections. These potential differences include facial malformations, scars on their heads, arms, or chests, and missing chunks of external muscle. "Old" drudges nearing their biological expiration date grow visibly paler, moving from purplish-grey to a stark white that indicates they should soon be recycled.
Strengths:
- Strength: Individual Drudges can lift and haul loads of 500 kilograms (over 1,100 pounds). In teams they can move even larger loads.
- Efficiency: Drudges are cheap to mass-produce in Exegol's cloning vats, and can be recycled to make more when they die.
- Endurance: Drudges are tireless, never needing sleep. They excel at long hours of simple tasks, from picking crops to forging bullets.
- Obedience: Drudges lack the capacity to differentiate Mawites from non-Mawites, and will obey anyone's commands.
- Nonviolence: Drudges are incapable of fighting. They cannot grasp the concept of violence, and do not react to being harmed.
- Unintelligence: Drudges have limited cognition. They cannot reason or imagine, only carry out simple tasks while supervised.
CULTURE
- Diet: Other. Drudges have no mouths, and are intravenously fed a nutrient cocktail.
- Communication: Drudges cannot speak, but understand Galactic Basic, and can nod or shake their heads.
- Technology level: Galactic Standard, as used in Mawite installations. Drudges build nothing for themselves.
- Religion/Beliefs: Obedience is the only religion for Drudges. They obey all commands without question.
General behavior: Drudges are only semi-sentient, and their entire lives - programmed to last only a single year before their biological material is recycled to make more of them - are toil on behalf of their Mawite masters. They do not sleep, and are fed through an IV drip hooked into a biological port on their left arms, allowing them to labor literally around the clock. However, the types of labor they are able to perform are limited. They can plow fields, operate basic machinery, and assemble simple devices, but any multi-step task is beyond them. Overseers must be on hand to coordinate teams of Drudges, ensuring that no obstacles or added variables interfere in their work; Drudges in such situations tend to either freeze up or try to proceed despite the interference, often with problematic results.
To compensate for these deficiencies, Drudges often work alongside organic slaves, who complete more complex steps of processes such as munitions assembly or farming while the extremely strong strand casts perform the simple, brute labor. The presence of Drudges, and the shortage of slaves, gives slaves an opportunity to rise above something. Laborers who earn the trust of Mawite overseers, usually by a combination of working hard without complaint and informing on other slaves for plotting to escape or rebel, are allowed to openly supervise teams of Drudges. Those who succeed in such roles are then allowed to supervise other slaves, eventually rising to become lesser Overseers. The hate, pain, and fear experienced by slaves often drives them to abuse Drudges, the only ones they can safely lash out at.
The Drudges, with their deliberately-limited intellects, don't even notice.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
In the wake of Csilla's destruction, the collapse of the Sith Empire, and the decline of the Bryn'adul, multiple large galactic governments declared war on the Brotherhood of the Maw. The first major attacks on Mawite core territory within the Nihil Retreat and surrounding systems, launched at Rhand and Lao-mon, caused massive disruption to the Brotherhood's slave trade. With Port Sorrow utterly destroyed and Goshen War Camp ravaged, not to mention the Holy City of Gehinnom shot from the sky, hundreds of thousands of forced laborers were killed or, in a few lucky cases, rescued. The Brotherhood depended heavily on slave labor to maintain its war machine, and the loss of so many slaves - and the cloning vats of Gehinnom - threatened to disrupt their entire logistical chain.
Nor did the Maw have the manufacturing capacity to build a droid labor force, or the connections to buy one.
As usual, the Mawites found their solution in corrupted mysticism and vile technology. The Brotherhood had recently moved its capital to the shadowed Sith world of Exegol, home to ancient and powerful cloning labs capable of creating genetically-engineered "strand casts". While the Sith of old often focused on creating particularly powerful strand casts, imbued with potent Force-sensitivity, the Mawites saw that the vats could just as easily be used to mass-produce much simpler creatures. Thus were born the Drudges, cheap and expendable laborers to fill in the labor shortage while slaver gangs combed the galactic north for new captives. Drudges were soon deployed to Mawite starships, stations, and planetary installations, performing simple tasks with droid-like obedience.
