Valarauko
Neryn cursed as something snapped under his foot. It was, unsurprisingly, a withered tree branch, dropped by one of the light-starved wroshyr giants that towered on both sides of the path. The trees here were skeletal, gray, and long bereft of life. The cause wasn't hard to ascertain: almost every nearby surface was coated in webbing.
It stretched between the gargantuan branches of the treetops far above, and coated the gnarled, twisting roots below just as profusely. Regrettably, this made flying difficult. He'd already tried, and had been forced to burn his way through several webs before giving up.
The earth here hardly deserved the privilege of touching his feet, but one had to endure many discomforts on the path to glory.
A saner being would probably have been worried. Kashyyyk was one of the deadliest places in the entire galaxy for the unprepared, with even the most experienced hunters being regularly claimed by the endless jungle. Places like this one were another matter entirely.
Trees, trees, trees. It was like being back on Brosi again, minus the clear eye for decorating that the governor there seemed to enjoy. Kashyyyk was different. Older, more untamed, more malevolent. Its trees huddled close, and greedily blocked the light of the sun and stars from reaching the ground.
Were he not trying to be at least a little subtle, Neryn might have succumbed to the temptation to burn them down. He was a thing of fire, after all, a manifestation of violent and indiscriminate cleansing. Today was not for such cleansing, however. The fire would just have to contain itself.
The time to burn would come later, after all. It always did.
Still, the less attention drawn today, the better. Kashyyyk held no master, for the time being, but the despised Imperial Confederation had encroached close upon it. At least, they had until their untimely disintegration, broken upon the immovable wall of the Sith as so many Imperial states had been before them. Neryn had done some cursory research before coming here, and had been informed that the Imperials had held this place before, far in the past. Indeed, Kashyyyk had swallowed many an army and nation that had thought to place a restraining hand upon it. That didn't mean nobody would try again, and he had no interest in running across a hostile surveying force.
He'd passed such signs of past conquest already. Great rusting walker-hulks, fragments of armor, the occasional ancient weapon. All reclaimed by vine and tree and dirt. All monuments to past failure and present irrelevance.
Here, life endured where metal and wheels did not. Typically, these past overlords had come for the planet's resources or, more commonly, its people. Neryn thought himself a little more forward-thinking than this.
He was here for the Wyyyschokk.
Anything else Kashyyyk offered could be found with greater ease elsewhere, but if one wanted spiders, one need only come here.
The Creator-Mother had taught him that living things were but tools, to be taken and twisted into an image one found more pleasing. For his part, Neryn already found spiders pleasing. The possibility of making his own, however, was simply too tempting to ignore. With the arrogance all-too-typical to the Sith, he believed himself very capable of improving upon evolutionary perfection.
Best to continue along, too. He'd been out here for some days now, seeking the places where the forest grew dark under the shadow of cloying webs. The places where the sound of scurrying legs and clicking mandibles drifted faintly on the breeze.
They'd probably already be watching. Sizing him up as prey. All he had to do was walk along, and wait for one to make the worst mistake of its wretched life.
Neryn could practically feel their beady eyes upon him. He fancied, too, that they were not the only things hunting the jungle on this fine afternoon.
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