Darth Hauntruss
Wraith of the Sith
The Palashintu or the Forgeborn
The Mahashutu Avatar leading the Palashintu Hive Swarm into battle
Preface:This was a race idea had for a long-time. It was always a half-bake “this would be cool” kinda thing. But seeing my inspiration for it has arisen once more and that race construction as a mechanic on this site has developed a bit, I feel confident now to share the idea with you guys. I always wanted to create a race that was born from the most horrifying and creepy things I can conjure from my cluster of inspirations. A race that was the stuff of nightmares and would terrorise the galaxy but not in the way say the Sith do through power and cruelty or say the Vong through strange bio-monstrosities. But, rather race that through shear alien familiarity and horrific appearance (and some Lovecraftian aesthetics for good measure) are just downright creepy. I hope you find them as interesting and morbidly fascinating as I did making them up.
I’d like to say I think they’d be a nice addition to the more menacing and mysterious type of races that the site could utilize. Still some working to be done and would love any feedback or brainstorming ideas. Also as a side note, the worlds Golgoroth and Nimon II are fictional and I will lore craft them if needed.
Introduction
Ta̷͢͜l̢͜s̨u͞͠h̡ ̸́͟k̸͘i̸͟ ̛҉P͠ą̢̕l̀á̸͠s̶h̶̛g҉a҉
̷́T̸al̷us̷̶̛h̨̨́ ̷͠͞k̵̴i̡͏͜ ̶̀͘P̡a͟͏l͝a͏ş̛́h̷įn͜͠t̵͡u
Translated: “Feed the Forge Mother, Feed the Swarm”
–A passage form an unknown Palashintu relic
–A passage form an unknown Palashintu relic
Who are the Palashintu? Not many are left alive to tell you. Perhaps an adventurous ancient galactic explorer form the early days of the galaxy or an equally ancient Sith Lord who came across one of their hive fleets long ago could tell you a few cryptic lines. That is if their own records still exist. People seem to think everything that’s worth discovering has been explored in this galaxy – but there are some terrors that deserve to remain asleep, deserve to remain…undiscovered.Lifeform and Appearance
The Palashintu, or in Galactic Basic Standard “The Forgeborn” are a supremely ancient race from the dawn of civilizations in our galactic history. They appear as twisted grotesque mechanical horrors that communicate to one another through intrusive telepathic visions, and if you are unfortunate enough to intercept such mental-dialogue your brain would process it into loud painful banshee like shrieks of piercing pain. And when they do audibly speak it’s in an incompressible language of incoherent electromagnetic static and shrill gargle of syllables. When speaking to other races they simply manipulate the vocal-modulators in their cybernetic throats to mimic whatever language you are speaking.
For the Palashintu live and die in their metallic cybernetic monstrosity of a body they call a “Sleeve”. They are genderless horrifying metal suits of forge created cybernetic organs, muscles, embedded weapons, neuro-transmitter machines and other products of warped engineering. However, they are not entirely robotic, no, a real Palashintu is no smaller than a Ewok and less fleshy. A real Palashintu is nothing but a spinal column, a nervous system and a flat disc like brain with several tendril like protrusions. They are breed, nurtured and grown inside enormous Exo-Biowombs that are built into their hive fleets. Then when they reach a level of advanced sentience they are installed into their sleeves.
A Palashintu, when born, can be programmed to fulfill a number of tasks. There are super sentient Palashintu, highly intelligent and a supreme power over telekentic powers and telepathy. While there are simple Drones, heavily muscled Palshintu with basic semi-sentience used for the most menial of labor tasks. There are some Palashintu that are embedded into their ships and act as the computer, navigation system and brain. Others are given the gift of ancient engineering lore and are tasked with creating the war and civil machines, and therefore their bodies are given several extra limbs to do many tasks at once. Whatever the Forge Mother commands, you shall become.
The Palashintu are Force-Sensitive creatures. They can use the force to sense, communicate, study and telepathically attack. But due to their real flesh forms being so weak are in able to do any more than that. And only some of the Palashintu are born with the ability to process the force and use it. The Warrior Priests and Engineers are granted the power at birth with the body to process the force for the purposes of building and construction; and in the case of the Warrior Priests defending the hive.
Brief Cultural Introduction
The Palshintu worship one being and one being alone – the Forge Mother. The Forge Mother however is no mythical being or metaphorical god. The Forge Mother is quite literally a sentient forge the size of a world and within it lies the very programs, fleshy membrane and soul that creates and reproduces the Palashintu. It is unknown who or what created it or if it just came into existence, but what is known is the Forge Mother herself came to this galaxy from the remnants of a celestial catastrophe. It was last seen hiding in a dead nebula concealed by the nebulas force devouring storms and ion cyclones.
However, to propagate her children she made copies of herself. Smaller less omnipowerful forge chambers that would help spread the breeding of the Palashintu. These chambers would blast of into the galaxy and when they landed on a technologically advanced world begin to devour and assimilate the world’s technologies to cyber-terraform it into the perfect nest for the Palashintu eggs. For if anything the Palashintu care not for galactic domination or glory, but simply to breed, produce and feed the Forge Mother to create even more ghastly monstrosities.
The closest the Palashintu get to an organized religion is the Mahashutu, “The Sacred Avatar”. The Avatar is a being that is given temporarily the ability to synchronize with the Forge Mother so that the Mother can guide her children and administrate to their growth. The Avatar is in a way the High Priestess and Arbiter of the Palashintu hive she controls. Along with the Mahashutu is her personal cohort of Priest Lords and Priest Warriors. Below them are the Swarm Chiefs and Swarm Lords. They culture and society of the Palashintu operates in a hierarchical almost insect like nest mentality. But they are not mindless devourers, no, they have a very complex and devout understanding of technology and lore. In fact they crave electronic knowledge. Holocron, holorecords, datapads anything with stored data and knowledge is absorbed by the Palashintu and the stored within a great Hive Library within the Forge Mother through telepathic connection.
Brief History (WIP)
The Palashintu first come into recorded galactic history, when one of their Hive Fleets (one which the ancient galactic records call Hive Fleet Golgoroth) comes into contact with the modestly humanoid colonized world of Golgoroth. The Hive Fleet finds the world suitably technologically advanced and deploys its Forge Chambers to begin the horrific cyber-terraforming. Many are slaughtered and much of the world is assimilate and processed into the great Forge Eaters (giant citadels designed to eat technology and then spit out Palashintu tech). After Golgoroth was consumed, the Hive Fleet moved on to Nimon II.
A Palashintu Hive Chamber cyber-terraforming on NIMON II
Nimon II was a planet of humanoid and ancient insectoid peoples run by a monarchy. However, this monarchy was also allied to the newly created Empress Teta Empire. When word came of the Palashintu’s assault, the high lords of Teta answered the call and began a war to destroy the Palashintu. But no matter how many they slayed the Palashintu could not be stopped. Nimon II itself was eventually cyber-terraformed into a horrific non-Euclidean city world (like Coruscant). Revealed to the galactic civilizations the Tetan Armies with the newly created Jedi Order began a counter. At this time the very first Sacred Avatar was created and this Avatar led the Palashintu Invasion that nearly penetrated into the heart of the galactic core. However, due to unrecorded reasons they were defeated. No one is really sure what occurred during the final confrontations in the galaxies outer rim. But what was for certain is the Palashintu abandoned Nimon II and Golgoroth, leaving to become centuries old wastelands and dead worlds. Returning to their Hive Fleets they vanished into the void of space and some sleep within their large necrotombs waiting for the Forge Mother to reawaken them.
