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"The Vong understood something the Jedi never will; flesh is only a garden, and we choose what grows in it.” -Darth Maladi
Unknown Space - Vaa Nokkul
A millenia ago, before darkness swept across the galaxy and before the current reigns;, the Yuuzhan Vong came.
They brought with them technology the likes of which the galaxy had never seen. Marvels made not of steel or metals, but flesh and living rock. Creatures and monsters forged in ways that most could never imagine. Biots they called them. bred over the millenia to serve ever purpose that one could imagine. The greatest of them were the world ships. Massive vessels that eclipsed even some of the terrors of old.
With them they swept into the galaxy, conquering, taking, killing whatever it was they desired. Piece by piece the galaxy fell, reaped by Yuuzhan Vong as they took planet after planet.
Even after their defeat, the touch of the Vong lingered upon the galaxy. Their great works scarring many worlds. Gradually, however, they faded. Blending with the people of the galaxy as their technologies became less and less common. The World Ships, once the crown jewels of their fleet began to fade and die. Drawing themselves away from the galaxy and into the unknown regions of space.
A small hiss echoed out from behind Amos' ear as he stepped out of the airlock and into the strange rocky tunnels of Vaa Nokkul.
The ancient World Ship was dead, long forgotten and long left to float in the great distances between the stars. It's massive dovin basil's had died off centuries ago, the yaret-kor along it's edges long silenced. Yet somehow there was still breath to be found within the expansive tunnels of the ship. The air stale, but warmer than it should have been for a ship that had been dead for millenia.
"Something here still lives." The Sith said quietly as the Amphistaff curled around his back slowly slipped forward across his shoulders and down around his bicep. It's muscled form drawing through his fingers.
The beast could feel it's brethren.
It was the Yammosk he'd found alongside his Amphistaff that had told him of this ship, whispered into his mind of it's existence. The creature had spoken truth, and now he stood within the tomb of it's people. He wondered if it had also been honest about what he would find.
There is no sky above you. No earth beneath your feet.
Only something warm.
The ground rises beneath your palm. It breathes.
You stand, and the dark unfolds into a passage of ribs, hardened flesh, and ancient bone.
There is no metal here.
You reach for the Force.
Nothing reaches back.
Not darkness. Not death.
An absence where something should be.
So you walk.
The passage descends. The air grows warmer.
Bones disappear into the floor beneath your feet.
THUMP.
Something trembles deep within the walls.
You should turn back.
THUMP.
There is no saber at your hip. No sword in your hand. No beskar between this place and your flesh.
Still, something draws you deeper.
The walls begin to move.
Or perhaps they always were.
THUMP.
Somewhere within the corpse of something impossibly old- something is still alive.
VAAL - KARTH'S LANDING
Adonis awoke in a cold sweat, his body shivering as he jerked himself from his pillow. His breath was heavy and unmeasured. He had been breathing like that for some time, even in his sleep, and his heart hammered faster than it should have from a vision alone. It had been a while since the Warden had received one. The last had led him to Malachor V and into the web of a Sith Lord.
There had been other visions, other callings. They had been more common when he was younger, before the darkness of war had eaten away at his empathy. Back then, reaching out through the Force had come easier. Sometimes it had shown him places, sometimes people, but there was usually some understanding that his presence was needed.
This one was different. It felt more like a warning than a calling.
His head pounded, like someone had been pulling at his brain, trying to tear it free from his skull. There was a grime he could feel all over his skin despite nothing being there, an itch that lived beneath his bones, so deep that he couldn't have scratched it with a knife. His brown eyes were bloodshot, his pupils wide as they took in what little ambient light trickled in from the city below. Adonis could tell he was alone in the room, so the immediate fear of an intruder quickly left him, but the unease remained. Whatever the Warden had seen in his vision was out there, and somehow he knew it could be found.
Minutes turned to hours as he rolled around his bed, wondering what it was that had invaded his dreams. It felt different from anything he had encountered before. Different from the Sith, from the monsters of the Netherworld, even from the strange creatures he had encountered across the galaxy. There had been an absence in the Force, a hole where something should have been. It wasn't cold or hot, light or dark. It was simply nothing.
Or at least, it should have been.
Something had still been there.
The contradiction refused to leave him. Something devoid of the Force, yet somehow alive. He had a meeting in the morning, but Adonis already knew he wouldn't be able to focus while his thoughts continued to return to whatever had found him in his sleep.
Eventually, the Warden gave up on the idea of rest. He rose from his bed, washed the sweat from his skin, and dressed. If the Force had gone through the trouble of showing him something, he wasn't going to ignore it. He called and canceled all of his meetings for the next days and left for his ship.
___
When he exited hyperspace, what he saw before him brought back a primal fear, something hardwired into his DNA. The ship was massive, or whatever was left of it. He hadn't any idea what it would be when he followed the vision, but there was no question that he had found the right place. Even from the cockpit he could recognize some of the shapes that had surrounded him in his dreams. There was no familiar construction, no obvious hull or machinery that Adonis could recognize. Instead, the vessel looked almost like the corpse of some massive creature left to drift between the stars. He knew nothing about who had built it, or what purpose something so large could have served, but he knew that it belonged to something- or someone- powerful.
The Warden brought his ship in for a landing, taking his time as he searched for somewhere that looked safe enough to set down. When he finally exited, he made sure he had his blaster and his broadsaber by his side. The air was stale and strangely warm, much warmer than he would have expected from something that appeared to have been dead for so long. It reminded him immediately of the dream, enough that Adonis stopped for a moment to take in the strange walls surrounding him.
He reached out through the Force almost instinctively, searching for anything that might be waiting deeper inside. Instead, he found the same absence he had felt in his vision. It wasn't darkness, at least not in the way Adonis understood it. There was no familiar corruption or oppressive presence pushing back against him. There was simply a place where the Force seemed to stop, and somehow that was far more unsettling.
Amos walked through the tunnels of Vaa Nokkul, every step drawing him further and further away from the outer spiral. As he walked, the more it became clear that the World Ship was a universe all it's own.
What had started with bare and barren rock quickly gave way to a jungle unlike any other.
Though the ship itself was long dead what lay within had managed to survive. Thousands upon thousands of biots had grown into a thicket that spanned almost the entirety of the World Ship itself. Amphistaff's, Coufee's, Lambent's, and everything in-between. A forest of creatures the Yuuzhan Vong had spent thousands of years curating, all grown simply wild.
It was like nothing he had ever seen before, or felt. Not a single thing before him had a sense or impression within the force. Not the trees, not the vines, nothing. The world before him was dead within the force. Even as he stretched his senses outward it seemed to almost drown into the vast void which lay before him. In the distance, Adonis would see the same. The vast jungle having survived, and somehow thrived within the long dead World Ship.
Behind Amos, that quiet hiss echoed out once more. The Amphistaff unfurling from his back and slowly crawling to even it's head with his own.
"Lead me through." Almost as soon as Amos said the words the living weapon dropped from his back and began to surge forward.
The biots ahead of him seemed to part slightly. Not dragging completely to the side, but shifting just enough to allow him to pass. Even as Amos stepped through, he could feel the oppresive weight of the void drawing around him. His senses in the force dampened, even his ability to reach out to it more difficult than before.
