Crystal Infestation

[Taeli Raaf]

Taeli smiled as she descended into the deepest part of the Coruscant Undercity. She couldn't believe that just a short time ago, this area was near life-threatening to her, what with all the gangs and Sithspawn that called the area home. Now, the gangs steered clear from the young woman, and the Sithspawn were both attracted to and repulsed by her darkside aura, unless she called upon one. But, she was here for a much different reason, she had work to do.

Entering an abandoned building, she made her way to a seemingly broken turbolift, but a simple thought with the Force reconnected the wires that allowed it to work. Taking the lift, she thought her master would be quite proud of her for creating a secret lab in the Undercity so she could practice and develop the alchemy skills Darth Praelior had shown and taught her. She wanted to create her own Sithspawn, but didn't want anyone to know until she was ready to reveal them.

Exiting the lift, a flick of her hand caused the wires to detach and the lights to switch on, showing various crystals and small Sithspawn she had captured to experiment on. A few droids were monitoring the beasts in their cages, but other than that she was alone.

She thought she had a breakthrough idea now though. She had gotten the idea in her head that she was the order to Carliah's madness amongst her master's apprentices, and she thus needed something to reflect that in a way. She had been studying Darth Bane recently, and was intrigued by the orbalisks. A living, impenetrable armor that fed and grew from the dark side.

She doubted she could get her hands on orbalisks to experiment on, but she had thought why not combine a Vong slave seed with a Force crystal and create a sort of crystal spore that would grow within a host. Striding towards her workstation, she pulled a recently acquired crystal out of her satchel and placed it on the table. She still needed to procure Vong seeds, but that shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Acquiring the Vong seeds hadn't been that difficult, a few words to a shaper of the Hrosha-Gul and she had been provided with enough surge-coral seeds and the implanters to go with them to get her project rolling. She had begun searching for examples of crossing Sith alchemy and the Vong biotech, she knew it was going to be extremely difficult given the nature of most Vong tech being separate from the normal Force spectrum. There were a few options she could choose from, but the most immediate would be to implant herself with one of the slave seeds and subjugate it to her will.

That would be highly unpleasant and painful, but sacrifices must be made in the pursuit of such goals. In that vain, Taeli was currently lying on her back, stripped of everything except her undergarments while a droid carried an implanter with its load of seeds to her.

"Place it on my chest," she ordered and the droid complied without saying anything, placing the implanter on her chest. Seeing it was free, the implanter plucked a seed from its back with one of its arms, while another immediately sliced the skin along her bosom open. Blood leaked from the deep thin wound, and pain throbbed from it, but it was nothing compared to what happened next.

The seed was inserted into the wound, right next to her sternum, and almost instantly, the seed began growing. Pain, white hot blinding pain erupted in her chest as the droid carried the implanter off her. She didn't pay attention to any of it as the pain wracked her body, her limbs twitching uncontrollably. She couldn't even feel the droids closing the wound as the surge-coral began growing, bonding with her nervous system, increasing the pain further. One though was able to make it through her pain.

'This may have been a horrible idea,' she thought before that was blasted away by the white nova erupting in her head.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Taeli could feel the coral growing inside her, the pain scouring everything in her mind . . . or at least trying to. She couldn't let this thing win, or she would become worse than useless to anyone except as a slave. Feeding on the pain as best she could, she focused on the spot where the seed was bonding with her nervous system. At first, it was like an abyss in the Force, nothing there, but as it connected with her more and more, she could start feeling the seed's need to grow, to spread its coral through the host.

As she focused more and more of her will on the seed, she could feel her normal presence in the Force dimming and she re-doubled her efforts.

'You will not win!' she thought savagely at the seed, her willpower being reinforced by a flare of pain the seed tried to cause by growing a small shard of coral out of her chest. Summoning power from both her concentration amulet and Mark of Darkness to bolster her willpower, she began crushing the seed's drive to grow. Slowly, agonizingly slow, the coral that erupted out of her chest started to recede, the pain reducing as her will continued to pummel the seed into submission. Normally a partnership with the seed was preferable, but she was Sith, she wasn't interested in that.

The seed tried one last rally to break her will, sending an enormous amount of pain through her chest and limbs, but she gritted her teeth and fought through it.

"Enough!" she yelled, an explosion of Force energy racing out around her as she smashed the seed's instinct and subjugated it completely. It would now be nothing more than a harmless part of her that focusing on it. . .

Around the chamber, she could feel the other surge-coral seeds and the implanters that held them. Their desire to sow the seeds in hosts, and the seeds' desire to grow filled her senses.

"Well that could have gone better," she groaned as she moved off the table, blood dripping from where the coral had pierced her chest. She hadn't even felt a few spikes that had grown out of her arms and legs but those had retreated too.

"You are injured, mistress, allow us to treat your wounds," one droid said, applying bacta patches.

"Thank you," she muttered, reaching out in the Force and levitating an implanter over to her. It laid docilely in her hand, her willpower and the Force binding it to her.

She wouldn't be able to affect things in the normal spectrum of the Force while using her slave seed conduit, but that was okay for her purposes. The crystals she had brought weren't all Force crystals, but they did have a unique property all the same. Once she grafted them to the seeds, they would produce a crystalline armor for her subjects, robbing of them of their will and turning them into a combination Sith and Vongspawn that she and other Sith could control. It was time to start the experiment properly.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"Beginning attempt number one," she said aloud, her voice being picked up by the datapad that was recording the experiments. "Attempt one will consist of grinding a crystal into a fine powder, treating the powder with alchemy, and feeding it to implanter to see what effects it will have on the coral seeds."

Taking one of the smaller crystals she acquired, Taeli began breaking it down using both the Force and the mortar and pestle she had sitting on her work station. The increasingly smaller crystals, and eventual powder, sparkled from the overhead lights, while Taeli held up the powder to see if she had missed any larger chunks. Satisfied she hadn't, she poured the powder into a small container and picked up a small cutting knife. Slashing it across her hand, she clenched it into a fist and dropped several drops of her blood onto the crystals.

"Sine sanguine hoc firmare crystallis, et cum se permittunt crescere semina sericum," she chanted, her blood flowing across the crystal powder and glowing slightly as she weaved a dark side spell over it, bonding with their structure to both harden it and allow them to bond with the surge-coral seeds. She had no idea if this would work, but as she wasn't directly using the Force on the seeds, she was optimistic she would get some result.

Taking the alchemically strengthened powder, she took a pinch of the powder and sprinkled it on the back of one of the implanters, right onto the seed beds that rested there. The powder clung to the seeds, not sinking in yet, but Taeli focused on her own implanted seed to see how the minute changes were being made to the seeds. The powder was resting on the seed's shell, but with some slight encouragement from her, the seed's allowed the powder to slip inside. That was when things went wrong.

The implanter started screeching and writhing as the seeds on its back both rejected and accepted the foreign material, crystals sprouting from the seeds and embedding themselves into the implanter's body and growing still. Luckily for the implanter, the pain didn't last long as multiple crystals broke through its skin and it died. Taeli scowled at the now useless implanter, that result had been unexpected, but interesting to some degree. The seeds had accepted the powder, but something in their genes had accelerated the growth and proven lethal.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"No, no, no, no!" she yelled, throwing aside another crystal encrusted corpse. She had been so bloody sure that she had figured out what she needed to do to fully meld the crystals, but to no avail. The implanter had rejected the crystal-infused seeds yet again, dying the same type of death as the other attempts in her experiment had.

She sat back down in a huff and grabbed one of the surge coral seeds and placed it in the palm of her hand. Studying it briefly, she set it down again and sliced off a translucent layer of the seed and placed it under a microscope. Zooming in with the scope, and keeping in touch with her Vongsense, Taeli observed the structure and molecules that made up the seed. Something was still rejecting the seeds, she just didn't know what it could be. She had factored in several things, even looking at the data she had recovered about Darth Maladi's Vongspawn Virus on Ossus, but to no avail.

"Interesting," she mumbled, focusing on one particular group of cells in the seed layer she was examining. Switching to one of the seeds that had been infused with the crystal spores, she took a small slice of that and placed it under her scope. The cells were different, and focusing with the Force on that area, she could tell the protein molecules there were extremely hyperactive. Now, that was something she could work on as those proteins seemed to be what was triggering the rapid and lethal growth.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Trying once again, Taeli kept her senses focused fully on the proteins she had noticed would cause the rapid growth of the crystals within the seeds. By focusing on that specific part of the molecule of the seeds, she hoped to control the outpouring of those proteins so they could stabilize and bond completely with the alchemized crystals.

'So far, so good,' she thought, focusing completely on the seed and ignoring the other aspects of the Force. The crystals were already imbued with what she needed them to be, and the bonding would happen regardless of her own Force touch. The proteins started to replicate and filter faster as the bonding began, and she brought her will down upon them. The proteins stopped replicating, but it was a mighty strain for her to hold them in place while the crystal powder bonded fully with the crystals.

'Come on, come on,' she thought, shaking slightly from the exertion of holding the proteins in place as the crystals started to bond with the molecular structure of the seed. Her control of the seed started to slip as more and more of it became crystallized and slipped out of her Vongsense, but she had to hold them just a bit longer, the proteins weren't fighting as hard as they too began to be assimilated by the alchemized crystal.

Finally, she was forced to recoil and gasped loudly. The implanter she had tried the latest attempt on was shaking slightly, but the crystals weren't bursting through its skin and killing it this time. She could feel the seeds within the normal spectrum of the Force now, and she realized the process had brought them into the normal spectrum, but they were muted. They reminded her of what the Chazrach slaves of the Vong were, and that was interesting. Still it seemed she had a success then.

"Congratulations, mistress," one of the droids said, examining the implanter. "The fusion was successful, the implanter and its seeds have accepted the crystals completely."

"Its only the first step," Taeli said, shaking her head a bit. "We need to make another and start them breeding, one implanter with seeds is not enough for what I have planned. We need to make sure the crystallization will pass through a blood line. Bring me another, now that I know what I'm doing, we're going to crystallize each one and then have them breed."

"Of course, mistress," the droid said, picking up the implanter and moving it into a separate holding pen while another droid brought a second implanter to her.

It was going to be a long process.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

It had actually taken several more days for Taeli to fully change each implanter and their seeds to the crystallized form, the process had taken a lot out of her and she had been distracted by other duties she had needed to attend to. The droids had begun trying to move the implanters to breed and see if the crystallized seeds would pass down their genetic code, but so far they had no success.

"Progress?" she asked as she arrived back within her hidden lab. It always felt good to come here, even if it was a place that could also hold frustration for her.

"None I'm afraid, my Lady," the droid replied, and if she didn't know any better, he would sound nervous. "The implanters refuse to breed with each other, we aren't sure why."

Taeli sighed as she moved to examine the implanters. The seeds on their backs glittered from the micro crystals that were fused with the coral. If they worked like she wanted, instead of coral they would grow crystals instead, and her failed experiments certainly spoke to the success of that at least. Something else had changed though from the process, and she wondered if the crystallized seeds were something the implanters were rejecting based upon some primal stigma about an implanter having a defect.

Switching to Vongsense, she began examining the breeding instincts of the implanters. Every single one she checked were the same, they viewed any defect in the symbiotic seedbeds on their back as a rejection and evidence of a mate that wouldn't produce strong seeds to implant within a being. It was a deep seated instinct, one Taeli wasn't entirely sure she could change and suppress easily.

There was another option though, and bringing her will crashing down on two implanters at a time, she began the process of breeding them forcefully. To change their breeding habits would require a complex mixture of off-spring and the suppression of that instinct. Regardless, she had to test the crystal seeds right now.

Picking up one male implanter, she took it over to a captured devourer pup and allow the implanter to insert a seed into the pup. It was time to analyze the results and see how fast the seeds would grow.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

The pup, one of the beasts that her apprentice had brought out of the Undercity, started shaking and howling as pain wracked its body as the seed fused with it. Taeli ignored the pained the howls, her academic nature in full force now as she observed and analyzed what was going on with the pup. She had predicted that the seeds would have a rejection rate, but she wasn't sure what it might be.

The pup howled even louder as a crystal started to sprout from it, telling Taeli the process could potentially be just as painful as when normal seeds were used. That would be useful in breaking down a being's willpower so they could become what she had planned, but it wouldn't be the only way she would control them.

Regardless, as the droids monitored its vitals, more crystals began to sprout and cover the pup's body. Slowly, very slowly, a crystal armor started to form around its body, but while that was good, internally was more interesting.

"My Lady, scans are suggesting that the creature's internal organs are slowly turning to crystal as well," one droid said. "Vitals are dropping just as slowly."

"Hmm, perhaps this subject is within our failure rate," she mused, looking at the pup that was three quarters covered in crystals. The pup's eyes had started to turn red, whether it was from blood or a side effect of the alchemized crystal seed, she wasn't sure, but it was clear the pup was dying and rejecting the implant. A shame really, but it happened in the course of science it seemed.

"Vitals dropping quickly, mistress," another droid said, taking a sample of the crystal though by scrapping a slim layer off one. "Crystal structure does support your thesis that they are stronger than standard crystals from the process you put them through."

"Good, very good," she muttered, she could still feel the pup in the Force, its presence heavily muted but it was still there and fading quickly. It would seem her project would still be affected by Force abilities, but the crystals would certainly help protect it from weapon damage.

The pup collapsed, shaking horribly as its organs shut down, and Taeli sighed. As a first test of the seeds went, it had been a partial success but it seemed she would need to test more to see what the failure rate was.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"Well that was informative," she said, looking over the data of the experiments her droids had been overseeing while she was away in her duties as a Sith. Apparently, the failure rate was a touch higher than she had anticipated for the seeds.

"So you're telling me in the experiments since I left, only one subject in ten has survived the process?" she asked, looking confused. "That seems a touch high . . . even for an alchemized Vong biot."

"We are not sure why the creatures expire at such a rate," one of her droids told her. "We simply tested the seeds created by you mistress, as instructed, and on the thirty subjects used, only three survived. We do have a hypothesis though."

"And what might that be?" she sighed, looking over other portions of the data. It would seem the breeding habits of the implanters was changing slightly. The need to breed was stronger than their dislike of an imperfect seed bed apparently, as more of the implanters were breeding. She was taking careful notice of these new implanters that hatched as some had the crystallized seeds, others didn't. The ones that didn't were quickly culled from the breeding chain until only the crystallized ones would be left.

"We have been testing these seeds on simple creatures, nothing with real sentience to fight against the seed and control it," the droid said. "We hypothesize that if tested on a sentient being, the failure rate would be lower, possibly three out of ten or even four out of ten success rate."

Tael picked up one of the crystallized seeds as the droid spoke, examining it. It had taken her a considerable amount of time to get these just right, and it would appear she was hopefully on the cusp of a new discovery. Oh, it made her giddy just thinking about it. Still, she wanted to examine the seeds to make sure that they would be suitable.

"Let's set up one more test," she decided, setting the seed down next to her microscope. "I want to actually see a successful use of it, gather up ten more subjects and bring them here."

"Yes, my Lady," the droid said, moving off with some of its compatriots to gather creature samples.

Sitting down, Taeli tried to cut through the seed to get a layer to examine, and while it took awhile because of how strong the crystals were, she was able to get a thin layer to see how the cells were working. Zooming in, she couldn't stop a smile forming on her face as she looked at the cells working normally, except for they had changed somewhat. Small specks of the crystals were everywhere on the seed's cells, even having fused with the cell walls and micro-organs.

"One more test . . . then onto the next stage," she muttered.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Taeli looked over each subject as her droids brought it in, making sure each was at least fit enough to possibly survive. Two of the final Sithspawn were actually twisted aliens that had been ravaged by a virus of some sort the Sith had unleashed when they took Coruscant. That should have an interesting effect, she thought as the droids prepared the implanters.

"We are ready to begin, mistress," one droid said, coming over to her.

"Then commence final design test," she said, pulling out a datapad to take notes on herself. She always felt better doing so, even as her droids would take the the necessary observations.

Implanters scuttled over to the bound Sithspawns, slicing areas to implant the crystal seeds into them and then being retrieved by the droids while they waited for the fun to begin. The wait didn't last long as one Sithspawn started thrashing as crystals erupted across its body as they rapidly grew, but she suspected that one was rejecting the seed and would be next to useless. Another two had the same exact reaction, thrashign and writhing as the crystals killed them from the inside out.

One of the aliens, a twisted Rodian, twisted and thrashed, trying to claw the seed out, even as the crystal started to cover its body and prevent it from reaching the seed. Eyes turning red as the crystals enveloped the Rodian, Taeli noted its Force presence, already muted was fading quickly as the internal organs turned to crystal as well.

The droids puttered around, but more of the Sithspawn were dying but at least accepting the crystal implant and growth. The other alien, a Twi'lek, seemed the most promising though, as the crystals were growing at a regular rate and the Twi'lek wasn't fading beyond what would happen normally to a person implanted with a Vong seed that consumed them.

"It would appear sentience is going to be required," Taeli replied with a sigh. "Regardless, we know the crystal seeds work now and they are able to passed along genetic lines. Begin prepping the lab and implanters for transport to Sposia, and send the data to my personal terminal for review."

"Yes, mistress," the droid replied and they began moving around, and cleaning up the corpses. Going over to the crystal covered Twi'lek, she tilted her head to observe it and it tilted back. Step one was complete now