Virion Blackwood
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: To create a unique creature native to Maena for use in the RP.
Image Credit: [X]
Canon: N/A
Links: Force Travel
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: Tsha-hy'zi, Kr'ylland Mutts, Maenan Laughing Hounds, Saaraishash War Dogs
Designation: Semi-Sentient
Homeworld: Maena
Language: Verbal Commands in various Dialects of Maenan and Galactic Basic (Handlers)
Average Lifespan: Unnaturally Long
Estimated Population: Planetary, verging towards Scattered
Description: Whether by cruel indifference of nature, or the otherworldly touch of demoniac hands, History has long forgotten. The Tsha-hy'zi are indeed a truly putrid Beast for the eye to behold. Fetid dread atrocities, that loft upwards nearly three heads taller than the average male, of human stock. Callously fragrant to even the most heinously tested nostril. The shape of the abominations stand high and hunched on powerful front limbs, sloping downward along it's ghastly back, towards a lower rear.
The head of the appalling creature speaks loud of anomalies in it's perceived evolutionary development cycle; manifesting features that seem in equal part, Chiroptera, Canine, and Feline - with observational bias of the onlooker alone dictating the actual genus to ease their fear of mystery. From the jaw, tough and resilient teeth jut threateningly, with a hungry glossus that dangles and slithers as if mocking. It's savage bite capable of delivering unnatural, bone crushing, pressures up to seven thousand pounds per square inch.
It's hide appears decayed, patches of sickly fur and decomposing black flesh, stretched over and across, protruding, obsidian bones. Ghostly smoke of rich ebony, seeping, from the grisly frame. Kept alive, seemingly, by some hateful force of Will. Despite appearing more as some sort of disintegrating skeletal aversion, these fiends possess shattering power. Brawn to challenge and match any apex predator of it's class, warrior it's unleashed upon, prey it feasts on, or hunter seeking the wealth of it's parts. Utilizing that pulverizing strength to slash or grasp with talons as long and sharp as khanjar daggers.
It's a formidable foe.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Breathes: Type I Atmosphere
Average Height of Adults: 2.2 Meters at the Shoulder
Average Length of Adults: 2.8 Meters from Muzzle to Tail
Skin Color: Obsidian
Hair Color: Dusk Grey, Black, White (Rarely)
Distinctions: Many aspects of the Tsha-hy'zi, in one way or another, defy comprehension and evaluation. Seeming to inhabit a domain somewhere between the natural order of earthly kingdoms and the realms of the infernal beyond. Persevering against scientific explanation, a blighted wraith, unable to recollect what they might have once been.
They reside as the only specimens of this uncomely genus, lacking sub-species, or caste. They appear also absent Male or Female variation, creating a culture of tension among off-world Scholars and Creature Specialists, manifesting a landscape of rumor and opinion, rather than undoubtable fact in regard to Breeding Methodology.
Structurally, there is little dimorphism throughout, but instead a rather abnormal level of uniformity, in both Size and Build. With the only deviation stemming from Color of the Fur, and the general putrescence of it's flesh and tissue integrity. Some present as quite whole, while others have rotted away to bone. Curiously, natural death, appears to only occur once all of the flesh and fur have decomposed from the Skeletal Frame.
Which has made identifying a concrete Lifespan, a highly strenuous task. One that, again, is a field ruled by gossip and falsehood. Currently given the general inaccessibility of the Creatures homeworld of Maena, as well as it's inherent danger, lack of solid facts may always remain the case.
However, where the scholarly pursuits of natural biology may fail in providing information, there are many Distinctive details that are quite easily shown and demonstrated.
It's Diet, hungers not for flesh or plant, as similar creatures may. But rather, it appears to sustain itself entirely on the unseen aspects of emotion. Surviving on, for lack of better terminology, the fear of it's prey. The hatred of those around it. Relishing in the pain of victims before their final death. Utilizing in some natural fashion, what the Schools of Force-Users in the Galaxy abroad, may refer to as Consume Essence, in a way highly adapted towards it's needs.
While the exact method of it's consumption is unseen, it is veritable truth, that it would appear every aspect of the Tsha-hy'zi is centered around this ever lurking need. From the terrible look of it's body, the size and power of it's natural weapons, the stench of it's rotting hide, it's methods of hunting and attack, down to the sounds it's capable of producing. All built to serve a singular purpose.
But not all is grim and horrible.
These are also highly intelligent creatures, in their way. Capable of creating powerful bonds with individuals or groups. Perhaps owed to their History as deadly companions and beasts of warfare. They also exhibit a strange level of understanding for Verbal and Hand Commands, and if the bond with an individual is heavy enough, an almost instinctual idea of what it's Handler may desire of it.
Races: No other Race
Strengths:
Apex Ambush - Perhaps the most frightening and dangerous aspect of the Tsha-hy'zi, more than any other tool it wields in the ruthless dispatching of prey or enemy, is it's categorical command of a skill widely likened to Force Travel. While they are incapable of utilizing this to cross vast distances, or the Galaxy, as some highly talented Force-Users allegedly can. Their natural adaptation of this ability sees them able to very rapidly assault stationary or mobile targets. Covering distances of 1 to 10 meters, in successive bursts, but no more than 40 meters before they tire. (See General Behavior for further detail.)
Aura of Uneasiness - Every detail of these Beasts exists to create dread and angst; it radiates thickly from the core of their very being. Setting stalwart adventurers, hardened warriors, and deadly hunters on edge. Producing the supplements it so requires to feed, supplying nourishment to it's existence, and strength to it's bones.
Eldritch Sinew - Power beyond belief. Whether by bite, or swipe, or talon-gripped hold. The Maenan Laughing Hounds will mangle it's prey or target in ways that redefine savagery. For the common man, or woman, or animal; the fight, more oft than not, is over before it could even begin in earnest. Mutilating flesh, crushing bone, making Light and Medium Armors seem like little more than wet paper. (Heavy Armor is subject only to Bite and Blunt Force. And, as always, all Player damage is scaled to their desire.)
Beast of War - Highly intelligent, for a beast. They are capable of being tamed as Companions. But are best suited towards Battle and War.
Weaknesses:
Beware the Fire - One of their mortal enemies, the Flame. They will not cross it, and keep a wide berth abreast of it. They burn quickly, if lit, and never recover to devour the fear of prey again.
Afternoon Nap - Hailing from the Black Peaks and Obsidian Sands around the dark city of Kr'ylland. The Tsha-hy'zi were bred, and have lived, in a land wreathed by shadow. When exposed to the light of a blazing sun, they are half as strong, and largely docile. Only specimens, with a strong bond to their particular Player Companion, can be spurred in to action.
There is No Emotion - Kr'ylland Mutts feed and draw power from the foul and negative emotions of those around them, and those meant to be prey. Individuals possessing exceptional control of their feelings become blind targets for roaming or rampaging Tsha-hy'zi.
Force Nulled - Nullification Fields render these creatures completely docile. Neither NPC or Player Character can urge the beasts onward. They merely come to heel, and exhibit extreme confusion.
Lost in Light - As a creature given life through dark ritual and application of the Darkside of the Force, exceptional bursts of Force Light can kill them, while much milder uses of the ability will temporarily stun and immobilize them.
Resilient, but not Immune - Like most monsters capable of waging War, the Tsha-hy'zi exhibit incredible tolerance to abuse. But they are by no means immune, and lack physical resistances outside of any other creature of their type. Heavy damage to the head, extreme blunt force across the back, blasters, lightsabers. All do the trick the same way they would against a creature like a Nexu.
CULTURE
Diet: Fear, Hate, Anger, Distress
Communication: Various frequencies of Whooping, Lowing and Laughing
Technology Level: None
Religion/Beliefs: None
General Behavior:
Social - In the wilds of the Black Desert of Maena, these are not customarily considered a Pack Creature. But rather a solitary horror, that stalks and kills across the dunes, caravan trails and mountain passes. Feral Clans, that are encountered, are widely believed to have once belonged to Nomadic Peoples that have perished in slaughter, or fallen to a host of other hazards that curse this malignant World at the very edge of the Galaxy's Unknown Regions.
Members of these Feral Clans exhibit no structure or hierarchy, but instead prowl and spread ruin in allied fashion. Communicating and coordinating through various pitches and paces of Whoops, and Grunts. And show a greater degree of vocalization than their solitary counter-parts, especially in regard of the hallmark Tsha-hy'zi Laugh. Which, unlike Lone Specimens, exhibits lower frequencies of a Chuckle and a faster, higher harmonic Giggle - said to put ice in the veins of even the hottest blooded warriors and depraved miscreants.
Hunting/Fighting - The Hunting Methods of Lone and Feral Clans are entirely Identical. Drawn in from miles around towards the nourishing senses they feast upon, amplifying them by many multitudes through taunting Laughter and general toying with their prey. Until finally, at the peak of the fear, they'll strike. Roughly brutalizing and disabling prey, tearing and ravaging the body beyond recognition. Before vacating the scene, leaving the dead where they lay. Not as warning, but rather an alarm. To experience even a moment of dread, is to alert every Tsha-hy'zi in a vast vicinity.
The method of attack is almost always the same. Run you ragged until your bones ache. Jeer and Laugh upon your certain demise. Then, at the moment of assault, they're upon you before you even thought them in range. Utilizing their adaptation of Force Travel to great effect. Should one stand and face them, they will deceive your senses, trigger your reflexes; pounce viciously towards your front, only to suddenly vanish in the black smoke that billows from their ungodly frames, and land upon your back.
Against exceptionally skilled and dangerous prey, they may utilize this tactic multiple times consecutively. Allowing you to catch but mere glimpses of them at your flank, then the opposite side, your front, then your back, before suddenly landing upon your head or seemingly erupting from the sand beneath your feet to drag you down and rag-doll the body.
Intelligence - Remarkably, for a creature so often regarded purely as a Beast, the Tsha-hy'zi display an exceptional degree of animal intelligence. This is displayed most prominently in their methods of hunting and fighting. Using natural advantages and adaptations at a truly tactical level. Some of this, such as Spooking, is clearly derived from their need to gorge upon the anxiety of it's prey for strength and sustenance.
Their sharp acumen, however, is highly displayed even further when trained as a Companion or War Beast. Able to learn and recall a vast many verbal commands, understand and conceptualize Swarming Tactics, be utilized in aggressive herding maneuvers en masse that deny enemy retreat or advance, urging them towards more disadvantageous pieces of ground.
As well as intuitive instincts to take desired action void a command when a highly intimate bond is made with a single Handler or Companion.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Providing illumination on the rayless antiquity of the Tsha-hy'zi, had presented an exhaustive task for the Saaraishash Inquisitor, Belphaegor. Capacious Tomes, such as Monsters of the Far West Unknown Territores. Grotesque Tales, like Beasts of Midnight. Even the exhilarant Diary, Hunt Without Hope, quilted the surface of the Maenan's desk for months. Pleasurable reads, each, in their own respect. But the only common factor they all shared - was that no men from the soft center of the Galaxy, really knew anything outside of their own observation.
Resident of Kr'ylland, prior to a more migrant lifestyle as the Apprentice of [member="Matsu Xiangu"], member of the Saaraishash, and student of Sith Space Academies; Belphaegor was not entirely unacquainted with these fiends. Having witnessed and grown behind the cloud scathing walls of that odius City, where Tsha-hy'zi were kept as Bestial Companions, or repellent Guardians of horrific Temples. Saw them seduced to docility and kept in cages whilst creeping through vast Markets of Flesh and Woe, privy of woven whispers from Trappers seeking the wealth of their parts to be traded at Dens of Alchemy and Sorcery for obscene riches.
But perhaps distance from home, allowed the weight of their potential, to finally burden his shoulders. For it wasn't until an actual encounter with a Tsha-hy'zi in the wilds, on one of many ill-fated expeditions with Matsu, did Belphaegor feel curiosity aroused.
Thus he was animated towards action, delving deep and far through Myth and Legend, to cull what knowledge he could and present it before the Lord Inquisitor as a prospective tool in the arsenal of his Shadows and the Emperor's Legions. Wayfaring across vast vade mecum peaks, under the eclipse of esoteric encyclopedia's, and obscure oceans of occult omnibuses. Somewhere there in the necromantic narratives of this necroplis of script, Belphaegor began to place the pieces of his extensive study together, for the scrutiny of his Master and [member="Darth Saarai"].
It was a story which threaded backwards kiloyears in to the past, revolving around a figure in Maenan History that Belphaegor likened to Ajunta Pall, for ease of reference for his Sith-minded cohorts. This particular personage was known as Ultroxium, and was himself, a Jedi. He had spent much of his life there on Maena, becoming a figure of incredible prominence throughout a multitude of eras. While his deeds and those of Pall were different, they did indeed share many characteristics.
Through Ultroxium, the various schools of Crafting were altered in ways that resonated to this day on the World. Gaining this man of the Galaxy much respect, and even renown upon a World where death awaits around every corner. Unlike the First Dark Lord of the Sith, however, Ultroxium was a wholly good man, albeit if temperately misguided. Such oversights in his character, and gentle disregard for the strict and narrow views of the Force, likely a cause for his own banishment from within the Order.
Upon review of the work of her Apprentice, however, Matsu elected to withdraw more than a thousand pages of text, written with a Quill of Fortune, citing the unjustified need to detail every known article of Ultroxium up until the necessary Events that spawned the Tsha-hy'zi.
Sadly, gone were the mentions of the Wars of Black and Red, the rise and fall of the Yog-Suulii Kajidic, a beautifully detailed retelling of the Skirmish at the Grim Crown mountain range, the creation of the Obsidian Knights, Black Jedi, the origin of the Last Fathers. As well as more than four hundred other major events that transpired. The Saaraishash Databanks would have to wait for another entry, perhaps.
Maenan's are disposed towards madness and malfeasance, corrupting even ideas brought with the best intentions. A Cultish World of innumerable Religions, they hardly recognize The Force in ways the greater Galaxy does. Even figures of sanctity, like Ultroxium, are coerced to bow to these realizations. As time and again, the Unions of Peace he worked towards, Foundations he planted, Structures he erected and Organizations he founded became as Ash in the wind.
The from Kr'ylland arrived the Oracles of the Black Sign, sadistic Alchemists and Necromancers, lead by the Ghoul King, Z'aathur. For 90 years they waged a War of Perversion and Sorcery, in a conflict known as the Stygian Sorrow. Here, during this time of tension, did Belphaegor find the sudden appearance of the Tsha-hy'zi; during a Battle in a region near the Obsidian Desert now known as the Laughing Spikes, so-named for the high concentration of the Beasts that reside there to this day.
Belphaegor also learned that these are, indeed, Creatures of conjuring. Gave life from the nether through spell and incantation, though by what means they reproduce and persist so long removed from that terrible age, he could not cipher from any text.
Z'aathur, once a student and dear friend of Ultroxium, birthed these monstrosities out of Ebony Stone and Black Clay. There, entombed below fields of fear and bloodshed, on lands ravaged through aeons of hideous warfare, The Ghoul King brought forth the crimson ichor of measureless sacrifice and deathly penance. Speaking in the unsightly tongues of Kr'ylland, the Black City, and through suffering and ruthless acts of devilry and Ritual, the Tsha-hy'zi rose out of the onyx sand - or so, the Legend says. His grand conflict had been densely populated by such savage miscreations. But the Tsha-hy'zi, are claimed to be his most prized fiends. Overwhelming the Forces of Ultroxium, the Red Wastes and the Herald's of Xoth-za; extending the length of the War for nearly twelve years before it's ultimate conclusion.
Were it not for the mind of the worn, and deeply aged Jedi, cleverly deceiving the Ghoul King and his combined forces of men and beast, out from beneath the shadow of the vast Black Deserts and deep within the lands of the Red Waste. A place where the Tsha-hy'zi were greatly weakened, without the cover of perpetual darkness, they may never have been stopped. The joined might of the Kr'ylland Mutts, Force Sorcery and Soldier proving to be a highly potent combination.
Defeated, the Oracles of the Black Sign retreated far in to the Raven Crags, adopting the Howling Hollow as their new home, where they allegedly reside to this day.
But the history of the Tsha-hy'zi did not end with the culmination of the Stygian Sorrow.
For a time, the Tsha-hy'zi were not valued as Companions or devices for Warfare. Rather, regarded in disdain as an invasive predator, loathed by all, but the beasts themselves relished in this feast of enmity. Earning through passion of horrific bloodshed, a place in the heart of many Maenan's, or at least, Hunters with a lust for wealth and glory.
It was the nomadic peoples of the Black Barrens that first discovered the means of taming and breaking the Tsha-hy'zi. Through the silencing of emotion, capture, then displays of wanton violence upon them. While this brutish method seems no longer required, and stronger bonds are now acquired through gluttonous provision of fear for them to gorge themselves on. This was not always the case, and breaking their predator instincts oft required days or weeks of scourging and abuse.
So it went, for an age, great battles fought, fantastic skirmishes, and the Tsha-hy'zi became far more than a raving, murderous, blight. From the city of Kr'ylland to the Ebony Bluffs, they roamed side-by-side with Maenan's. Even adventuring off world with enterprising criminals and scoundrels, adored for the tactical advantages they provided their Handlers.
One such individual being Agnessa Niebuhr, a failed New City Seamstress turned Pirate. Noted for her use of twenty Tsha-hy'zi in boarding actions along Republic Trade Routes, near the edges of the Unknown Region and Outer-Rim. Her career lasted nearly three decades before she and her Tsha-hy'zi were defeated and captured, and in the opinion of many, deserved death over the largely symbolic fate she received with 479 consecutive life sentences plus hard labor. She perished some nine years later during a prison riot allegedly incited over the existence and validity of the Tsha-hy'zi Companions she so dearly loved.
The future of the Tsha-hy'zi in the Galaxy, perhaps, may prove far more harrowing as Belphaegor attempts to introduce the horrors of their kind to the Saaraishash and Sith Empire Legions. In more ways than one. While the presence of the Fiends may soon expand across many fields of battle and theatres of land and naval warfare, and far greater minds are introduced for evaluation, the Pale Maenan seeks to forever cement their foul legacy in Lightsaber Combat.
It came to him during a time of observation, far removed from the comfort of book and lab, as he had told Matsu, and later the Lord Inquisitor. With a head barely aloft, consciousness drowning as a hallucinogenic haze was pressuring him under the waves. With Zymis he had managed to transport himself to one of the Black City's grisly Fighting Pits, though for the life of him he could not recall which, to allow his tired and kaleidoscopic eyes the repast of a carnival of cruelty.
Somewhere between Rancor Wrestling, Porg Tossing, and the Rahtar Baiting - where he had lost a considerable sum of credits to Zymis, as it'd only taken three minutes and not five for all of the slaves to be killed - they came upon Tsha-hy'zi Fighting. Which, after so much research, seemed as if a sign sent to him from the mysterious realms of the beyond.
And there, after witnessing the outrageous spectacle that saw both of the Tsha-hy'zi briskly vanishing and reappearing between and during attacks, often altering course multiple times in swift sequence, Belphaegor began theorycrafting an entirely new Lightsaber Combat Style.
Form VIII, The Way of the Tsha-hy'zi, or the Ambush Form.
In his mind, they provided the perfect foundation for something new. The Tsha-hy'zi, hideously beautiful, beasts of violence and war.
