No edit summary |
Heaven's Agent@legacy41591424 (talk | contribs) m (Removal of content taken directly from Wookieepedia) |
||
| Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
|- |
|- |
||
| |
| |
||
| + | {{stub}} |
||
| − | {{quotation|Celeste Morne to Cade Skywalker |
||
| − | |The rakghouls began as creations of Karness Muur's Sith magic, but scratches or bites spread the plague—even to Force users like you. |
||
| − | }} |
||
| − | |||
| − | Rakghouls were a type of Sith-spawned mutants, engineered by the Sith Lord Karness Muur. Desiring an army to rule over and seeking a way to cheat death as so many other Sith before and after him did, Muur forged a talisman that he poured his spirit and power into, one that eventually came to be known as the Muur Talisman. Muur's talisman could turn almost any sentient being near him into a mindless rakghoul which he could control, but he found that there were exceptions: Force-sensitives and certain alien species could resist the talisman's effects. Thus, Muur engineered the "rakghoul plague", a virus-like disease that could be spread by a rakghoul's bite or a scratch from its claws, and that subjected the victim to a slower transformation into a rakghoul. Jealous and fearful of his power, Muur's Sith rivals killed him, and over time, the Muur Talisman came to reside on the Outer Rim world of Taris where the rakghoul plague ran rampant throughout the world's impoverished Undercity, creating vast numbers of rakghouls. The people of Taris would manage to put an end to the rakghoul presence on their world at some point prior to the year 19 BBY, and by the days of the Second Imperial Civil War, rakghouls were believed to be extinct. |
||
| − | |||
| − | However, with the Muur Talisman laid the ability to create new rakghouls, and the galaxy would see the return of the rakghoul when the oubliette belonging to the Sith Lord Dreypa was uncovered by Darth Vader, and the Jedi Knight Celeste Morne who had entombed herself and the talisman within for safekeeping nearly four thousand years prior, was revived. Morne battled Vader, but was no match for the skills of the Sith Lord and his stormtroopers, so she called upon the talisman's power to turn the stormtroopers into rakghouls; outnumbered, Darth Vader fled, stranding Morne on the desolate moon she had awakened on with only rakghouls and the spirit of Karness Muur for company. Several years later, Morne and the talisman would escape the moon aboard a Rebel Alliance shuttle, turning the crew of an orbiting Imperial-class Star Destroyer into rakghouls during her escape. Later, after her ship had been taken aboard a Pellaeon-class Star Destroyer, Morne turned the crew of the Iron Sun into subservient rakghouls with the power of the Muur Talisman. Morne and her rakghoul crew later came into contact with former Jedi Cade Skywalker, who convinced Morne to join him in his campaign against the current Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Krayt, after curing the rakghoul plague he had been infected with using his unique healing ability. During their attack on Krayt's forces, Krayt was killed and Morne convinced Skywalker to end her life and her suffering under Karness Muur's constant psychic presence. Skywalker then destroyed the Muur Talisman as it attempted to bind itself to a new host, effectively putting and end to the primary source of rakghouls. |
||
| − | |||
| − | {{dark header|Origins}} |
||
| − | |||
| − | In the wake of the Hundred-Year Darkness, waged between the Jedi Order and the Dark Jedi who sought to use the Force to alter and create life, and the Jedi's victory in the war's final battle on Corbos, the remaining Dark Jedi were taken into custody by Galactic Republic forces. These darksiders were stripped of their weapons and armor, and herded into unarmed transports that took them off-world and into the then unknown regions of the galaxy. These "Exiles", as they came to be known, landed on the primitive world of Korriban, home of the equally primitive Sith species; the former Jedi used their Force powers to amaze the Sith, who in turn elevated these outsiders to god-like status. Among this generation of the first "Lords of the Sith" was Karness Muur. Like many Sith, Muur desired a way to cheat the inevitability of death, and thus forged a Sith talisman that he poured his mind and spirit into, the Muur Talisman.[2] But Muur's amulet had a second purpose: the talisman could use Muur's Sith magic to transform any nearby sentient into a mindless rakghoul, subservient to Muur's will and with which Muur intended to form an infinitely expanding army that would allow him to conquer the galaxy.[1] There were exceptions, however, as both Force-sensitive beings and beings from a number of certain non-Human species proved immune to the talisman's effects.[4] To combat this flaw, Muur engineered the "rakghoul plague", a virus-like disease that could be spread from a rakghoul's bite or a scratch from its claws. The infected victim would then slowly mutate into a rakghoul within a timeframe spanning mere hours.[2] |
||
| − | |||
| − | Muur's jealous Sith rivals would lead to his body's physical death,[2] though his spirit lived on with the talisman that over time, came to reside in the Undercity of the Outer Rim world of Taris, after its most recent owner had been crushed in a cave-in. Years passed as the rakghoul plague spread among the Undercity's Outcasts, transforming an untold number into mindless rakghouls that roamed the streets attacking any they came across. |
||
| − | |||
| − | By the start of the Mandalorian Wars, rakghouls had become an ever-present danger in Taris' Undercity. When Jedi Padawan Zayne Carrick fled into the Undercity seeking to escape his Jedi Masters—who had killed their others students earlier that evening after receiving a vision in the Force that one would become the next Sith, and blamed Carrick for their murders after he managed to escape—the Jedi Masters of the Taris Jedi Council were forced to fight through mobs of rakghouls and outlaw Gamorreans during their pursuit of the Padawan.[5] After the Mandalorians conquered Taris, a Mandalorian scouting party and excavation team led by the Neo-Crusader scientist Pulsipher descended into Taris' Undercity where they located the Muur Talisman, claimed it for the Mandalorians, and took aboard Pulsipher's ship, the Mar'eyce. Unbeknown to Pulsipher or his warriors, Zayne Carrick, along with friend Marn "Gryph" Hierogryph and Jedi Covenant Shadow Celeste Morne, had stowed away aboard the Mar'eyce in an attempt to retake the talisman. When Pulsipher handled the talisman on board his ship, the Sith amulet attached itself to his arm, and afflicted Pulsipher's warriors with the rakghoul plague when they attempted to help their leader remove the talisman. Once the Mar'eyce landed at the Mandalorians' Ice Citadel on the frozen world of Jebble, these infected soldiers soon turned into rakghouls and began a series of events that led to more and more Mandalorians becoming infected upon being scratched and bitten. To the surprise of Celeste Morne, these Mandalorian-spawned rakghouls—or "Mando-Raks" as one Neo-Crusader recruit deemed them—could use blaster weapons and were much more organized and apparently intelligent than previously witnessed. As the Mandalorians battled their rakghoul-turned comrades all across their Jebble base of operations, Zayne Carrick made contact with Mandalorian military commander Cassus Fett, bound for Jebble with Neo-Crusader transports. Carrick warned Fett of the rakghoul outbreak, and urged him not to land any ships for fear of the plague spreading further. Shortly after, Carrick was ambushed by a pair of rakghouls who dragged the Jedi to the laboratory of Pulsipher where the Mandalorian scientist, now realizing for himself the power the Muur Talisman possessed, demanded Carrick tell him how to unlock the relic's further powers over the rakghouls. In the presence of a Jedi, the talisman abandoned Pulsipher and the rakghouls he had previously commanded then slaughtered him. Before the talisman could bind itself to Carrick, however, Celeste Morne intervened and took the talisman onto herself.[1] Using the Muur Talisman's power in conjunction with her own Force-sensitivity, Morne took control of the rakghoul horde. Over one million Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders had been turned into rakghouls, all now under the control of Morne. But with that power came the threat of dark side corruption from Karness Muur's spirit, and Morne chose to allow herself to be sealed away in the oubliette of the Sith Lord Dreypa, one of the Force-related items Pulsipher had collected in his Ice Citadel laboratory. With Morne sealed inside Dreypa's oubliette, the rakghouls lost their temporary intelligence and set upon each other, nearly killing Carrick and his companion, Gryph, as they fled the world aboard the Moomo Williwaw. Moments later, the Mandalorian fleet appeared over Jebble and, heading Carrick's earlier warning against the rakghouls, Cassus Fett ordered the orbital bombardment of Jebble via nuclear missiles. The rakghouls were wiped out, and the oubliette containing Morne and Karness Muur's talisman sunk beneath the water formed from Jebble's melted glaciers. |
||
| − | |||
| − | {{dark header|Jedi Civil War}} |
||
| − | |||
| − | Though the Muur Talisman, the original source of the rakghouls, was lost beneath the surface of Jebble, the rakghouls were not gone from the galaxy. Taris' Undercity remained infested with the creatures, and more were transformed regularly after being bitten and scratched by pre-existing rakghouls. By the time of the Jedi Civil War, it was estimated that up to 60 million beings on Taris had been infected,[6] but because the plague was mostly confined to the Undercity and lower levels generally populated by the planet's criminal class, the Taris government made little effort to combat the disease.[7] The Mandalorians were later driven from Taris by Republic forces under the Jedi Knights Revan and Malak, but in 3,956 BBY Sith forces under the recently turned Darth Malak occupied Taris. With them came a serum that could heal those infected by the rakghoul plague who had yet to complete the transformation, but the Sith restricted access to the serum to those Sith troopers that were sent down into the Undercity. An amnesiac Revan—his memory of his time as a Sith Lord after falling to the dark side removed by the Jedi Council—later found a vial of the curative serum on the body of a dead Sith trooper while on Taris, and used it to heal several Outcasts infected with the rakghoul plague before finally giving it to the Upper City doctor, Zelka Forn. Forn was able to use this sample to synthesize a mass-produced serum that he shipped to the Outcasts and sold at a low price to all Tarisians. Shortly after, Taris was subjected to a devastating orbital bombardment by Darth Malak's Sith armada, killing an untold number of beings on the planet, including a significant number of rakghouls.[8] However, during the Republic's efforts to rebuild Taris around the time of the Great Galactic War, it was discovered that a number of rakghouls had survived the bombardment. Bands of these rakghouls roamed beyond the reaches of the Undercity and up to the surface, and reports claimed that some of the vicious creatures had evolved, displaying new powers. |
||
| − | |||
|- |
|- |
||
! |
! |
||
Revision as of 20:08, 2 November 2011
Template:Header Info
|
|
Template:Non-sentientNav