Drengir

The Drengir were a plant-like species of sentient, amorphous carnivores from the Wild Space planet Mulita who threatened to reap harvest across the Galactic Frontier during the High Republic Era. With twisted tentacles and a maw arrayed with teeth, the avaricious creatures shared a collective consciousness known as the root-mind that could dominate and corrupt other minds—even those of Jedi. Those defenders of light and life feared the Drengir as meat was their sole desire, and they spread a darkness so great it perturbed and swayed Jedi Knights into their own collective mind, inflaming the chaos and imbalance upon which the Drengir thrived.
With an aptitude for healing, the Drengir were largely impervious to the scorches of blasters and singes of lightsabers. When seared in half by the blade of a lightsaber, a Drengir could simply reform with two animated bodies. In the aftermath of the Great Hyperspace Disaster, the Drengir spread in search of food, although they lacked the scheming nature and power structure of the anarchistic Nihil marauders that battled the Galactic Republic.
Reflecting hues of green, the plant-like carnivores pursued their purpose of consuming life on worlds such as Batuu and Sedri Minor, deceiving farmers and kidnapping children; ruining crops and carving hideouts underground; ransacking villages and feasting on humans and non-humans alike. In 232 BBY, Jedi Master Sskeer's fate became inescapably linked to the Drengir on Sedri Minor.
==Biology and appearance==
An amorphous carnivorous sentient species that resembled plants, the Drengir were born of darkness, hatred, and pain. With color in various hues of green and brown and an array of teeth, they possessed numerous tentacles and thorns. The latter secreted deadly poisons, and the mere presence of the Drengir inspired dread, casting an intent and focused "shadow" that was perceivable by sentients, even those not attuned to the currents of the Force. Plants were also affected by the Drengir's presence; the branches of plants near the creatures curled away, tainted and blackened.
As with plants, the Drengir spawned from seeds, taking root and growing to towering masses within only a couple of days of being planted. With a voracious hunger, the ancient and twisted mounds of greenery perceived all other life-forms as food, preferring to consume their prey alive. With innately warlike ways, the plant-like sentients fed life-forms such as wampas directly into their maws. The Drengir also captured sentients, strangling them with tentacles that reached into their bodies through their ears, nostrils, and mouth, and took children's vitality, draining away their very life.
To the human Batuuan farmer Menir, the carnivores were monstrous and hulking figures, with their jaws seen as wicked and their face pale in the moonlight. With manes of leaves and vines and horrific spurs of wood for limbs, the creatures seemed like sentient trees, and were were easily mistaken as such by other sentients. Capable of speaking Galactic Basic Standard, the species were able to heal from most wounds inflicted by blasters or lightsabers quickly, although they were killed when exposed to the vacuum of space. When cut in half by a lightsaber, a single Drengir could survive with two bodies.
The sentients operated in a group, sharing a collective mind with other Drengir of the same group and completing each other's sentences like bond-twins.The High Republic (2021) 2 The overall collective mind connected all Drengir in the galaxyThe High Republic (2021) 6 and was identified as the root-mind. The creatures persuaded sentient captives to join their collective consciousness, successfully doing so on those who were vulnerable to the influence of the dark side of the Force.
==Society and culture==
While intelligent, the Drengir acted as a collective, caring primarily about devouring non-botanical lifeforms. Strongly connected to the dark side of the Force, they were evil creatures that thrived on chaos and imbalance. While they lacked the scheming nature and power structure of the anarchistic Nihil marauders, they aimed to reap harvest across the Galactic Frontier during the High Republic Era.
For sentient species such as humans and Rodians, the Drengir lurked around their settlements in the shadows, haunting people with eerie sounds before spoiling all of their crops, casting a blight that left grains rotting in the fields, blackened and withered and turning into mulch. Crops soon became ripe with mold, casting a nearly overwhelming reek. The Drengir also set up a den of their own nearby, abducting the target settlement's children to there one-by-one and entangling them in vines before having their vitality, their very life, drained out of them. The Drengir then wrecked the settlements of sentients, killing the inhabitants and leaving blackened, withered vines in their wake to spread a terrible clutch over the desolate ruins.
==History==
===Backlash against the Amaxines===
Thousands of years before the High Republic Era, before large swathes of the galaxy were unified by the Galactic Republic, the Drengir were encountered on a marshy planet located between Coruscant and the Galactic Frontier by the Amaxine warriors. Seeking to expand their conquest, the warriors built a relay system on the planet to fight the plant-like carnivores and take their world.
However, the plan backfired as a number of the Drengir infiltrated the space station at the heart of the Amaxine relay, devouring Amaxine warriors and forcing the survivors to retreat defeated. Later, the station was discovered by the Sith, who allied with the Drengir but later betrayed them.The High Republic (2021) 4 They put the Drengir in stasis by binding them to a set of four grandiose and elaborate binding statues, which served as Force dampeners. The other Drengir on the planet below remained unaware of their fellows' fate.
===Drenched in chaos===
The Amaxine station eventually became a waypoint for Byne Guild pilots during the High Republic Era. The station's central sphere was an arboretum, an exotic jungle where grass, moss, and vines littered the ground. While the station's atrium was dark and shadowy, it boasted a gathering of life forms so great that the station was filled with vitality. An area of the biosphere contained a set of rock stairs that ascended from the ground up to a dark,The Rise of Kylo Ren 1 stone-carved throne, which was guarded by the four binding statues. The station's upper ring stored Byne Guild lockers, which had handwritten symbols that indicated a hyperspace disturbance and suggested a diversion in the hyperspace lanes. Other lockers and bay doors also had handwritten symbols.
In the time of the High Republic, the star of the star system that contained the station entered its last millennia before going supernova, giving off violent solar flares. Around 232 BBY,The Star Wars Book dates the launch of the Starlight Beacon to 232 years before the events of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, which corresponds to 232 BBY in the dating system used by Star Wars: Galactic Atlas. The High Republic: Into the Dark and The High Republic: Light of the Jedi takes place shortly before the dedication of the Starlight Beacon, so its events must take place around that year. Jedi Wayseeker Orla Jareni, Jedi Knight Dez Rydan, Jedi Padawan Reath Silas, and Jedi Master Cohmac Vitus, as well as the cargo ship Vessel Captain Leox Gyasi, co-pilot Affie Hollow, and the navigator Geode, came to be stranded aboard the space station due to hyperspace debris that were sent hurling across the galaxy during the Great Hyperspace Disaster, as well as the threat of solar flares.
Several other ships were stranded also, and they were coordinated by the Vessel crew and passengers to make landing on the station. Having landed at a docking bay located in the central ring of the Amaxine station, the Vessel passengers began to explore the ancient construct. They found that the station's systems were fully operational, and Dez Rydan and Reath Silas found the station's central globe to be filled with an abundance of plant life, which were managed by dedicated 8-T gardening droids. The two Jedi also found artifacts and jewelry laying on the ground, as well as ancient glyphs, and Affie Hollow spotted wrenches and other spacers' equipment that she deduced, judging by the lack of vines on them, were recently left on the ground. While Hollow decided to keep that knowledge to herself, the two Jedi sensed a shadow in the Force.
Rydan and Silas rejoined Orla Jareni and Cohmac Vitus and shared their findings, prompting Jareni and Vitus to venture further out into the central sphere themselves. Meanwhile, the Vessel assisted the crew of a smaller ship that they had rescued from the solar flares to alight. The crew, which was a Zabrak named Hague and his young ward, Nan, met with the Vessel crew and the Jedi. A curious Nan engaged in conversation with Silas, and the two proceeded to greet the passengers of the other ships after Leox Gyasi announced that the last of them were boarding. With the Jedi occupied, Affie Hollow traveled to the upper rings, knowing that spacers would likely have used the top and bottom rings as storage bays. As she trekked, Hollow suspected the lower ring to have larger bays for more dangerous substances and that the upper ring would provide a vantage point to better survey the station's layout. In the upper ring, which was unlit and required Hollow to switch on a glow rod, the co-pilot discovered that the ring's lockers had dates ranging from thirty-two to six years ago, and her pleasant mood was interrupted when she found the crest of the Byne Guild on one of the lockers.
In the central sphere, Jareni and Vitus discovered the binding statues. As they explored the surrounding area, they were struck by a cold shadow that gave them a terrible sensation of darkness. Vitus saw the vision as a warning, and the Jedi returned to the Vessel, its crew and other passengers, as well as newly docked passengers of the other ships. Aboard the Vessel, Vitus described his experience to Dez Rydan. Vitus stated that his consciousness had been transported before a terrible abyss, pained in the dark, and his soul was anguished to the extent of potentially tearing into two. The Jedi had also sensed that, unlike his experience with dark side–imbued trees, there was intelligence behind the shadow, focused and targeted. Speculating that the idols he and Jareni discovered were warning beacons that conveyed an intelligent message, Vitus expressed his thought that they should keep away from the darkness within the idols.
In meditation aboard the Vessel, Vitus sensed that the ominous darkness aboard the station was akin to the darkness he felt on his mission to Eiram and E'ronoh as a Padawan years ago, although the station's darkness took a different, unsettling form; consciousness seemingly without a corporeal being. Only more questions arose for Vitus on what created the darkness and how it took form aboard the station, which led to him question Jedi philosophy's rejection to study the dark side and how it divided the Force into a dichotomy of light and dark.
Within the dark forest arches of the station's atrium, Reath Silas also encountered a dark vision after recalling his horrifying experience with cutting another life-form's arm off with his lightsaber. Silas found himself alone amongst the plants and trees, which were seemingly warped into a different form. Fog enveloped the Jedi, and the vapor was made nearly steamy as heat suddenly surrounded Silas. A blue lightsaber was raised amid the fog, and Silas was knocked down by a booted foot that landed on his chest. The vision left Silas as he collapsed in mud and was executed by a swoop of the blade. Routinely sensing feelings of impending doom linked to the Drengir, the Jedi aboard the station gathered inside the Vessel, believing that the artifacts contained the darkness that had been haunting them. Orla Jareni elected to isolate the statues for further examination over the choice of destroying them and potentially setting loose the darkness within.
However, Dez Rydan proposed the possibility that the darkness affecting them was linked to an item protected by the energy field in the station's lower rings. While all of the Jedi had thought of that, with Silas appearing to be highly doubtful, Vitus appearing to be relieved to finally hear something sensible, and Jareni thinking of herself as one who was open to any possibilities yet not to ceaseless debate. Deciding that it was the time to act, Jareni told her group that they should put their new hypothesis to the test.
The four statues were wrapped in a Force shield by the Jedi and brought to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, the capital world of the Galactic Republic, to be purified in the Shrine in the Depths. However, while performing the ritual to neutralize the artifacts of the dark side, the Jedi realized that there was nothing to neutralize. The true purpose of the Sith binding statues had been misinterpreted; the Force dampeners served to contain something else, and the Vessel crew had taken the statues away.
The crew of the Vessel thus returned to the Amaxine station to make things right. Jedi Knights Jareni and Vitus repositioned the statues in their original configuration aboard the station, ensuring that the Drengir returned to stasis. However, the arrival of a group of Nihil marauders forced the Jedi to defend themselves by unleashing the Drengir. After damaging the statues to release the dark side carnivores, the Jedi and their allies escaped amidst the chaos which ensued. During the process, an explosive decompression struck the station, which was speculated to have sucked pieces of the statues into space.
Later, Silas joined Rydan on the Drengir marsh world, where they aimed to further investigate the Amaxine station. Deducing that the station remained intact after witnessing the two visitors traveling down to their world using the relay system, the Drengir pursued the off-worlders. While the two Jedi escaped the marsh planet with a transport pod to the Amaxine station, they were trailed by several Drengir in another pod. When the Drengir arrived at the station with their pod, Silas used the Force to shove it backwards, hurling it into hyperspace and letting the vacuum of space kill the Drengir who had emerged. Nevertheless, the Great Progenitor had been awokenThe High Republic (2021) 4 and even survived.The High Republic (2021) 6 With her return to consciousness, Drengir across the galaxy awoke and began to wreck havoc.
===Further emergences===
====Fate of the Jedi====
Compounding the galaxy's troubles alongside the Great Disaster, the Emergences, and the Nihil raidsThe High Republic: Light of the Jedi around 232 BBY, the Drengir represented a new threat to the Jedi and the galaxy at large, aiming to reap harvest across the Galactic Frontier. Soon after the dedication of the Starlight BeaconThe High Republic (2021) 1 in 232 BBY, the Drengir began abducting children on Sedri Minor, an arable planet located in the Periphery and the Galactic Frontier. The Drengir brought their captives to their dwelling in a cavern underground, which was accessible by an abnormally large sinkhole. In the fields above, the local produce, a barley named vratixia renanicus, began to rot, though a shipment of the grains were sold to a trader of the Hutt Clans, whose transport flew through the Kazlin system in violation of Republic law.
While investigating a Nihil raid on the Hutt freighter, the Jedi Kotabi bond-twins, Ceret and Terec, the Trandoshan Jedi Master Sskeer, and the human Jedi Knight Keeve Trennis traced the shipment of barley to Sedri Minor. Ceret and Sskeer made contact with the locals, though as Ceret explored the fields, the Jedi was abducted by the Drengir. With his fellow Jedi missing, Sskeer was joined by the human Master Avar Kriss, Terec, and Trennis, who arrived aboard the Ataraxia after Trennis informed Kriss that Sskeer had been acting strangely after the battle at Kur—where the Trandoshan lost his left arm and felt responsible for his Jedi colleague Jora Malli's death—and that he brutally murdered a Nihil in a bout of rage while exploring the Hutt ship. Sskeer also hid a devastating secret that was tearing him apart, drawing a private emotional outburst from him soon after the dedication ceremony aboard the Starlight Beacon. Once the Kriss, Sskeer, and Trennis gathered aboard the Ataraxia on Sedri Minor, Terec had become crazed, succumbing to the influence of the dark side; Terec's bond-twin, Ceret, who was captured by the Drengir, had been broken and fell to the carnivores' control.
Standing guard outside the Ataraxia, Keeve Trennis was led away to the Drengir's sinkhole den by a local boy named Bartol. Trennis was overwhelmed by the shadow cast by the Drengir, and sensed their expectation that she would come to them. Meanwhile, aboard the Ataraxia, Avar Kriss restrained Terec's crazed behavior, stopping them from attacking Sskeer as Terec—under the influence of the Drengir—exclaimed that the darkness must be allowed to consume, and that the Jedi had already lost. After Terec passed out, Kriss was contacted by Speaker Kalo Sulman, the local leader, and was told that Jedi Trennis had disappeared. Kriss thus set out to look for Trennis, but not before ordering Sskeer remain on the Ataraxia to care for Terec.
Within the Drengir den, Trennis and Bartol cut through a wall of vines and found Ceret and Julus—a local Rodian boy—strangled by tentacles. While Trennis freed the two captives using the Force, Bartol found his friend, Julus, to be dead. However, Ceret remained alive, and warned Trennis that no meat was safe from the Drengir. While Trennis saved Bartol from a close call with a Drengir, Terec, aboard the Ataraxia, succumbed to a defeatist state, refusing Sskeer's advice to center themself. When Sskeer attempted to show Terec that the Force would offer strength and refuge, Terec furiously rejected with violence, spreading dark essence to the Trandoshan. The latter thus despaired at his inability to help, falling onto his knees as Terec, who had fully embraced the Drengir's shadow, invited him to escape from his loneliness by joining the Drengir's collective mind.
Meanwhile, Ceret, also under the shadow of the Drengir, captured Bartol and refused to let him go. With Trennis all alone, the Drengir that had previously attempted to capture Bartol advanced on the Jedi Knight, delivering the ultimatum that she must choose to either nourish the Drengir or be one with them. While Trennis remained adamant on taking the position of neither, her Drengir predator moved to claim the Jedi as food. Before that could happen, however, Avar Kriss broke through the cavern ceilings with her lightsaber, searing the Drengir into two while dropping down before Trennis. Kriss then spoke to the possessed Ceret, convincing them that together, as Jedi, they were one. Kriss also demanded that Ceret release Bartol from their grip and return to the light. Ceret was moved by Kriss' sway and became free of the Drengir's collective mind, explaining meekly that they could not resist for the Drengir were too strong.
Yet before the three Jedi and Bartol could leave the cavern, the Drengir that had been cut into two reformed as two organisms sharing the same collective mind, stating that there was no escape. They were then joined by another Drengir as well as Sskeer, who had joined with the Drengir's mind and had his left arm regrown as a botanical construct. Sskeer stated that the Drengir's harvest would be bountiful and pure, igniting his lightsaber to face Bartol, Ceret, Avar Kriss, and Keeve Trennis.
Kriss' group were held in the clutches of Sskeer and the Drengir, being hung from the cavern's ceiling with vines that grew from Sskeer's botanical arm. As Starlight Beacon was threatened by an age-old enemy, the secret history of the Drengir was revealed.
During the High Republic Era, the Drengir, hungry for Jedi, also arrived at a serene and remote Jedi outpost that the Jedi Lily Tora-Asi lived in.
====Black harvest====
A written legend in the galaxy told of a "Bitter Harvest," illustrating the threat of the dark side and the Drengir: During the era of the High Republic, with the galaxy at peace, the traveler Iren visited the village Skirl on the distant planet Batuu. Located not far from Black Spire Outpost, Skirl was a small village surrounded by ancient woodland that marked the area as one of the most fertile and beautiful parts of Batuu. In Skirl, Iren was invited by Elise to take food and shelter at her house while her beloved husband Menir, a Wild Space mercenary who settled for a quiet life, sold grain at Black Spire. When Menir returned, he became enraged that a stranger sat within his house, and, having grown protective of his steadfast way of living and unwilling to accept any change, threw Iren out of his house.
As Iren left, he declared that as Menir had wronged him, all that shall follow would be because of Menir. When a shocked Elise pointed out that the poor traveler left his sole property—a leather pouch containing a few seeds—within their house, Menir stormed out of the dwelling with the pouch and hurled it out in anger into the soft, damp ground of the trees.
After Elise went through a sleepless night, Menir told her that he was to return with more profits to ease her worries. Although Elise stated that she felt oppressed by a "terrible weight," Menir dismissed it as simple fear that resulted from Iren's parting words. While making his way to Black Spire Outpost to sell his grains to slavers for them to feed their slaves, Menir became lost in the morning mists, sensing a dark and foreboding presence stalking him before detecting movement around him, glimpsing the movement of a gnarled tree branch that pointed at him accusingly. While he eventually made his way out of the fog and journeyed to Black Spire Outpost and back to Skirl, Menir was told by a neighbor that there was talk in the village of a strange, angular figure who visited in the morning mists, creeping amongst the houses and peering into their windows before retreating into the woods. While Menir denied seeing anything of the sort, the farmer remained sleepless that night, hearing sounds of knocking and glimpsing a phantom branch tapping on the window glass.
In the morning, Menir was notified by his neighbor, Nanuth, that the crops throughout the village had suffered from a blight. And a boy, Cleeve, had gone missing. Menir became worried for the loss of grain profits, but even more so for the stranger, Iren, and his parting words: "All that follows is because of you." After an entire day's search for young Cleeve without success, the villagers were forced to end the search and return to their dwellings. Anger took hold of Menir, who blamed Iren for all of Skirl's suffering. Increasingly agitated, Menir remained awake on his bed, thinking that to welcome strangers into the community was to invite poison into their lives. As he served himself a cup of blue milk in his kitchen, Menir caught sight of movement out in his garden.
Concluding in rage that it must have been Iren, Menir snatched a torch and marched out of his house to confront the stranger. His fear driven away by anger, Menir cursed and struggled through the vegetation of his garden, forcing his way through branches that tugged at his clothes and scratched his skin. Driven by his strong will to protect his village from any change, Menir pursued the movement up ahead and reached a small grove illuminated by the soft beams of Batuu's twin moons. Sheer terror struck Menir, who sighted hulking figures of roots and branches with jutting, stark jaws, seemingly erupting from the moss-covered ground. As the human entered the grove, gnarled branches reached out and disturbed the air, casting a dark presence that Menir sensed instinctively. Thier sizes varying from that of children to men, eight Drengir, still rooted to their ground, rose up from the soil. Whimpering, Menir saw the lifeless body of Cleeve at the feet of one of the Drengir, and further sighted that three spots of upturned soil remained empty.
Beside one such empty patch lay a leather pouch. In throwing the stranger's pouch away in anger, Menir realized, he had unleashed the Drengir upon Skirl. Recalling the earlier tapping of his windows and the breaths which fogged them, Menir cried out in terror, charging back to his house to find that the entire village had been ransacked. Skirl was no more, and his house was but a disfigured shell held in the clutch of a bough. Crying the name of his love, Elise, Menir flinched as movement approached him from behind. Iren stood close by, smiling sadly. The traveler suggested that Menir might have profited from showing a little kindness, and stated that in offering hatred and fear in his bitterness, Menir would have to harvest the resultant bitter fruits. Such was the case of his seeds, Iren said, and then strolled away into the dark woods. Menir slowly returned home, hearing something rapping on the kitchen window. He knew that it was time to answer.
===End of the Drengir crisis===
The Drengir were defeated when the Great Progenitor was forced into hibernation during the assault on Mulita.The High Republic (2021) 8 However, the Jedi discovered that the Nihil had used the Drengir as a distraction, having helped seed them across the frontier to distract from the attack on Valo.The High Republic: The Rising Storm
===Legacy===
====Qi'ra's final stand====
Centuries after the High Republic Era, as part of Crimson Dawn's war against the Sith during the Imperial Era, "the Archivist" traveled to the Amaxine space station to make use of its abundant plant life and dark side energy in "feeding" the Fermata Cage, which needed a great deal of both to open. A researcher into the dark side,Crimson Reign 3 she was aware of the hidden station and declared it a safe place to open the Cage, which began to consume the surrounding plant life so fast that she compared the Cage to a starving organic. Shortly after the Cage began consuming the dark side energy and plant life around it, however, the Sith Lords Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, who could both feel the opening through the Force, arrived aboard Vader's flagship, the Executor.
Unable to immediately destroy the station, thereby taking the Cage with it, through the Executor's long range weaponry due to the arrival of the Dawn Fleet, as the flagship's crew were forced to divert power to their deflector shields, Vader and Sidious personally led a team of Emperor's Royal Guards and death troopers to find the Cage and wipe out the Dawn troops aboard the Amaxine station. Upon entering a hangar bay, Sidious was greeted with deep waves of dark side energy and realized not all of them came from the Cage, declaring to Vader that he was unsure what they find aboard the station, but that they needed to ensure there were no survivors. Nearby the Cage and surrounded by the plant life, Qi'ra, the leader of Crimson Dawn, met with the Spark EternalDoctor Aphra (2020) 28 before re-joining her fleet.Hidden Empire 5 However, her efforts ended in tragedy,Crimson Reign 1 and the Cage was destroyed.Bounty Hunters 32
====Hermitage garden====
While pulling the strings behind the First Order through General Brendol Hux,Aftermath Snoke, a dark side strand-cast created by Sidious who became the First Order's Supreme Leader,Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary took abode at the Amaxine station. From there, he maintained communication through the Force with Ben Solo, the nephew and pupil of the Jedi legend Luke Skywalker who saw Snoke as a mentor, goading him towards the dark side. After Solo was nearly killed by a fearful Skywalker who was confused about Solo's potential destiny, Snoke beckoned the youth to his hermitage abode. At the time, the Amaxine station was partially enveloped by dark, withered tendrils which had broken out of a part of the station's transparent central biosphere. The station's interior was verdant with a variety of plants, some thriving and some withered.
Aboard the space station, Snoke shared his teachings: a sentient became its truest self when it fully embraced the dark side; he was not born as the Snoke he was, but instead became that Snoke of that moment. He thus encouraged Ben Solo to stop denying "the shadow"—the dark side of the Force and the true nature of reality—and liberate himself from the rules and constraints of the Jedi path. While revealing humanoid skeletons that had been engulfed by the withered plants, Snoke further explained that the station, which he expressed fondness for, was a beacon of light that was built in an ill-fated attempt to resist the dark.
Snoke's words, coupled with his own frustration of all the expectations that were placed upon him by his family as the legacy of legends who saved the galaxy, led Ben Solo to seek the fabled Knights of Ren, a group of morally apathetic marauders who, instead of considering what they destroyed or what goals they might achieve, cared only about being: living in the present and consuming without apology, bathing in "the shadow" and allowing oneself to be consumed by the dark side. Snoke's pupil also rejected his own name and considered taking on the name "Kylo,"The Rise of Kylo Ren 4 a name which he thought of as a child, to Snoke's approval. Toying with a skeleton captured within a Drengir's withered tendrils, Snoke elaborated that children's thoughts were pure, for they practiced no self-deception, and sent his pupil to seek out the Knights.
Traveling with the Knights, the pupil remembered Snoke, who was surrounded by plant-life and the withered vines on his station, saying that unlike the Jedi who rigidly followed rules, practiced self-control, and were thus easily broken, the Knights of Ren did what they wanted, lending them fluidity as they did whatever was needed to survive and triumph. As the Jedi attacked the Knights in the hope of bringing Ben Solo back to the light, Snoke's pupil believed that he must walk the dark path for had no choice; both the light and the dark claimed him for their own, and neither Luke Skywalker nor Snoke saw him as a person, only a legacy and a set of expectations. As Jedi Tai said that there was always hope and encouraged Ben Solo to simply be himself, the Jedi was killed by Ren, the Knights' leader. Ren saw that Snoke's pupil did not want to live in the shadow, and the pupil agreed, claiming that he was the shadow. The former Jedi attacked Ren in anger to the approval of Snoke aboard his station and Darth Sidious on Exegol. After giving Ren what the Knight deemed a "good death," the fallen Jedi took charge of the remaining Knights and embraced his dark persona as Kylo Ren.
==Behind the scenes==
===Conception and development===
The Drengir were first mentioned, albeit indirectly, in the 2020 comic The Rise of Kylo Ren 2, written by Charles Soule. Later that year, they made their first full appearance and were identified in the short story "A Bitter Harvest," which was written by George Mann and published in the Target-exclusive edition of Dark Legends. The Drengir were created for the Star Wars: The High Republic publishing initiative, and the concept for the vegetation-based villains came from a sketch by the longtime Star Wars concept artist Iain McCaig in the early days of the project's development. Amongst McCaig's sketches of monsters, author Cavan Scott found inspiration for what would become the Drengir from a creature that was "covered in vines and creepers." Scott quickly shared a document outlining their possible culture and background with the other members of the High Republic initiative, drawing on research he had been reading about how real-world plants thrive and communicate with each other.
Scott stated that the Drengir shared a collective mind through a "weird telepathic root system," and that facing one Drengir would be to face all of them. Scott also said that Jedi were not really aware of how widespread the danger of the Drengir was. Regarding the Star Wars: The High Republic comic series he authored, Scott said that it ended up a little darker than he thought it would, mainly because of Ario Anindito, who illustrated the comics. Scott and Anindito share a deep love of horror, and Scott said that he grew up with Star Wars as a monster series since he read Marvel's Star Wars comics before he ever saw any of the films. Scott found it a "wonderful surprise" that he and Anindito were leaning into the horror side of Star Wars. Scott also said that an amazing team worked on the comic, with the combination of Anindito's pencils and Mark Morales' inks being simply genius.
Claudia Gray, the author of The High Republic: Into the Dark, stated that the scariest attribute of the Drengir was that they were truly alien. While Star Wars fans are used to seeing a wide array of species, the Drengir are a profoundly different case because they do not want the type of things animal life forms want; they do not want connection.
===Continuity===
A member of the Nameless was used to represent the Drengir in the second episode of Star Wars: The High Republic Show.
==Appearances==
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Botanical sentient species
Category:Carnivorous creatures
Category:Force-sensitive species
Category:Hive-mind species
Category:Wild Space species