Villip

Like all Yuuzhan Vong biots, villips were fully organic and were biogenetically engineered, not manufactured. Low, water-filled paddies were seeded with villip plants, which would grow into long, fleshy stalks recognizable by their triad of blue leaves. Two to five berries would bud from the stalks, feeding symbiotically and developing telepathic communication channels originally meant to scan for predators on the villip plant's home planet. Soon the berries grew to about the size of a Yuuzhan Vong's head, and Shapers would pluck the matured villips from their stalks. Fully-grown villips resembled distended bags of flesh with a hanging gut sack. Sensory tendrils drooped from the main body, and a furrowed ridge reminiscent of an eye socket sat within a short groove - the outer and eversion stomas.

The communicatory relays between the 'sister' villips, however, would not be lost. Telepathic networks would persist between the stalkmates, allowing them to communicate instantaneously across infinite distances. Yuuzhan Vong took advantage of this natural predilection and utilized villips as the ultimate form of long-range correspondence.

Should someone stroke the green Eversion Stoma, the villip would pucker and invert itself around this focal point. A signal instantly reached all the sister villips (though typically only two bud berries ) and suddenly vibrations channeled down the others' outer stomas. The quaking would alert the holder of the other villip, who would stroke the eversion stoma in kind. Both villips, when inverted, would become flawless three-dimensional representations of the other holder's head and speak in their master's voice. In this manner, two Yuuzhan Vong could communicate face-to-face (figuratively) from opposite ends of the galaxy without fear of interception, for technology could not deduce telepathy. When the conversation was finished, a second touch to the eversion stoma returned the villip to its original fleshy state.

Through the use of villips, the Yuuzhan Vong had the ability of creating "living light" for centuries.

Due to their stable abilities and infinite range, villips were widely used by the Yuuzhan Vong. Warriors affixed them into shouldermounts for easy communication during pitched combat and were known as Tactical Villips. In addition, coralskipper pilots used them to denote enemy positions and tactical information as necessary.

Shapers were the ones who grew the villips to start with, and thus were the root of every villip deployed throughout the Yuuzhan Vong forces. Priests and Intendants conversed with allies as they plotted what next to do to both further the invasion and bring the Yuuzhan Vong as a whole closer to the gloriousness of the gods.

Certain chambers possessed a villip fixed on either side of the door allowing for a person inside to determine who was on the other side by stroking the villip.

Villips were also used as a potent espionage tool and were implanted in flying organisms which were used to track targets by spying on them.

As with much Yuuzhan Vong biotechnology, a slew of branches hung from the villip's genetic tree. Some were ancient, some modern; some were created specifically during the invasion to enhance the Eighth Cortex.

Enormous master villips could override and speak to other, dedicated villips; a Warrior commander could speak into his lone villip and the message would be relayed to all those in the web. This chain worked in one direction only; subordinates could not talk to their superior through his master villip.

Villip choirs were very similar to normal villips, but transmitted a three-dimensional image of a scene instead of simply voices and the communicator's head. Typically two individual villips were required for such a task.

Similarly, villip beacons transmitted images alone, and in only two dimensions. These were very appropriate for subtle espionage, as agents beneath ooglith masquers could hide the villip beacon against their body, where the living flesh would curl against the skin and become almost unnoticeable.

When invading watery worlds or areas choked with deadly gas, Yuuzhan Vong wore a starfish-like breather, the gnullith, that extended a tendril down the throat. As speaking through vacuum environments is impossible, a hybrid of the gnullith and the villip was created in order to allow warriors to command their legions through hostile territory, whilst still keeping their gnullith in place.

Following the invasion of the galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong often wished to communicate with the infidels upon whom they warred. To this end much experimenting occurred, eventually producing the oggzil, an attachment to the standard villip that would allow the Yuuzhan Vong's voice to transmit electronically across spectral frequencies. This freed the invaders from the shame of utilizing dead machinery.

These specialized form of villips were flattened gelatinous lifeforms which were used in groups to create light shapers. This made them similar to a villip-choir field but used instead to send and receive bioluminescent holographic images over vast distances.

The ol-villip was a minute version of the villip beacon that could be attached to the head of a provoker spineray as it scanned a being's nervous system, allowing the Shapers to see images of their neurological targets.

When Jedi defector Bey Gandan returned to the New Republic as a Yuuzhan Vong agent in a bid to sabotage bacta production, Master Shaper Viith Yalu equipped him with a small villip implanted directly in his brain. This enabled him to communicate silently and covertly with a normal villip like that used by Tsaa Qalu. It is not known exactly what form outward transmissions from this villip took, but communications using it seems to have manifested outwardly as moments of pain, and the coma-like state in which Klin-Fa Gi initially encountered Gandan may have been the outward appearance of a longer villip discussion with Viith Yalu.

At least some villips—perhaps a distinct subspecies—could also survive in the vacuum of space. When Danni Quee, Bensin Tomri, and Cho Badeleg, the first native denizens of the galaxy to encounter the Yuuzhan Vong directly, arrived in the orbit of Helska IV aboard the ExGal-4 outpost's Spacecaster shuttle, Prefect Da'Gara of the Praetorite Vong contacted them by means of a villip which struck the main forward viewport of their ship's flight-deck and somehow extruded itself through the center of the pane to hang inside the cabin. It is not clear how different this "see villip" (as the early tizowyrm translation protocols named it) was from a standard villip, but it may have been a significantly modified type.

Upon the Yuuzhan Vong's invasion of the galaxy, they terraformed the planet Belkadan in order to turn the world into a garden which would breed villips.

After the conquest of the world of Obroa-skai, the electronic databases of the planet's library were translated into an organic format through the use of villip memories.

Jedi healer Cilghal of the New Jedi Order attempted to study villips at Eclipse Station but was unable to discover its secrets or breed more of them.

• The Essential Guide to Alien Species
• The New Jedi Order Sourcebook
• Coruscant and the Core Worlds
• The New Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
• Legacy Era Campaign Guide
• Galaxy of Intrigue