Drengir

The Drengir (pronounced /dʒɹɛnˈɡɪər/) were a carnivorous sentient species with a plant-like appearance, emerging from darkness, hatred, and suffering. Displaying color in various shades of green and brown, they featured an array of teeth and possessed numerous tentacles and thorns. Their thorns secreted potent poisons, and their mere presence evoked a sense of dread, projecting a focused "shadow" that could be sensed by sentients, even those not attuned to the Force. Plants in their vicinity also suffered, with branches curling away, becoming tainted and blackened.

Similar to plants, the Drengir propagated from seeds, rapidly taking root and growing into towering masses within just a few days. Driven by an insatiable hunger, these ancient and twisted masses of greenery regarded all other life-forms as food, preferring to devour their prey alive. Displaying inherently warlike tendencies, these plant-like sentients would feed creatures like wampas directly into their maws. They also captured sentients, constricting them with tentacles that penetrated their bodies through orifices like ears, nostrils, and mouths, and they stole the vitality of children, draining their very life force.

To the human Batuuan farmer Menir, these carnivores appeared as monstrous and hulking figures, their jaws appearing wicked and their faces pale in the moonlight. Adorned with manes of leaves and vines, and possessing horrific spurs of wood for limbs, they resembled sentient trees and could easily be mistaken as such. Capable of speaking Galactic Basic Standard, they could quickly recover from injuries inflicted by blasters or lightsabers, although they were killed when exposed to the vacuum of space. When a lightsaber bisected a Drengir, each half could survive as a separate entity.

These sentients operated collectively, sharing a unified mind with other Drengir in their group and completing each other's sentences like bond-twins. This overall collective mind, known as the root-mind, connected all Drengir throughout the galaxy. They could persuade sentient captives to join their collective consciousness, especially those susceptible to the dark side of the Force.

The Drengir, while possessing intelligence, functioned as a collective with a primary focus on devouring non-botanical lifeforms. Deeply connected to the dark side of the Force, they were malevolent beings that thrived on chaos and imbalance. Although they lacked the intricate planning and hierarchical structure of the Nihil marauders, they sought to reap a harvest of destruction across the Galactic Frontier during the High Republic Era.

For sentient species like humans and Rodians, the Drengir would lurk in the shadows around their settlements, haunting them with eerie sounds before destroying their crops. This blight would cause grains to rot in the fields, turning black and withered into mulch, emitting an overwhelming stench. The Drengir would also establish a nearby den, abducting the settlement's children one by one and entangling them in vines to drain their vitality and life force. Subsequently, they would destroy the settlements, killing the inhabitants and leaving behind blackened, withered vines, casting a terrible pall over the desolate ruins.

Thousands of years prior to the High Republic Era, before the Galactic Republic unified much of the galaxy, the Amaxine warriors encountered the Drengir on a marshy planet situated between Coruscant and the Galactic Frontier. Driven by expansionist ambitions, the warriors constructed a relay system on the planet to combat the plant-like carnivores and seize their world.

However, the plan backfired when some Drengir infiltrated the space station at the heart of the Amaxine relay, consuming Amaxine warriors and forcing the survivors into a defeated retreat. Later, the Sith discovered the station and initially allied with the Drengir, only to betray them later. They put the Drengir in stasis by binding them to four elaborate binding statues that acted as Force dampeners. The remaining Drengir on the planet below were unaware of their brethren's fate.

During the High Republic Era, the Amaxine station became a waypoint for Byne Guild pilots. The station's central sphere was transformed into an arboretum, a lush jungle filled with grass, moss, and vines. Despite the atrium's darkness, it teemed with life, radiating vitality. Within this biosphere, a set of rock stairs ascended to a dark, stone-carved throne guarded by the four binding statues. The station's upper ring housed Byne Guild lockers, marked with handwritten symbols indicating hyperspace disturbances and suggesting deviations in hyperspace lanes. Other lockers and bay doors also bore handwritten symbols.

During the High Republic, the star of the star system containing the station was nearing its supernova stage, emitting violent solar flares. Around 232 BBY, Jedi Wayseeker Orla Jareni, Jedi Knight Dez Rydan, Jedi Padawan Reath Silas, and Jedi Master Cohmac Vitus, along with the cargo ship Vessel's Captain Leox Gyasi, co-pilot Affie Hollow, and navigator Geode, found themselves stranded aboard the space station. This was due to hyperspace debris scattered by the Great Hyperspace Disaster and the threat of solar flares. Other ships were also stranded, and the Vessel's crew coordinated their landing on the station. After landing at a docking bay in the central ring, the Vessel's passengers began exploring the ancient structure. They discovered that the station's systems were functional. Dez Rydan and Reath Silas found the central globe filled with plant life, maintained by 8-T gardening droids. The two Jedi also found artifacts, jewelry, and ancient glyphs on the ground. Affie Hollow noticed wrenches and other spacers' equipment, which she deduced were recently left there due to the absence of vines. Hollow kept this information to herself, while the two Jedi sensed a shadow in the Force.

Rydan and Silas shared their findings with Orla Jareni and Cohmac Vitus, prompting Jareni and Vitus to explore further. Meanwhile, the Vessel assisted the crew of a smaller ship rescued from the solar flares. The crew, consisting of a Zabrak named Hague and his young ward, Nan, met with the Vessel's crew and the Jedi. A curious Nan conversed with Silas, and they greeted the passengers of the other ships after Leox Gyasi announced that the last of them were boarding. While the Jedi were occupied, Affie Hollow ventured to the upper rings, expecting spacers to use the top and bottom rings for storage. Hollow suspected the lower ring contained larger bays for dangerous substances, while the upper ring offered a better vantage point. In the unlit upper ring, requiring a glow rod, she discovered lockers with dates ranging from thirty-two to six years ago. 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. Exploring the area, they were struck by a cold shadow that gave them a terrible sensation of darkness. Vitus interpreted the vision as a warning, and the Jedi returned to the Vessel, its crew, and the other passengers. Aboard the Vessel, Vitus described his experience to Dez Rydan, stating that his consciousness had been transported to a terrible abyss, pained and anguished to the point of potential tearing. The Jedi had also sensed that, unlike his experience with dark side–imbued trees, there was focused and targeted intelligence behind the shadow. Speculating that the idols were warning beacons conveying an intelligent message, Vitus suggested they avoid the darkness within.

Meditating aboard the Vessel, Vitus sensed that the ominous darkness was similar to the darkness he felt on his mission to Eiram and E'ronoh as a Padawan, but the station's darkness took a different, unsettling form: consciousness without a corporeal being. He questioned the origins and form of the darkness, leading him to question Jedi philosophy's rejection of studying the dark side and its division of the Force into 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 of severing another life-form's arm with his lightsaber. He found himself alone among warped plants and trees. Fog enveloped him, becoming steamy as heat suddenly surrounded him. A blue lightsaber appeared in the fog, and Silas was knocked down by a booted foot. The vision ended with Silas collapsing in mud and being executed by a swoop of the blade. Sensing impending doom linked to the Drengir, the Jedi gathered inside the Vessel, believing the artifacts contained the darkness. Orla Jareni chose to isolate the statues for further examination rather than destroy them and risk unleashing the darkness.

However, Dez Rydan suggested that the darkness might be linked to an item protected by an energy field in the station's lower rings. While all the Jedi had considered this, Silas appeared doubtful, Vitus relieved, and Jareni open to possibilities but wary of endless debate. Deciding to act, Jareni told her group to test their new hypothesis.

The Jedi wrapped the four statues in a Force shield and transported them to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, the capital of the Galactic Republic, to be purified in the Shrine in the Depths. However, during the ritual, they realized there was nothing to neutralize. The Sith binding statues' true purpose had been misinterpreted; the Force dampeners were containing something else, and the Vessel's crew had taken the statues away.

The Vessel's crew returned to the Amaxine station to rectify the situation. Jedi Knights Jareni and Vitus repositioned the statues, ensuring the Drengir returned to stasis. However, the arrival 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 ensuing chaos. An explosive decompression struck the station, potentially sucking pieces of the statues into space.

Later, Silas joined Rydan on the Drengir marsh world 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 to the Amaxine station in a transport pod, they were followed by several Drengir in another pod. When the Drengir arrived at the station, Silas used the Force to shove their pod into hyperspace, killing the Drengir who had emerged. Nevertheless, the Great Progenitor had been awakened and survived. With her return to consciousness, Drengir across the galaxy awoke and began to wreak havoc.

Alongside the Great Disaster, the Emergences, and the Nihil raids around 232 BBY, the Drengir presented a new threat to the Jedi and the galaxy, aiming to reap a harvest of destruction across the Galactic Frontier. Shortly after the dedication of the Starlight Beacon in 232 BBY, the Drengir began abducting children on Sedri Minor, a fertile planet in the Periphery and the Galactic Frontier. They brought their captives to a cavern underground, accessible through an unusually large sinkhole. Above ground, the local crop, a barley called vratixia renanicus, began to rot, although a shipment was sold to a trader of the Hutt Clans, whose transport violated Republic law by flying through the Kazlin system.

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 barley shipment to Sedri Minor. Ceret and Sskeer contacted the locals, but Ceret was abducted by the Drengir while exploring the fields. With Ceret 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 since the battle at Kur—where he lost his left arm and felt responsible for Jora Malli's death—and that he brutally murdered a Nihil in a fit of rage while exploring the Hutt ship. Sskeer was also hiding a secret that was tearing him apart, causing a private emotional outburst after the dedication ceremony aboard the Starlight Beacon. Once Kriss, Sskeer, and Trennis gathered aboard the Ataraxia on Sedri Minor, Terec had become crazed, succumbing to the dark side. Terec's bond-twin, Ceret, captured by the Drengir, had been broken and fell to their control.

Standing guard outside the Ataraxia, Keeve Trennis was led to the Drengir's sinkhole den by a local boy named Bartol. Trennis was overwhelmed by the Drengir's shadow and sensed their expectation of her arrival. Aboard the Ataraxia, Avar Kriss restrained Terec's crazed behavior, preventing them from attacking Sskeer as Terec—under the Drengir's influence—declared that the darkness must consume and that the Jedi had already lost. After Terec passed out, Kriss was contacted by Speaker Kalo Sulman, the local leader, who reported Trennis' disappearance. Kriss set out to find Trennis, ordering Sskeer to remain on the Ataraxia to care for Terec.

Inside the Drengir den, Trennis and Bartol cut through a wall of vines and found Ceret and Julus—a local Rodian boy—strangled by tentacles. Trennis freed the two captives using the Force, but Bartol found Julus dead. Ceret, however, remained alive and warned Trennis that no meat was safe from the Drengir. While Trennis saved Bartol from a Drengir, Terec, aboard the Ataraxia, succumbed to a defeatist state, rejecting Sskeer's advice to center themself. When Sskeer attempted to show Terec the strength and refuge offered by the Force, Terec violently rejected him, spreading dark essence to the Trandoshan. Despairing at his inability to help, Sskeer fell to his knees as Terec, fully embracing the Drengir's shadow, invited him to escape his loneliness by joining the Drengir's collective mind.

Meanwhile, Ceret, also under the Drengir's shadow, captured Bartol and refused to release him. With Trennis alone, the Drengir that had previously attempted to capture Bartol advanced on the Jedi Knight, demanding that she either nourish the Drengir or become one with them. Trennis refused both options, but her Drengir predator moved to claim her as food. Before that could happen, Avar Kriss broke through the cavern ceilings with her lightsaber, searing the Drengir in two and dropping down before Trennis. Kriss spoke to the possessed Ceret, convincing them that together, as Jedi, they were one. Kriss demanded that Ceret release Bartol and return to the light. Moved by Kriss's sway, Ceret became free of the Drengir's collective mind, explaining meekly that they could not resist because the Drengir were too strong.

Yet, before Bartol and the three Jedi could make their exit from the cavern, the Drengir, which had been bisected, underwent a reformation process, resulting in two distinct organisms that shared a single, unified consciousness, declaring that escape was impossible. They were then accompanied by another Drengir, as well as Sskeer, who had become integrated with the Drengir's collective mind and had experienced the regrowth of his left arm as a botanical structure. Sskeer proclaimed that the Drengir's harvest would be abundant and unblemished, activating his lightsaber to confront Bartol, Ceret, Avar Kriss, and Keeve Trennis.

Sskeer and the Drengir held Kriss's group captive, suspending them from the cavern's roof using vines that sprouted from Sskeer's botanical arm. As Starlight Beacon faced a threat from an ancient adversary, the concealed history of the Drengir was brought to light.

During the High Republic Era, the Drengir, with a craving for Jedi, also made their presence known at a tranquil and isolated Jedi outpost where the Jedi Lily Tora-Asi resided.

Galactic lore contained a written narrative known as the "Bitter Harvest," which served as an illustration of the dark side's threat and the Drengir's menace: During the High Republic's time, when peace reigned throughout the galaxy, a traveler named Iren paid a visit to the village of Skirl on the far-off planet of Batuu. Located in close proximity to Black Spire Outpost, Skirl was a modest village nestled amidst ancient woodlands, marking it as one of Batuu's most fertile and picturesque regions. In Skirl, Elise extended an invitation to Iren, offering him food and lodging at her home while her cherished husband, Menir, a Wild Space mercenary who had chosen a life of tranquility, was engaged in selling grain at Black Spire. Upon Menir's return, he was filled with rage at the sight of a stranger within his house, and, having grown protective of his unwavering way of life and resistant to any form of change, he evicted Iren from his dwelling.

As Iren departed, he declared that because Menir had wronged him, all that would follow would be Menir's responsibility. When a shocked Elise pointed out that the unfortunate traveler had left behind his only possession—a leather pouch containing a handful of seeds—within their house, Menir stormed out of the dwelling with the pouch and hurled it in anger onto the soft, damp ground of the surrounding trees.

After Elise endured a sleepless night, Menir informed her that he intended to return with increased profits to alleviate her concerns. Despite Elise's expression of feeling weighed down by a "terrible burden," Menir dismissed it as mere anxiety stemming from Iren's parting words. While en route to Black Spire Outpost to sell his grains to slavers for the purpose of feeding their slaves, Menir became disoriented in the morning mists, sensing a dark and ominous presence stalking him before detecting movement in his vicinity, catching a glimpse of a gnarled tree branch that seemed to point at him accusingly. Although he eventually navigated his way out of the fog and completed his journey to Black Spire Outpost and back to Skirl, Menir was informed by a neighbor that rumors were circulating in the village about a peculiar, angular figure who had been seen in the morning mists, creeping among the houses and peering into their windows before retreating into the woods. While Menir denied having witnessed anything of the sort, the farmer remained awake throughout the night, hearing knocking sounds and catching sight of a phantom branch tapping on the window glass.

In the morning, Menir was informed by his neighbor, Nanuth, that the crops throughout the village had been afflicted by a blight. Additionally, a boy named Cleeve had gone missing. Menir became concerned about the potential loss of grain profits, but even more so about the stranger, Iren, and his parting words: "All that follows is because of you." After an entire day of searching for young Cleeve without success, the villagers were compelled to abandon the search and return to their homes. Anger consumed Menir, who blamed Iren for all of Skirl's misfortunes. Increasingly agitated, Menir remained awake on his bed, contemplating that welcoming strangers into the community was akin to inviting poison into their lives. As he poured himself a cup of blue milk in his kitchen, Menir noticed movement outside in his garden.

Concluding in a fit of rage that it must have been Iren, Menir grabbed a torch and stormed out of his house to confront the stranger. His fear replaced 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 unwavering determination to protect his village from any form of change, Menir pursued the movement ahead and reached a small grove illuminated by the soft glow of Batuu's twin moons. Sheer terror gripped Menir as he beheld hulking figures of roots and branches with protruding, stark jaws, seemingly emerging from the moss-covered ground. As the human entered the grove, gnarled branches reached out and disrupted the air, casting a dark presence that Menir sensed instinctively. With sizes ranging from those of children to men, eight Drengir, still anchored to the ground, rose up from the soil. Whimpering, Menir noticed the lifeless body of Cleeve at the feet of one of the Drengir, and further observed that three patches of upturned soil remained vacant.

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 on his windows and the breaths that fogged them, Menir cried out in terror, rushing back to his house only to find that the entire village had been ransacked. Skirl was no more, and his house was merely a disfigured shell held in the grasp of a bough. Crying out the name of his beloved, Elise, Menir flinched as movement approached him from behind. Iren stood nearby, smiling sadly. The traveler suggested that Menir might have benefited from showing a little kindness, and stated that in offering hatred and fear in his bitterness, Menir would have to reap the bitter fruits that followed. Such was the case with his seeds, Iren said, before strolling away into the dark woods. Menir slowly returned home, hearing something rapping on the kitchen window. He knew that it was time to answer.

The Drengir's downfall occurred when the Great Progenitor was compelled into a state of hibernation during the assault on Mulita. However, the Jedi uncovered that the Nihil had exploited the Drengir as a diversionary tactic, having facilitated their spread across the frontier to distract from the attack on Valo.

Centuries following the High Republic Era, as a component of Crimson Dawn's war against the Sith during the Imperial Era, "the Archivist" journeyed to the Amaxine space station to utilize its abundant plant life and dark side energy in "nourishing" the Fermata Cage, which required a substantial amount of both to activate. As a researcher of the dark side, she possessed knowledge of the hidden station and deemed it a secure location to activate the Cage, which commenced consuming the surrounding plant life at such a rapid pace that she likened it to a ravenous organism. Shortly after the Cage began consuming the dark side energy and plant life in its vicinity, the Sith Lords Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, who were both able to sense the activation through the Force, arrived aboard Vader's flagship, the Executor.

Unable to immediately obliterate the station, thereby destroying the Cage along with it, using the Executor's long-range weaponry due to the arrival of the Dawn Fleet, as the flagship's crew were compelled to divert power to their deflector shields, Vader and Sidious personally led a contingent of Emperor's Royal Guards and death troopers to locate the Cage and eliminate the Dawn troops stationed aboard the Amaxine station. Upon entering a hangar bay, Sidious was met with profound waves of dark side energy and realized that not all of it originated from the Cage, declaring to Vader that he was uncertain of what they would encounter aboard the station, but that they needed to ensure that there were no survivors. In close proximity to the Cage and surrounded by plant life, Qi'ra, the leader of Crimson Dawn, conferred with the Spark Eternal before rejoining her fleet. However, her endeavors culminated in tragedy, and the Cage was destroyed.

While manipulating the First Order from behind the scenes through General Brendol Hux, Snoke, a dark side strand-cast created by Sidious who ascended to the position of the First Order's Supreme Leader, established his residence at the Amaxine station. From this location, he maintained communication through the Force with Ben Solo, the nephew and apprentice of the Jedi legend Luke Skywalker who regarded Snoke as a mentor, enticing him towards the dark side. After Solo was nearly killed by a fearful Skywalker who was perplexed by Solo's potential destiny, Snoke summoned the youth to his secluded hermitage. At the time, the Amaxine station was partially enveloped by dark, withered tendrils that had breached a section of the station's transparent central biosphere. The station's interior was lush with a diverse array of plants, some thriving and others withered.

Aboard the space station, Snoke imparted his teachings: a sentient being attained its truest form when it fully embraced the dark side; he was not born as the Snoke he was, but rather became that Snoke of that moment. He thus urged Ben Solo to cease denying "the shadow"—the dark side of the Force and the true nature of reality—and to free himself from the rules and limitations of the Jedi path. While revealing humanoid skeletons that had been consumed by the withered plants, Snoke further elucidated that the station, for which he expressed fondness, was a beacon of light that had been constructed in a doomed attempt to resist the dark.

Snoke's words, coupled with his own frustration with all the expectations that had been placed upon him by his family as the legacy of legends who had saved the galaxy, led Ben Solo to seek out the fabled Knights of Ren, a group of morally indifferent marauders who, instead of considering what they destroyed or what goals they might achieve, were solely concerned with existing: living in the present and consuming without remorse, reveling in "the shadow" and allowing themselves to be consumed by the dark side. Snoke's apprentice also rejected his own name and contemplated adopting the name "Kylo," a name he had conceived as a child, to Snoke's approval. While toying with a skeleton trapped within a Drengir's withered tendrils, Snoke elaborated that children's thoughts were pure, as they practiced no self-deception, and dispatched his apprentice to seek out the Knights.

Traveling with the Knights, the apprentice recalled Snoke, who was surrounded by plant life and the withered vines on his station, stating that unlike the Jedi who rigidly adhered to rules, practiced self-control, and were thus easily broken, the Knights of Ren did as they pleased, granting them fluidity as they did whatever was necessary to survive and triumph. As the Jedi attacked the Knights in the hope of bringing Ben Solo back to the light, Snoke's apprentice believed that he was compelled to walk the dark path as he had no other choice; both the light and the dark claimed him for their own, and neither Luke Skywalker nor Snoke saw him as an individual, only as a legacy and a set of expectations. As Jedi Tai declared that there was always hope and encouraged Ben Solo to simply be himself, the Jedi was killed by Ren, the Knights' leader. Ren perceived that Snoke's apprentice did not desire to live in the shadow, and the apprentice concurred, asserting 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 granting Ren what the Knight deemed a "good death," the fallen Jedi assumed command of the remaining Knights and embraced his dark persona as Kylo Ren.

The Drengir were initially mentioned, albeit indirectly, in the 2020 comic The Rise of Kylo Ren 2, authored by Charles Soule. Later that year, they made their official debut and were identified in the short story "A Bitter Harvest," which was penned by George Mann and published in the Target-exclusive edition of Dark Legends. The Drengir were conceived for the Star Wars: The High Republic publishing initiative, and the inspiration for the vegetation-based antagonists originated from a sketch by the veteran Star Wars concept artist Iain McCaig during the early stages of the project's development. Among McCaig's sketches of monsters, author Cavan Scott discovered inspiration for what would eventually become the Drengir from a creature that was "covered in vines and creepers." Scott promptly shared a document outlining their potential culture and background with the other members of the High Republic initiative, drawing upon research he had been conducting on how real-world plants thrive and communicate with one another.

Scott stated that the Drengir shared a collective consciousness through a "strange telepathic root system," and that confronting one Drengir was tantamount to confronting all of them. Scott also noted that the Jedi were not fully aware of the extent of the Drengir's threat. Regarding the Star Wars: The High Republic comic series that he authored, Scott remarked that it turned out to be somewhat darker than he had anticipated, primarily due to Ario Anindito, who illustrated the comics. Scott and Anindito share a profound appreciation for horror, and Scott mentioned that he had grown up with Star Wars as a monster series since he had read Marvel's Star Wars comics before ever viewing any of the films. Scott found it a "delightful surprise" that he and Anindito were embracing the horror aspect of Star Wars. Scott also acknowledged that an exceptional team had collaborated on the comic, with the combination of Anindito's pencils and Mark Morales' inks being nothing short of genius.

Claudia Gray, the author of The High Republic: Into the Dark, asserted that the most terrifying characteristic of the Drengir was their genuine alien nature. While Star Wars fans are accustomed to encountering a wide range of species, the Drengir represent a profoundly different case because they do not desire the types of things that animal life forms desire; they do not seek connection.

A member of the Nameless was utilized to represent the Drengir in the second episode of Star Wars: The High Republic Show.