Difference between revisions of "Kessel"

Spice was mined on Kessel by criminals. Since Kessel lay within the Maw Cluster, if a prisoner were to escape (very unlikely under Imperial rule) they would not likely go far because of the black holes. The spice found on Kessel was glitterstim, one of the most prized spices in the galaxy. This particular spice was created by a species of energy spiders that would spin the spice into webs. Any unlucky miner that came into contact with one of these creatures would have their life energy sucked out of them in seconds.

Spice mining was a very dangerous job. Kessel had no natural atmosphere and factories on the surface create air; however, the air was still too thin to breathe without an oxygen mask. Spice was activated by light, forcing workers to work in complete darkness or under dim, red lights that lacked photons energetic enough to trigger it. Along with the obvious dangers of energy spiders, glitterstim threads were very sharp, and could easily remove digits if the worker was not careful.

Energy spiders or spice spiders were arachnids that inhabited the spice mines of Kessel. They lived in complete darkness inside the mine's caves spinning webs made of glitterstim, a rare kind of spice. The spiders would shoot webbing from their mouths to capture prey, impale them and then quickly suck the life energy from them. The spiders were known to feed on bogeys, as they were sources of pure energy that caused the glitterstim to react and produce light, alerting the spiders to their presence. The spiders also disliked bright light, since they lived in pitch black caves. Energy spiders were, however, drawn to the light produced by the glitterstim-bogey interaction, and there are even cases of mistaking other lighting sources for this interaction. They were one of the many threats faced by the spice miners, especially those who wandered too deep into the caves where the spiders lived. Often times, the administrators and superiors on Kessel would send disruptive prisoners to work in these deep tunnels, ensuring an often permanent solution to a prisoner problem. As energy spiders feed on energy, blaster bolts are ineffective against them and are merely absorbed. Curiously, ion weapons, since they affect energy and its distribution, are highly effective (but not lethal) against them.

A variant species of energy spider was discovered while investigating a series of ground quakes on behalf of the owner of the spice mining operation. The newly discovered subspecies had a reddish hue and lacked the hooks and spines that are present on the arms of typical spiders. These "red spiders" were found to be herbivorous, feeding on the giant fungi found in the lower reaches of Kessel's spice mines. These red spiders had a poisonous effect on baseline energy spiders, allowing the two to coexist. Genetically, the two different types could even mate, though no documentation of the act nor results existed.

When fed ryll, the energy spiders would produce glitteryll and grow to large sizes. A number of the creatures were smuggled onto Ryloth, which proved to be one of the few other worlds capable of supporting them.

Taras-chi

A Taras-chi was an insect native to Kessel. It had six legs under a hard round carapace about three centimeters in diameter. Kyp Durron explained that they offered nutrition to the slaves in the spice mines who could catch them to eat. Having spent time on Kessel, Booster Terrik also knew of this insect, and passed on the knowledge of it to his son-in-law Corran Horn. Both Terrik and Durron felt that the taras-chi tasted awful, although Kyp did say that they tasted less awful if prepared properly.

Bogey

These beings were noted for being phosphorescent non-sentient creatures that floated through the black tunnels on Kessel. They seemingly fed on lichen and other forms of underground fungus. The more remarkable trait demonstrated by these beings was their capacity to pass through solid rock. However, they were unable to pass through the webs created by energy spiders who spun the material to ensnare the bogeys in order to feed on them as their favored meal. Bogeys also had an effect on the black glitterstim strands produced by the spice spiders and gave them their blue photoactive nature. If these creatures would pass through machinery that contained energy, the machinery would power down, and sometimes never power back up. Only after their residual energies dissipated did the crippled electronics return to power.

Some speculated that the creatures were not alive and could not be detected by the Force. Force-sensitives were only capable of feeling energy and intent from these beings. Large colonies, however, were able to be sensed by a trained Force user though there was no life within them though hostile intent could be discerned. In reality, their closest function was similar to datacards with access to their contents being done by simple touch with its entire purpose being communication. A reservoir of energy was contained within them and had the ability to communicate. It was also a big store of fresh data that was linked to the machinery underneath Kessel. The information included a thousand or millions of three-dimensional data that needed to be delivered.

These creatures had a wide array of color schemes; they also emitted a musical-type of noise. The size of the bogeys tended to vary with some of these swirling balls of colored light being large enough to fit an R2-series astromech droid. A hand was able to brush across its outer nimbus with an individual feeling static electricity from this contact. When approaching beings, they simply hovered and made curious clacking chattering noise.

History

The source of the bogeys came from machinery deep in the caverns beneath the surface of Kessel with some speculation attributing these devices being the creation of the Celestials. They were responsible for maintaining variables and unimaginable numbers contained within the installation that served as a giant astronomical observatory of the galaxy which contained the coordinates of all gravity wells.

Bogeys were pure energy and seemingly fed on the glitterstim found in the mines. They became the main diet of the energy spiders that secreted glitterstim. By the times the Spice Mines were being mined for glitterstim, these beings were long thought to had been the creation of many a scatterbrained prisoner or mine worker.

• Wookieepedia (edited to remove details that are not canon with our timeline)