Villip

"When we entered the villip paddy on Belkadan, I could hear the villip buds whispering to one another. I know they were talking about us."

- Luke Skywalker

Villips were the primary method of communication amongst the extra-galactic Yuuzhan Vong.

Like all Yuuzhan Vong accoutrements, 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 berries bud) 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.

Villips could also survive in the vacuum of space. Yuuzhan Vong commanders could record a message on the biot and hurl it through space. The villips possessed an uncanny power that allowed them to transport through matter - they would strike the outside of a ship and appear within to relay their contents. In the orbit of Helska IV aboard the ExGal-4 Station's Spacecaster shuttle, Danni Quee, Bensin Tomri, and Cho Badeleg were the first native denizens of the Galaxy to encounter this spacefaring entity.

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 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.

Variations
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 the physical restriction was impossible, a hybrid of the gnullith and the villip was created. This allowed Warriors to command their legions through the hostile territory while 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.

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.

Appearances

 * The New Jedi Order series