Droch

This article is about the insect. You may be looking for the boarding craft.

"Drochs are tiny. They start out that way, anyway. They breed at ferocious rates in dark, damp places. When they encounter living tissue, of most species, they burrow in. Their gift is that they sample the host's body chemistry and electromagnetic characteristics, even tissue density, and mimic them, becoming all but invisible to scanners. They grow in the host's body, living off the host's life energy, when they are numerous enough, when collectively they begin drawing enough life energy from the host, the Death Seed plague manifests itself."

―Luke Skywalker^[2]

Drochs were parasitic insects that burrowed under the skin of the host and drank their life energies. Their feeding was the source of Death Seed plague.

Biology and appearance[]

Drochs were small, insectile parasites originating on Nam Chorios that drained and fed upon the electromagnetic field of the host organism, burrowing into the skin and assimilating with the host's body so as to become biologically indistinguishable from its flesh. Originally assuming the form of a small beetle roughly five millimeters in length, the droch's tendency to mutate as it grew in both size and intelligence from feeding upon the life energy of its hosts resulted in diverse body sizes, structures, and intelligence levels amongst more advanced specimen. Larger specimen had a tendency to absorb smaller drochs, thus growing in power without having to take a host. The consumption of drochs had a similar effect on any being willing to eat them, and could in large quantities extend the eater's life and restore their youth, although adopting the droch's parasitic tendencies was necessary to maintain the effect. Although beginning life as non-sentients, some--such as Dzym, who was over two-hundred-and-fifty years old at the time of his death--eventually absorbed enough energy to achieve sentience. Because of the interaction between the native tsil crystals and natural light on Nam Chorios, drochs were sluggish and infertile in the light, but moved quickly and reproduced at an alarming rate in darkness. Outside of Nam Chorios, however, the absence of the tsil's interference allowed them to endure sunlight without any adverse effects.

History[]

In 702 BBY, the Grissmath Dynasty founded a penal colony on Nam Chorios in the Meridian sector and seeded the world with drochs in the hopes that a Death Seed outbreak would wipe out the prisoners. However, sunlight fragmented through the sentient Spook crystals found on Nam Chorios, weakening the electromagnetic bonds of the drochs. Smaller ones were killed outright by the light, but larger ones proved unable to harm their hosts and were harmlessly absorbed by the body as nutrients. A plague never broke out, as drochs were only able to grow in the dark.

In 1 ABY, research conducted by the Imperial Department for Epidemic Prevention revealed that vermin on Tatooine were possibly carrying droch eggs. These suspected creatures were all destroyed.^[3]

By 13 ABY, the droch Dzym had achieved sentience and gained the ability to control lesser drochs at will. Having grown to great power, he assumed the guise of a Human and conspired with Seti Ashgad to start a plague in the Meridian Sector. Drochs appeared in the arthropod exhibit of the Coruscant Livestock Exchange and Exhibition following the New Republic's founding, along with spice-producing Energy spiders and toxin/adrenaline-producing orbalisks.

Hutts ate drochs as appetizers. Zubindi Ebsuk was a notable provider of droch foods, which eventually resulted in the creation of Dzym.