Did Cassiora ever get into a physical fight with Irkana to protect Besteel -and possibly Redimus too- from her invasive attempts, even defend his honor as well?
Oh, yeah. After the incident with the wild moon berries, Cassiora was pissed. She went looking for Irkana and gave her the beating of a lifetime, in front of the entire Kai'vren tribe. No one intervened—not even Gormak, who figured it was time his spoiled sister finally faced actual consequences for her actions.
When their father arrived from hunting and tried breaking them up, Cassiora struck him in the face, telling him to keep his spoiled brat away from her man.
So, I have some ideas about why the Voss Mystics are so much better at seeing the future than the Jedi and Sith. It is a mixture of a) more sophisticated vision inducing techniques, b) the Seer-Interpreter-Actor division, and c) their cultural attitudes towards choice and fate. All these factors are rooted in the differing evolution of the Mystics as an organisation compared to the Jedi.
Sith & Jedi come to Voss
This all begins when the Gormak were exposed to Jedi and Sith Force-practices thousands of years before the events of the game. As a technology, I think Force-manipulation is similar to written language in that it was originally invented in a small number of places then spread as people exposed to it went “damn that’s useful” and ran off to develop their own systems to suit their own needs.
An indirect genesis sparked in a more restricted indigenous practice is no less probable than there being a direct through-line from the Jedi teachings to the Voss. It would explain the absence of the Light-Dark paradigm and the puzzle of why, if the Jedi shared their martial skills with the proto-Voss, do we never see the Mystics engage in combat.
Because these events happen in the centuries between the Second Great Jedi Schism and the Great Hyperspace War – during which the Sith and Galactic Republic had no direct contact with each other – I think that the Jedi who came to Voss weren’t part of the main Order in the Republic but, like the Sith, had their origins in the exiles lead by Ajunta Pall. Planets like Dromund Kaas were discovered then forgotten in this period, so finding and loosing Voss would fit with that. I don’t believe the wars between the Korribani Jedi and the Sith were at all connected to differing views on the Dark-Side and Light-Side of the Force; there were many drivers to conflicts between them – political, philosophical, religious – but that was never one of them. Both Korribani Jedi and Sith comfortably used both sides of the Force, so on Voss neither of them were talking about Dark Is Evil/Light Is Weak which contributed to the Mystics not picking up the Light-Dark paradigm from them. Both the Sith and the Korribani Jedi were strongly influenced by the native Korribani Force traditions in addition to the Jedi teachings the Twelve Exiles brought with them; these traditions include Force Rituals conducted at significant sites. While Voss Mystic Rituals are all distinct from the Sith ones – it was the idea which was passed along rather than any complete rituals – these site specific, formal Force rituals are something that the Jedi Order in the Republic does not appear to engage in. This is part of the reason I believe it is more likely that the Sith and Jedi warring with each other were both from the Sith worlds rather than the main Jedi Order and one of their Dark-Side breakaway factions during, say, the Third Great Jedi Schism. Another part of the reason is that “Sith” is a loanword in Republic Basic that was presumably picked-up during the Great Hyperspace War, so it doesn’t make sense for any Dark Jedi on the Core Worlds’ side of the galaxy to be using it earlier than that.
This leads us to the question of why the Voss Mystics don’t retain any of the combat techniques the lore tablets describing this era record that the Jedi taught the proto-Voss. One possible reason is that everybody who knew the techniques – Jedi, Sith, proto-Voss – was killed in the climactic battle between the proto-Voss and the Sith. Another is that the climactic battle was so horrifying that in its aftermath the Voss swore-off using the Force in warfare, consciously allowing the techniques to fall from memory as the generation who knew them died.
The Nightmare Lands seem likely to have been the site of that battle, the terrible things which happened there leaving an indelible mark on the land. The rage and pain and death and fear seeping down to form the fertile ground the seed of Sel-Makor would one day take root in.
Birth of the Voss
What the Gormak and Voss Origins lore tablet has to say on the split between the Voss’ ancestors and the rest of the Gormak – “the Jedi taught a handful of the tribes the ways of the Force … [this] would alter the path of their natural evolution so that they underwent profound physical and mental changes over the next several generations … [the Voss] were touched by the dark side, further altering their radically sensitive evolutionary path” – seems to me unlikely to be a truly reliable account. For one thing, the Gormak Shamans seem to have some low-key Mechu-deru going on yet persistently remain Gormak. For another, it is unlikely that the Gormak alone of all sentient species would react so strongly training as Force-adepts. All Voss’ lore tablets are written from an outside perspective, many containing some very nasty sentiments about the planet’s “primitive” and “backward” indigenous inhabitants; they should be treated with a level of scepticism.
It seems more likely to me – given the Voss’ use of rituals to transition between life stages, the creation story of being born from the substance of the planet Voss in the Deep Cradle, and the legend of the Voss who returned to the Deep Cradle to drink the fire from the planet’s heart – that a group of Gormak tribes made the choice to undertake a powerful Force-ritual that transformed them from the Gormak they once were birthing to a new people.
Seeing a bunch of tribes perform a strange ritual to give them the power to destroy their enemies and morph into a new species must have been pretty yikes for the neighbouring Gormak. That, and the massively destructive battle between the proto-Voss and the Sith, spawned the rumours which fermented into the Gormak’s conviction that the Voss are an aberrant blight. (I don’t think the primary purpose of the ritual actually was to give the proto-Voss “the power to destroy their enemies” but given the context of events that’s what many of the other Gormak tribes assumed their motivation was.)
Role of the Mystics
The Jedi are a monastic tradition, warrior-monks by trade and by training. While they consider service an important part of their calling, they hold themselves apart from the rest of society. Because the Jedi are warriors they view the Force as a weapon of war, a danger; because the Jedi are monks they view the Force as a path to personal enlightenment, a transcendence.
The Voss Mystics are far more deeply imbedded in their society than the Jedi; they view their skills with the Force as tools with which to serve that society. What are the most useful parts of the future for a society to know about?
A) The weather – will it rain, will it frost, must we contend with hail or floor or drought for this year’s harvests?
B) Natural disasters – the afore mentioned droughts and flooding rains but also volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.
These are things the Voss have no power to prevent. Attempting to prevent them is a folly which distracts from making plans to mitigate the damage of future disasters. You can plant late or harvest early, you can evacuate the shrine at the volcano’s base or stockpile supplies for the coming plague, but you can’t stop the future that’s coming for you.
This is also information that it makes sense to form into a mass collection, cross-reference against other visions and secondary sources, then systematically distribute. Rather than have a Mystic go haring off to warn a farmstead they saw destroyed by flood they pass on as many details as they can to the Interpreters, the Interpreters analyse the vision for clues of its location and timeframe, they hand their assessment to the weather council who distribute the flood warning to areas along the effected watercourses with a special note for the farmstead in the vision saying don’t bother building levees just evacuate.
This is the origin of; the conviction Mystics’ visions always come to pass (the role began as a search for static events), the Mystics’ prestigious role in the government (they became tied up in the management of the agricultural system), and the Mystics’ more advanced vision inducing techniques (Mystics’ visions were more useful to them and their society than the Jedi’s fluctuating personal futures were to theirs, so more resources were invested in further innovation).
Over time the Voss lean more heavily on the Mystics’ visions for guidance. Over time the Mystics’ visions of all things – not just those that are beyond the Voss’ ability to influence – become more accurate.
To a certain extent, there is a feed-back loop here. The Voss believe the Mystics’ visions are always accurate, so they act in accordance with the visions’ content, so their actions lead to the events foreseen in the visions. I think a lot of outsiders are inclined to write off the Voss’ acceptance of fate on those grounds. The Mystic’s visions come true because the Voss make them come true.
But if that were all there is to it the Mystics wouldn’t be able to predict the actions of outsiders – and the Voss’ neat destruction of the Imperial invasion fleet proves they very much can.
I think that many Voss are not unaware that they are involved in a societal trade-off – think of the altars of Life, Death, and Duty in the Deep Cradle. Part of the context, though, is that while in the Voss belief system fate may be weighted too heavily relative to free-will in a way that can incentivise harm to individuals, many modern western cultures (and, in-universe, the Galactic Republic which often functions as kinda sorta thematic proxy for modern western states) set too much store in the idea of free-will in ways that also incentivise harm to individuals. You should sacrifice yourself in accordance with a vision for the good of society vs You should lift yourself out of poverty using only your bootstraps for the good of society.
Voss’ fate directed government policy actions are weird, but the system appears to work quite well. We see no poverty in Voss-Ka, little crime not committed by outsiders, and Voss was able to deftly thwart the Sith’s attempt at invasion. People will tolerate a remarkable amount of disfunction from a system they consider to be broadly stable and successful.
The Gormak were sentient humanoids native to the planet Voss, a world in the Voss system of the Allied Tion sector in the Outer Rim Territories.
Voss had a temperate climate and solid terrain, with roughly half of the planet covered in rocky plateaus, unspoiled peaks, and verdant forests, while the other half lay under seas and oceans.
An aggressive species, the Gormak held an innate love of warfare and competition, and were extremely hostile toward the other natives of their planet, the Voss species. The Gormak held a cultural belief that in order for them to prosper, the Voss—whom they viewed as an unnatural plague on the planet—must be destroyed. To achieve that goal, Gormak warriors repeatedly assaulted the Voss capital city of Voss-Ka over the course of centuries; however, despite their far greater numbers, they were never successful as their warlike nature has kept them from uniting against their enemy. After the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic established embassies in Voss-Ka, the Gormak viewed both factions as enemies, seeing the off-worlders as no different from the Voss. Although their tribal society and basic speech patterns were considered primitive by galactic standards, their innate talent with technology rivaled the capabilities of the top minds of the Republic. From bits of scavenged electronics and discarded equipment, the Gormak constructed advanced tools, heavy machinery, specialized weapons and even cybernetic implants. However, despite their incredible affinity for technology, the Gormak remained a pre-spaceflight culture confined to their homeworld, which caused them to be viewed as a backward species despite being perfectly capable of repairing, modifying and improving tech created by more advanced cultures.
The Gormak population was numbered in millions and their society was tribal in structure, with Gormak spread throughout the wilderness of Voss in numerous nomadic clans numbering roughly a hundred individuals each. Within each tribe the position of responsibility to maximize the value of all salvaged equipment was held by a Shaman with a particularly strong affinity for technology, to whom the other Gormak looked for guidance not just in matters of technology, but in their daily lives. By far the most populous sentient species on the planet, the Gormak settled in camps, sometimes fortified by stolen off-world technology and actively avoided the forest known as the Nightmare Lands due to its mysterious corruptive influence. The largest Gormak settlement on the planet was Gorma-Koss in the Gormak Lands, where tens of thousands of Gormak have united their tribes at the base of an unnamed mountain under the leadership of Jokull, the Gormak King. The Gormak constructed mines to strip the land of valuable resources for the construction of their machines and weapons, leaving desolation and monolithic structures behind. Apart from working with existing technology, the Gormak also experimented heavily with organic-cybernetic hybrids, using Voss fauna as test subjects. Gormak hunting parties set out at regular intervals to trap mawvorrs, shaclaws and even the deadly vorantikus alive so that the creatures could be implanted with cybernetic upgrades. These monstrous cyberbeasts became faster, stronger and far more dangerous and could be programmed with specific instructions, making them into excellent guardians. The Gormak considered the meat of the insectoid shaclaw a delicacy, and became skilled at capturing and cooking them alive since the giant insects' flesh would become contaminated with toxins within minutes after death. The Gormak would only dine on the shaclaws during special coming of age feasts, and the capture and preparation of such meal was considered an essential part of the ritual celebration. The Gormak revered the local alpha predator vorantiki for their power and fearlessness, often depicting them in crudely scrawled pictures found inside Gormak domiciles.
In ancient times, the Sith came to Voss, where the Gormak were the only one native sentient species. The Sith viewed Gormak as primitive and ignored them as they began to harvest the world's resources. However, the planet and the Gormak were irrevocably changed when the Jedi arrived and attempted to drive the Sith off Voss. Seeking allies among the natives, the Jedi agreed to teach some of the Gormak tribes on how to use the Force, but the Gormak were unprepared for the knowledge. Those tribes underwent radical evolutionary changes in the course of a few generations, becoming a new species named the Voss. The Jedi attempted to teach the Voss how to control their emotions and new powers, but the Voss instead attacked the Sith on the planet, bringing the new species in contact with the dark side of the Force. This caused the dark side to become manifest in a Sith structure on the planet, and this entity came to take the name Sel-Makor as it gained intelligence. Sel-Makor began to feed on violence and suffering, fueling its dark side powers and spreading corruption across the surrounding area, which became known as the Nightmare Lands, and the ancient Sith complex that the entity inhabited was known as the Dark Heart. Not long after his creation, Sel-Makor captured the spirits of two of the Gormak who had been taught by the Jedi, Damek-Ol and Nemok-Ta, and imprisoned their spirits in slave bodies. Damek-Ol was imprisoned in the body of a Dashade, while Nemok-Ta was placed in the body of an Abyssin, and the two became avatars of Sel-Makor's power. After the extermination of the Sith, the Voss forgot their origins and founded the city of Voss-Ka atop the planet's highest peak, while the Jedi eventually died out or departed. Sel-Makor, meanwhile, influenced the Gormak's bloodlust and drove the far more numerous species to attack their cousins throughout the centuries so that he could feed off of their dark emotions.
For centuries between the sundering of the species and the re-discovery of Voss by non-native off-worlders, the Gormak settled across the planet and engaged in a seemingly endless war against the Voss species. Though restricted at the time to pre-flight technology, the technological aptitude, viciousness, and superior numbers of the Gormak made them a formidable opponent to the Voss. Despite that, the Gormak were held at bay by the training of the Voss commandos, the Force visions of the Voss Mystics, and the fortifications of the Voss mountain-top city of Voss-Ka. Following the Treaty of Coruscant that ended the Great Galactic War between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic, Voss was accidentally rediscovered by the larger galaxy around 3645 BBY. An operative of the Star Cabal named Albathius arrived on Voss shortly after its discovery, and gained great influence among the Voss Mystics, becoming known as the "Shining Man" and convincing the Voss to stay neutral from the Cold War between two governments. The Shining Man soon died, but his starship remained in the Chamber of Ashes of the Dark Heart, where it was guarded by a Gormak named Xanar for years afterwards.
At some point during the Cold War, a Gormak by the name of Jokull entered the Nightmare Lands and traveled to the Dark Heart, entering the cave known as the Dark Hollow where Sel-Makor was most powerful. Instead of consuming the Gormak's mind like he had done to so many others, Sel-Makor instead chose to awaken within Jokull his species' natural ability—the power to see visions as the Voss did. Horrified that he had been corrupted and seeing all Voss as being marked with evil because of their powers, Jokull returned to the Gormak Lands and became king of his people in order to wage war upon the Voss—so that the Gormak would never be corrupted like he was. Under his leadership dozens of Gormak tribes united in Gorma-Koss, where thousands of Gormak set to work together on a massive project. Using pieces and equipment salvaged from the offworlders and the Voss, the Gormak constructing a Gormak cannon to threaten Voss-Ka and a starship named Gormegan-1 which they intended to use to travel to the stars. These constructions were supported by the Tela Mining Operations, while Jokull stored treasures and trophies from his conquests in the underground vault known as the King's Hall. In the Pelath-Ri Marches the Gormak settled on the Fest Otur Island and began to cut down many of the trees in the region.
Trying to gain an alliance with the Voss, both the Republic and the Empire lent them aid in their fight against the Gormak. The Sith aided the Voss in destroying Gormegan-1while the Republic helped the Voss to destroy the Gormak cannon. In the process, Jokull was captured, and the Voss discovered Jokull's ability to see the future. They enlisted the aid of outsiders in retracing the Gormak king's steps in the Nightmare Lands, soon learning the truth of their species' creation. After Jokull and neutralized, a new leader named Raklann took charge of Gormak in the Pelath-Ri Marches, trying to destroy the Shrine of Healing from below and attempting to excavate and repair the ancient starship named Evuk-Nosk. In 3636 BBY the galaxy was invaded by the Eternal Empire of Zakuul, who after defeating both the Republic and the Sith Empire, placed dozens of massive battlestations called Star Fortresses in orbits of subjugated worlds to watch for possible uprisings. The Voss Star Fortress was protected by a shield bunker located in the Pelath-Ri Marches, and the Gormak saw it as a source of the disease that affected their young, old and weak. In the face of a larger threat, the Voss and Gormak soldiers had united to defend their homeworld during the Invasion of Voss, ending the centuries-long war between two species. Their alliance has proven surprisingly effective, with the meditative reserve of the Voss complimenting the ferocious strength of the Gormak to form a formidable army.
The Gormak were sentient humanoids with green skin. They had flat, noseless faces adorned with frills that swept away from their eyes and mandible, collecting in whorls on the sides of their heads behind the jaw. The eyes of a Gormak varied in color, with red, orange and blue varieties observed. The Gormak had clawed, three-fingered hands—also adorned with frills—and tended to possess a muscular build. The Gormak possessed a sexual dimorphism, with females being slightly shorter than males and lacking a whorl located above their nose. The Gormak also had a natural mental acuity for understanding and employing technology.
Gormaks age at the following stages:
1 - 12 Child
13 - 17 Young Adult
18 - 49 Adult
50 - 74 Middle Age
75 - 89 Old
Examples of Names: Damek-Ol, Hadrik, Jokull, Nemok-Ta, Raklann, Xanar.
Languages: Gormak have their own language of Gormak, though dialects vary widely between different tribal groups and regions.
