Star Wars: The High Republic (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Song of the Drengir”

* Part 4 of 5 of the There Is No Fear storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Star Wars: The High Republic (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Song of the Drengir”! In the previous installment, Keeve and a kid named Bartol discover a big, scary Drengir underground that appears to be permeating the population with dark side energy, and that includes an infiltration of Sskeer and Ceret! No one is safe!

Good thing Avar Kriss is there to put a stop to it, but she can only handle so much. How will these Jedi get out of this pickle? And where’s my Samana spiced loaf?!

Star Wars: The High Republic (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [June, 2021]
Written by: Cavan Scott
“Song of the Drengir”

Six years ago on the mid-rim planet of Kirima, Sskeer is making Keeve leap across a giant chasm using only her legs and also oh yeah the Force. “You will not fall,” says Sskeer, like he fucking knows anything.

Well, look here Mr. Know-It-All-Jedi-”Master”, Keeve takes the leap and misses the other side by about 15 feet. “No,” she says with all the calmness of someone about to plunge to their untimely death. “AAAAH!” she then says. That’s more like it.

Just before she hits the ground, Sskeer uses his Jedi magic to stop her in mid-air and raise back up to the cliffside. He tells Keeve not to apologize for sucking, it’s all part of the training. “Now… ssshall we try again?” he hisses.

“He was my rock. My universe…” Keeve thinks as she finds herself hanging upside down and wrapped in very thick tree trunk-like vines. “How could it have gone so wrong?”

Sskeer walks up to a similarly-hanging-upside-down Avar Kriss and tells her that the Drengir must feed immediately! Kriss tries to reason with him even though he’s speaking in black speech balloons. Sskeer tells her to shut the fuck up, and he silences her with a creepy crawley vine over the mouth. “Avar Krissss. Always so convinced that the galaxy dances to your tune. You sssay you want to understand. You sssay you wissh to know. Then for once, you must truly listen… listen to the sssong of the Drengir.”

Now that the S key on my keyboard has been destroyed, we can witness the Drengir’s creepy crawley vines spread around the cave. Sskeer does a soliloquy about how the Drengir used to spread across the galaxy feasting on flesh, but “they” betrayed them. And soon “they” paid the price. “They” plotted against them. “They” trapped them in totems, forcing “her” to sleep. And the Drengir slept while “she” slept. The Great Progenitor. Now she awakes. And so do the Drengir. It’s a very circular soliloquy. I’m also asleep, as a result.

Star Wars: The High Republic (Vol. 1), Issue #4

Maybe it’s just all the fat settling?

Meanwhile, on the Starlight Beacon, Archivist Orbalin makes progress on the dead Hutt autopsy. Turns out that he didn’t die from Nihil-related activity, nor Nagnol poisoning. Nor impaled through the butthole with a large novelty spike. It’s like it has been entirely infected with a virus of sorts. Veins full of stinky sludge. The rustling in the above panel is infestation…

Suddenly, whatever’s inside the Hutt cannot be contained any longer and the cadaver bursts open like a water balloon, spraying purple gunk everywhere with a sickening “SLLURK”. It looks like grape jelly but it probably tastes terrible, like raspberry jelly.

Back in the Drengir hole, Keeve now tries to talk some sense into her Jedi master. Sskeer is not a Drengir, you see. He’s just some lizard guy! Sskeer snaps out of it for the splittest of seconds before falling back into black speech balloons and insisting that the Drengir has “made him whole”.

Terec (or is it Ceret?) tells Keeve that she’s wasting her breath. It’s hopeless! Death and destruction await them all! Sweet, sweet oblivion!

Viny tendrils begin slithering their way into various face orifices of our hapless upside-down prisoners. With a struggled breath, Keeve implores her Master to fucking get a grip. “Whatever’s happened… whatever they’ve promised you… you don’t need to do this.”

Keeve’s magic words help, I guess, because Sskeer is like “ha ha, just kidding” and Forces a whole hunk of earth up into the air, startling the Drengir into letting the prisoners go. Kriss and Keeve see if Sskeer is ok after all that Forcin’, but there are more important matters. The Drengir still have Bartol. Remember him? I sure didn’t.

lol, Terec with his pulled-back fist. Go get us some coffee, nerd.

So they approach the Drengir holding the child and fight, fight, fight. Sskeer’s got an arm made out of vines, so he’s still captured by the essence of the Drengir and continues fighting it off. Since Keeve is a full-fledged Jedi Knight now, Sskeer and Kriss allow her to do the honors of flailing her lightsaber all willy-nilly and hacking off vines.

Elsewhere, Kal Sulman is punching these wimpy-looking aliens in the face because they blabbed to the high-and-mighty Jedi, and now the Jedi are all hell of such as getting involved in their lives on their planet. “And now you’re gonna pay the price,” Kal says, ready to tear some ass, until a boom comes from the door behind him.

It’s the high-and-mighty Avar Kriss and the equally high-and-mighty Sskeer. Confrontation time! Kal knew all along that the Drengir had taken root on the planet. This is why he didn’t want the Jedi snooping around. “Tell us the truth!” Sskeer yells, throwing the guy around a bit. Things are getting tense!

Maru calls Kriss from the Beacon. Starlight is under attack by a Drengir that forced its way out of the Hutt’s body. The Jedis’ puny lightsabers are no match for its smashing vines! Someone help them before they’re gobbled up, but good!

And if things were bad enough, in flies another damn species on their damn spaceships.