Zhaetor-zhae

Zhaetor-zhae, Yuuzhan Vong for glory, was a Yorik-stronha spy ship from Domain Amnan and one of the domain's few vessels that survived the Battle of Telos of 28 ABY to rendezvous with the wreckage of the crippled worldship Baanu Amnan in the Tingel Arm.

After the Shamed One Eshin Shul, using the false alias of Eckla Muyel, seduced Tolok Amnan and secured his fleet's services, she began capturing Jedi and Sith alike, torturing them until they submitted to the True Way to serve her as her personal "Slayers". Still seeking revenge on the dark Jeedai who had shamed her during the Fall of Antei, as well as nearly killed her for her deception during the Battle of Telos, Eshin dispatched the Zhaetor-zhae to Antei, loading it up with spinerays that would corrupt the Sseeth when they finally decided to return to reclaim their homeland—as she was certain they would.

A spineray latching onto a Jedi.

Instead of the Brotherhood, Antei was liberated by the Jedi Crusaders of Omancor Crask, who deployed the Alpha Red virus to devastating effect throughout the Antei system. By the time the Brotherhood finally came to liberate the planet—albeit now from the Jedi rather than the Vong—the Zhaetor-zhae was already falling apart, its crew dead, infected by Alpha Red. When the lifeless hulk was encountered by a task force from the Dlarit Special Operations Group, the Disciples of Sadow dispatched an away team led by Macron Goura to investigate what had happened to the Vong. While on the fast collapsing ship, Goura stumbled down into the asteroid's interior, coming across the rotting corpses of the dead Yuuzhan Vong, where he was attacked by one of the spinerays that Eshin Shul had loaded aboard the ship. Unaware at the time that the creature had latched onto the back of his neck, Goura climbed out of the ship, only for Tsainetomo Keibatsu to lunge at the long tailed hand-spider, killing the spineray.

Uneventful as the experience seemed at the time, the spineray had embedded its mind-altering tendrils into the alchemist's neck by the time it was detached. Come several months later, when the new self-declared Warmaster, Varesh Shai, was finally ready to launch his strike on the Orian system, Eshin Shul sent out a telepathic signal using a villip to Goura, at long last activating the hidden sleeper cells that had been embedded in his neck, overwriting the Son of Sadow's mind with a preprogrammed identity called Krag Muyel. It was then "Krag" who broke into the central data Hive within Sadow Palace on Sepros and decativated the system's defences.

Trivia

Zhaetor-zhae featured in the Prologue running up to Children of War, Clan Naga Sadow's House Feud for 2009. It also provided an opportunity to flesh out the away team mission to the Vong ship in the Ninth Great Jedi War which had largely taken place "offscreen".