Clan Krei'ger's ancestral home is in the jungles of central Mandalore, a
region of wild growth amidst which many strange creatures make their home.
Many of these creatures are found nowhere else on Mandalore, and those unfamiliar
with the Krei'ger lands can often fall prey to many unique and unexpected
dangers. One such danger is the P'lest, the six-legged spider. The spider
seems to be a simple green ball, the size of a thumb, making its home under
the leaves of the ferns which carpet the jungle floor. All Krei'ger recognize
the P'lest; they crawl everywhere, and they are not aggressive - in fact,
every tree in the jungle is covered with the spiders, blending in so well
with the foliage that they are seldom noticed. Children often play with them,
putting their fingers in front of the spider to watch it crawl around and
over. They take no notice of such interruptions, unless they are trapped by
a finger placed right on top of them - and then they bite. The bite of the
P'lest is invariably deadly.
It is told that in the founding days of the Krei'ger, the Clan Triad of Ver'urt'eil'ung,
Tod and Ver'nicht'ung displaced the Founding Family, H'al'kath, as leaders.
It was a time of turbulence for the Krei'gar, when the old alliances were
shifted and broken, and new families arose - the families that define the
clan's caste system to this very day. Many of these families formed themselves
from the remnants of the H'al'kath's, distancing themselves from the disgraced
bloodline by tracing descent through their mothers. Others of the H'al'kath
declared that they were founding new families, and took symbolic names to
declare their role in the new order.
One man to create such a family was Vil'acht H'al'kath, a master of the martial
art known as Krei'gersk'unst. The adepts of this art forge their bodies into
living weapons by bashing their shins and elbows against surfaces of rock
or hard wood, toughening them into blades of bone. Vil'acht was known to all
the Krei'gar as one of the greatest warriors in the land, and the H'al'kath's
strongest captain. It was inevitable that the leaders of the Clan Triad would
see him as a threat, and so he was one of the first on their list of the dead.
But they also feared him, for they had no one warrior who could match him
in single combat. They had no two warriors who could prevail over him by working
together. They had no three warriors who could slay him from ambush. He was
unassailable by strength of arms. So instead, they attempted to slay him by
treachery - they poisoned the minds of the H'al'kath elders against him. In
a few short weeks, Vil'acht's elders were convinced that he was plotting to
overthrow them. Assassins armed with poison darts were sent to stalk him as
he gathered herbs in the jungle (for he was also known as a great healer).
Vil'acht was gazing at the three-pronged thorn of the Ky'akta bush, known
for its ability to cause sleep, when the dart caught him in the arm. He was
strong - stronger then any five lesser men - and he struggled to his feet
and killed all three of the assassins who had followed him before the drug
even began to slow him. But the poison was stronger, and though he managed
to stagger through the jungle to the very edge of his home town, he lost consciousness
and collapsed on the outskirts of the very clearing where the children of
the H'al'kath loved to play at war. As Vil'acht lay there dying, a terrible
clarity of focus came to his thoughts. He looked across the ferns where his
face was buried, unable to turn his head, and saw a little green ball rolling
towards him along a leaf. As his vision cleared, he saw that it was not rolling
at all, but walking on six spindly legs. It was one of the P'lest, the ubiquitous
six-legged spiders. Slowly it meandered towards him, and then it stopped,
and turned, and seemed to stare out at the clearing from its hiding place
among the ferns. And as Vil'acht watched, unable to turn his head, his eyes
were drawn to follow what he imagined was the gaze of the spider.
In the clearing stood two of the H'al'kath elders, whose names are not recorded.
As he listened, he heard one say, "Why have our assassins not returned?
Surely, Vil'acht has slain them!" The other made to reply, but Vil'acht
never heard it - a sharp pain traveled up his arm, and he abruptly convulsed.
Unnoticed, the little P'lest had crawled across the leaf onto his arm and
bitten him on the elbow. But his elbow, toughened as it was by his years of
practice of the martial art, was too strong for the spiders tiny jaws, so
it continued up his arm until it reached the very spot where the dart had
wounded him. And there, on the little pinprick where poison had flowed into
Vil'acht's veins, the passive spider had bitten him with the full force of
its venom.
Vil'acht's body thrashed wildly in the bushes, torn between two conflicting
poisons. The two elders, who had not noticed him before, suddenly drew weapons
and rushed towards him. But a strangeness happened, which has not been duplicated
since - the poison of the P'lest did not kill him. Instead, it neutralized
the toxin that was already in his veins. Vil'acht leaped to his feet and,
before the elders could react, he knocked the weapons from their hands and
crushed their windpipes with his elbows.
Vil'acht forsook the H'al'kath that day, running into the jungle deep into
the night. He spent the rest of his life studying the little six-legged spider,
learning its ways of stealth and secrecy, and became a legendary ghost who
stalked the jungle bringing unseen death to his enemies. Eventually the Clan
Triad's hold on the lesser families grew steady, and Vil'acht felt the time
was right to show himself and declare his new family name - Vil'acht P'lest.
For his family symbol he took the six-legged spider: all of the P'lest family
wear this tattoo, the spider's body painted into their back in green with
two legs trailing down behind their knees, two on their arms, and two more
arching up over the shoulders and down the chest. The P'lest are warriors
as all Krei'ger are warriors, but more than that they are diplomats and spies.
They delight, not in outmatching their enemy with brute force, but in knowing
how he thinks and how to kill him most efficiently.
Some families choose for their tattoos the most awesome of creatures, seen
only on special occasions: the Ver'nicht'ung have the dreaded Viper of the
deep jungles, rarely seen near clan holdings; family Tod has the mighty Eagle
of the north, almost never actually encountered in the jungles of Krei'ger;
and the Ver'urt'eil'ung have the mythical Dragon, a creature so mighty it
is never seen at all. But the symbol of the P'lest are everywhere, crawling
on every leaf of every tree, known by every child of the Krei'ger, watching,
always watching.