Entry Twenty-Five – Days after Geonosis, One Hundred Forty-Nine
Someday, a day far into the future, I will forgive Isoxya for inviting me to a festive dinner whose primary sustenance consisted of Kinrath legs the attendees were obligated to self-grill over red hot metal spits. A day long after I have forgotten the part where she singled me out in front of everyone and dared me to prove I was actually eating some of it through a drinking game. That darkly awaited day shall also include a complete purge of all memory of the sickly sweet and sour taste of the Kinrath as it went down, or the furious burning sticky pebbled slime texture as it came back up in the middle of the night.

I can still taste that as I write this. By the Force the memory flashes up my throat and churns my stomach all at once. Technically I should be able to digest Kinrath flesh, if cooked thoroughly, but it seems my stomach has chosen to refute the findings of molecular gastronomy through a most practical demonstration. Strange how the Atsevs, outwardly so similar to human standard, should have such a vastly variant palate.

In some ways what is worse than the taste is that Isoxya told me she hunted the Kinrath herself, down on Level 998. Apparently the creatures haunt the great hydroponics farms found there used for gas exchange and the production of nutrient paste. I am now forced to confront the fact that a considerable portion of my meals can be traced to an industrial ecology dominated by nightmarish colonial pseudo-spiders. That relaying this information to the Atsevs caused them to cheer as one somehow made it so much worse.

I have also learned that anyone without access to advanced alcohol-processing ampules to forestall the uptake of spirits into the bloodstream should not drink with the Atsev. Their metabolism can process certain sugar-like alcohols such as erythitol as an apparent adaptation to the unusual ecology of their beehive-cluster homeworld and consequently drink a large amount of it made from fermented arthropod shells. An ordinary human attempting to keep pace will induce alcohol poisoning in just over an hour. It's quite disappointing actually, since the liquor was somehow surprisingly good.

Inebriation did not seem to bother the Atsev's much, aside from inducing a tendency to break into a series of raucous songs in their native tongue. I could not make out much, but a later search suggest their music focuses on the struggle to 'defend the nest' from the various deadly predators of their homeworld. This was somewhat ridiculous coming from the throats of a group of mostly middle-aged to elderly engineers a considerable distance diverged from peak fitness. They all managed to somehow participate in a drinking game where the subject hangs by their feet from the ceiling, however, so looks are somewhat deceiving.

I spoke with Isoxya's husband for some time during dinner. Nothing like his vigorous and fearsome wife, this amicably jovial engineer managed to completely exhaust my knowledge of lightsaber construction with a series of piercing questions. He seemed both fascinated and frustrated by the central function of the Khyber crystal within. He even offered, having drunk a considerable amount, such a potent resource ought to be put to a better use than 'laser swords.'

Partly that sentiment is understandable. There probably are uses for the crystals with greater societal utility than that of a lightsaber, but history suggests that in the past attempts to harness them in such ways led to the production of terrible world-shattering weaponry. Perhaps it is better that such power be divided up rather than combined.

Notes

Kinrath are the vaguely spider-like creatures that appear on Dantooine and Kashyyk in KOTOR I.

Erythitol is a total real form of sugar-alcohol used as a non-sugar sweetener. It can't get you drunk, but a further fermented version that would include ethanol as well could. Atsev's actively metabolize these substances and therefore avoid devastating alcohol poisoning as a consequence.

Harnessing Khyber crystals for non-lightsaber use most notably led to the Death Star. So yeah, messing about with them is maybe not a good idea.