Checklist: 20 Terrifying Star Wars Moments

Back in the care-free days of the late-1990s, reading Young Jedi Knights series were a harmless way to while away the time. They were breezy reads, meant for a middle school audience, full of the kind of ensemble adventures that were the staple of classic Star Wars yarns, but with the new generation of Jacen and Jaina Solo on center stage. Despite a handful of meaty beats in the series (the rise of a Shadow Academy, and a kid getting her arm amputated) things generally returned to the status quo by the end of a particular arc. Contrasting the dark paths explored by the prequel trilogy and the New Jedi Order that would follow, the Young Jedi Knights series seems remarkably safe in retrospect.

Raynar Thul was a recurring character in the series, a stuffy blowhard rich kid that would serve as a foil and thorn to the Solo twins. He was a bit like Draco Malfoy, but without any real bite. Maybe he's more like Francis, Pee Wee Herman's neighbor. The snotty kid is a pretty common juvie-fic archetype. What's not common is mangling that kid's fine features and shredding his mind.

So was his fate in the Dark Nest trilogy of novels by Troy Denning from Del Rey that began in 2005. Raynar had barely escaped the Yuuzhan Vong attack and was disfigured in a crash. His mind was then absorbed into a nest of hive-minded Killiks, twisting Raynar into "UnuThul," leader and spokesperson of the hive. From the first book, The Joiner King:

"Raynar Thul is no more," Raynar said. He was squatting on his haunches in the heart of the Prime Chamber, high atop the circular dais where he would always be visible to the hundreds of insect attendants that followed wherever he went. His long arms were hanging over his knees with the backs of his hands resting slackly on the ground before him, and his blue eyes were riveted, unblinking, to Luke's face. "We are UnuThul." ... [Luke] found it difficult to meet Raynar's gaze, not because of those unblinking eyes or the ghastliness of the face that held them, but because of the conflicting emotions they aroused..."

The tragedy is not so much the deformation of once handsome features, but the shattering of what was once a strong and prideful mind. As the series progresses, conversations with Raynar swirl into maddening circles and implacable insect "logic." Sure, the vivid descriptions of chambers filled with bugs make these books scary, but the real fear isn't that they'll crawl upon naked flesh, but that their relentless will would crawl into and swarm your mind.