What did the Yuuzhan Vong feed and harvest from prisoners?

Question

From the TV Tropes entry for Solid Gold Poop:

• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, glitterstim spice, the Fantastic Drug on which many a vast criminal fortune (including Jabba the Hutt's) has been built, is the "webbing" of a species of giant spiders that are only known to live in underground caves on the planet Kessel. The spiders use it to catch and prey on Will-o'-Wisp-like energy creatures that live in the same caves.
  • And in the New Jedi Order series, prisoners captured by the Yuuzhan Vong are sometimes fed in this way. The Vong find it amusing. The prisoners try not to think about it, since the alternative is starvation.

I'm not quite following that second example, and can't seem to find it online. Are prisoners fed Will-o'-Wisps? Fed to the spiders? Something else?

Answer 1

This is a system the Yuuzhan Vong used to feed their prisoners (not one that the prisoners were fed to). Biotechnological creatures excrete a kind of edible paste that serves as food.

These creatures could be either large, sessile forms equivalent to a dispenser you'd find in a cafeteria (seen on the yammosk carrier Creche in Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse), or they could be smaller, handheld creatures (seen in the slave camp on Yavin IV in Edge of Victory 1: Conquest).

In the dank and underlighted hold that served as both mess hall and dormitory for the privileged captives aboard the yammosk carrier, Wurth Skidder placed his bowl beneath the spout of the nutrient dispenser, waited while his allotted share drizzled out, then carried the bowl to his usual spot of deck space, where he lowered himself into a cross-legged posture and forced himself to eat.

Like all things Yuuzhan Vong, the container had surely been fashioned from some creature-perhaps from the egg of an outsize oviparous animal-and the spoon, though made of an exotic hardwood, bore no traces of carving or machining and appeared to have been grown with handle and bowl provided. Even the thick, tapered spout of the nutrient dispenser gave all evidence of being attached to some living thing that resided unseen on the far side of the hold's curved and membranous bulkhead.

It's not made clear exactly how the creatures produce this paste and for their part, the viewpoint characters in these prefer not to dwell on it too much.