Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#60)

591. Krikthasi. Krikthasi are cool/freaky-looking mollusk things that are supposedly marine beings, but kind of look like they're on land in both of their images. Their name looks fun to say. Their home planet is Baralou.

Rating: 3/5. Looking kind of neat/freaky can get you a long way on these scores, considering that the amount of information other than pictures on Wookieepedia is shorter than what I wrote in this entry.

592. Krish. While the image shows that Krish have bony head ridges (like dozens upon dozens of Klingon-inspired Rubber Forehead Aliens), it's interesting to note that their entry describes them as smooth-skinned.

Apparently, they're something of a bunch of lazy layabouts or something, as they're described as liking games but also unreliable in business.

You kids these days, you need to shape up and... Never mind.

Their home planet is either called Sanza or Krish, depending on who you ask.

Rating: 1/5. Lame.

593. Kroctari. The Kroctari are capable of speaking Basic (English), but do so with an accent full of burps, wheezes, and other such noises.

Best accent ever?

They also were a very unreasonable party during some heavy political stuff at one point.

Rating: 3/5. Apparently, burping and wheezing when you talk and being a bunch of unreasonable screaming mimis to make a political crisis worse will get you about as far as looking cool.

594. Krozurbians. The Krozurbians had been engaged in a two-hundred-year-long civil war amongst themselves when an Ithorian came and fed a meeting full of the opposed war leaders steaks full of happy drugs. This brought the war to a close, because clearly the war must not have had any socioeconomic reasons beyond cranky leaders for being perpetuated for over two hundred years.

The picture of one looks very cheerful. Presumably this is due to the happy drugs.

Rating: 3/5. Poor happy drugged guys. They never knew what hit them. (Also, I thought Ithorians were against slaughtering animals... Hmmm...)

595. Krytollaks. Krytollaks are heavy-shelled and adorably cranky-looking beings with a very rigid social structure based around absolute dictatorship. This made them ardent supporters of the Empire despite wide complaints about high Imperial taxes (they blamed the Emperor's aides for the taxes, because obviously it couldn't be the guy with all the power taxing them senseless).

Their social system also involves the royalty having green shells, and when brown-shelled children are born to royals, they count as royals, but if their children have brown shells too, they don't. (The description is slightly ambiguous-if a brown-shelled royal has brown-shelled children, it sounds a bit like that royal gets kicked out, but maybe not.)

Apparently, Krytollaks tend to grow their whole lives and live for about a century without losing much of their strength or vigor. At their largest, they're rather bigger than Wookiees. They have a tendency to embrace rather violent physical activities because of their shells, which are more than sturdy enough to protect them from a lot of things.

Rating: 4/5. They look neat, they've got a pretty detailed society with ramifications from their anatomy that make sense, and they have an unusual political stance. Good stuff.

596. Ktilacs. Along with two other races, the Ktilacs of Ktil rule(d) the Ktilac Regions.

Rating: 2/5. Modestly evocative idea. It's interesting to note that their co-rulers have a lot more information on them even when the regions are named after them.

597. Kuarans. Kuarans are apparently very humanlike, but taller, lack hair, and poorly adapted to sunlight, suggesting a subterranean species. They're also supposedly strikingly beautiful to humans. They were driven to near extinction by the Mandalorians well before the movie era, because that's a thing the Mandalorians did a lot back then.

Rating: 3/5. This is a bit of a high rating for a group of "near-humans," but they're a fair bit more interesting than most such.

598. Kubaz. The Kubaz are descendants of burrowing insectivorous mammals who are still, in fact, burrowing insectivorous mammals. That guy wearing goggles who followed Obi-Wan and Luke around, talking into a commlink and taking money from stormtroopers? He's a Kubaz.

The Kubaz have the dubious distinction of possibly disturbing me personally more than any other single Star Wars aliens. Why? Because they're not terribly picky about what they'll eat, and will happily sample anything, as long as one might describe it as an "insect," "insectoid," or "insect-like." In other words, they're (science fiction/fantasy definition) cannibals who justify it by saying "Eh, they're bugs."

Rating: 3/5. They get this much because, as I've noted indirectly a few times, every fictional setting needs some creeps.

599. Kulless. The Kulless are rather ugly guys with gaunt, skull-like faces, stumpy legs, long arms with huge hands, and thick, heavy tails. (The limbs of the pictured one are much too thin, but I'm willing to forgive this because I like the image in general.) One was apparently a successful podracer.

Rating: 3/5. Sometimes, you just need to have some kinda ugly stumpy guys around.

600. Kumumgah. The Kumumgah inhabited a lush planet about 25,000 years before the movie era.

Against the wishes of the Kumumgah elders, Kumumgah explorers started exploring the galaxy. This attracted the attention of the Infinite Empire, a group ruled by one of the oldest and most evil bunches in the history of the Star Wars galaxy. The Infinite Empire conquered them, and when they rebelled, the Empire bombed their homeworld so hard that its surface turned to glass, which would eventually erode into sand.

Descendants of the Kumumgah would become the Sand People and the Jawas, and the planet would become known as Tatooine.

And now you know... the rest of the story.

Rating: 4/5. I was considering whether or not Tatooine really needed an origin, but I eventually decided it did, because I don't think it's really likely that a planet could have life on it if it lacked oceans. If the oceans' destruction was geologically recent, it's less unbelievable, though how there's any animal life on the planet at all is still questionable when the destruction was so thorough. Let's just say the Kumumgah must have had great bomb shelters and leave it at that.

-Signing off.

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