Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#73)

(Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and whatever else blah blah fishcakes.)

721. Morlings. Morlings are ambiguously canonical ugly dog people. They apparently have adapted well to using technology after joining galactic society, but don't understand it and think it's magic. Many of them are pirates by trade. They're also really ugly.

Rating: 2/5. Have I mentioned they're ugly? I rather like the idea that there's a group who's perfectly good at using technology, but just handwave it as magic-after all, there are plenty of people in our society who don't have the faintest notion of how a radio, or an internal combustion engine, or a telephone works, yet use these things all the time without thinking about it. (Oscillations, if you don't know and you're wondering. Yes, that applies to all of them, even if it's not very informative.)

722. Morodins. Morodins are rather huge (~30-60 feet long) eight-limbed creatures, with six legs and a pair of rather stubby arms. They look quite a bit like a collection of hodgepodge dinosaur parts, and not in a bad way-the overall effect is quite charming and rather cool, though a tad unbalanced-looking.

As huge herbivorous beings, the Morodins are easily mistaken for unintelligent beasts, and while they seem to have a propensity for slow-wittedness (not connecting a group of farmers they were helping with a group of poachers who were killing them, despite the two groups being made up entirely of the same people-in their defense, I could imagine their eyesight being rather insufficient), they're actually descended from a starfaring civilization that used some form of organic starships, and retain a great deal of knowledge from that society. Those aforementioned farmers? They were up to various illicit activities, and unbeknownst to the Morodins, the "farmers" had discovered that the Morodin help they'd received for their crops had turned the plants into a source of blaster gas (for reference, the enormous floating city on Bespin from The Empire Strikes Back was a blaster gas mining operation, so obviously it was a pretty lucrative trade).

Eventually, a good-hearted crime boss helped put a stop to that, as is often the case in the Star Wars galaxy.

Rating: 5/5. They're pretty great.

723. Morses. Morses are long-lived "humanoids" (we don't know what that means in this context) who don't necessarily have any place in canon, as they're from the same almost-official source that gives us the Morlings and various other ambiguously canonical stuff. They have blue antennae that give them some kind of excellent "sense of perception," and can live for two hundred and fifty to three hundred years. Apparently, their hair goes through many different colors as they age, settling on purple in old age.

Rating: 2/5. That rainbow of aging sounds like an interesting detail, although there's not really anything other than the most boringly mundane stuff otherwise.

724. Morseerians. Morseerians are one of the various races described as "methane breathers." This is silly, because in order to get use out of methane, you'd need something to burn it with (i.e. oxygen). Now that I'm thinking about it, I suppose a "methane breather" could have a metabolism based on using oxygen stored in its food to burn its air as fuel, but that's needlessly complex and silly.

Ahem. The Morseerians.

They've got four arms, and allied to some degree to the fellow "methane breather" race, the Drackmarians. They didn't like the Empire, and a lot of them helped the Rebellion, though there were some who served the Imperials as informants.

Apparently, they were cautious and careful enough that the Empire never actually found their homeworld, which strikes me as improbable.

Rating: 2/5. Their status as non-oxygen-breathing four-armed aliens is a mild point of interest.

725. Mosciive. They look pretty human, but with red eyes.

Rating: 1/5. They do have an interesting name, I suppose.

726. Mostlaa. Okay, you see this elegant, slightly odd species name? The sole named member of the species is known as Jimmer.

Jimmer.

They're rather short and described as weaselly, although the picture of Jimmer that exists looks too... pudgy and beefy, I think... to really be "weaselly."

Jimmer.

Rating: 2/5. They're saved by the hilarity of "Mostlaa" versus "Jimmer." Jimmer, you guys. Just... Jimmer.

727. Mrissi. Mrissi (the singular form is "Mriss") are owl people with separate arms and hilarious little wings. The pictured one looks rather like he belongs on Middle Earth or something, wearing a hooded robe and carrying a walking stick and a scroll as he is. The wings are explicitly vestigial-and thank goodness, because the thought of one flying is almost too funny to bear. Oh, gosh, now I'm thinking of it. Heh.

Heh heh heh.

Okay, I'll stop.

They're apparently prone to being outspoken and politically unconventional scholars.

They also are highly sensitive to pollution and thus prone to illness on industrialized and similar worlds such as Coruscant.

Their strangest and most improbable feature is that they never developed sculpture on their own, and this fact informed Grand Admiral Thrawn's analysis of their psychology and helped him manipulate them in his seizing their planet.

Rating: 3/5. They're interestingly detailed, and they're good for a giggle.

728. Mrlssi or Mrlssti (which is also the name of their homeworld). Like the Mrissi, they're bird people, although they're a fair bit more alien and distinctly separate from any specific real world animals. Like the Mrissi, they're also scholarly, although it seems they believe much more in applied sciences. Like the Mrissi, they were attacked and trounced by Grand Admiral Thrawn (begging the question of whether there were typos involved somewhere). And also like the Mrissi, they've got a name with "Mr~ssi" in it.

Rating: 3/5. They're kind of interesting looking, and I do rather wonder at that odd little single letter of separation between the two.

729. Mudgubs. The sole known Mudgub was a Mudgub princess who tried to court a big froggish creature called a Gorph. She was a little salamander creature, and she wore lipstick.

She also had what looks like frizzy hair, which I'll be generous and say could be interpreted as external gills such as one might see on certain salamanders (mostly larval ones, and the axlotlaxolotl.

Rating: 3/5, because as with the Gorphs, I'm somewhat interested in a less cartoony interpretation of the design.

730. Mugaari. The Mugaari have an interesting name, because it's only two letters off from the name of the Vagaari, a group of piratical butchers who ran around enslaving and slaughtering other species and stealing their accomplishments. The Mugaari are also known for being pirates, though considerably less notable ones.

They apparently have heavy brows and lantern jaws, which makes them not that much different from most heavily built comic book characters (and thus their defining physical feature is largely meaningless). If there was any indication that they had the slightest relation to the Vagaari, they'd be at least marginally interesting, but as they are... Meh.

Rating: 1/5... because they made me think of a more interesting group. That's terrible.

-Signing off.

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