Friday, February 14, 2014

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#107)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)

(This post excludes Syrox, which appears to be a predatory/parasitic creature that lacks a brain and thus is rather unlikely to be sapient despite the location of its listing.

As a side note, I think this post has the fewest entries where I could perform a quick double-click to select the species' name ever. That's kinda weird.)

1061. Swimming People of Dellalt. The Swimming People of Dellalt are one of my favorite things ever. (NOTE: Please do not think of the page image as being an accurate representation of one.)

They're giant plesiosauroid beings that, despite their size and primarily aquatic natures, are basically just regular people, such that they have gang wars over business rights and use phrases such as "use their language, woman" (with each other). (I first mentioned them on this blog here.)

And even better, despite the difficulties you'd think they'd have with it, there was at least one Dellaltian Jedi, and he apparently made a holocron (a type of special recording device that only really skilled Force users can make). (He was also primarily active on watery planets, apparently, which explains at least one thing.)

Rating: 5/5. I love these guys.

1062. Swokes Swokes. Swokes Swokes are big, rather ugly types. Some of them have tails with spiked/clubbed tips.

Swokes Swokes are apparently blessed with an extremely durable anatomy which gets compared to that of a planarian, though unlike the Amanin they aren't actually planarians. While their lifespans are comparable to those of humans, Swokes Swokes get tougher as they get older, and the oldest are the most formidable. They can regenerate grievous wounds in a matter of days as long as they don't exert themselves, regrowing limbs and the like. Their resistance to pain is so high that they often surgically install jewelry near their vital organs. Their durability makes Swokes Swokes naturally rather pugnacious.

We also know that Swokes Swokes have an enormous group of catacombs on their home planet (such that it can be seen from space), tend towards religious zealotry, eat candy shaped like skulls for festivals (amusingly, in addition to Swokes Swokes skulls this candy may take the shape of human, Cerean, or Wookiee skulls as well as possibly other species), don't mind eating out of troughs at restaurants, and whose native language is named Swoken.

In other words, there are a lot of little details on them.

At least one Swokes Swokes was named Oakie Dokes (derp) and having a double name (e.g. Wruuta Wruuta) is apparently something of a status symbol.

Rating: 5/5. They're very likable.

1063. Swonks. Ambiguously canonical reptilians. There's supposedly an illustration, but the article lacks one; that could have significantly affected the rating.

Rating: 1/5. Incidentally, their article is a particular mess, because at least once they get called "Skeïtos" in the text.

1064. Sy Myrthians. Sy Myrthians are bizarre mammal/gastropod hybrids, which means they have hair and move on their tail-stomach-things.

Rating: 3/5, purely on the weight of them being "mammalian gastropods."

1065. Syboona. Syboona are kind of silly-looking blue aliens. Their faces are somewhere between horses and some sort of herbivorous dinosaurs, and they have big clawed hands.

Rating: 2/5. This comes from appearance.

1066. Sylphes. Ambiguously canonical people who are plants who can interbreed with humans and have special snowflake features like telepathy and pacifism.

Rating: 1/5. I... kinda wound up being cranky when I read that.

1067. T'kkrpk. T'kkrpk apparently are very long-lived insectoids. Their most notable cultural feature is that they used to calculate time via a system incompatible with Galactic Standard, and they changed over almost a hundred years before the movie era, and because of the oddities of the system and possibly general apathy and laziness, most T'kkrpk aren't sure exactly how old they are in the movie era.

Rating: 3/5. Partly because they're long-lived insect aliens and partly because they come across as hilariously lazy.

1068. T'landa Til. The t'landa Til (note the odd capitalization) are distant relatives of the Hutts. Like the Hutts, they are very large and resistant to Jedi mind tricks; unlike the Hutts, they are shaped rather like rhinoceroses with tiny little arms sticking out of their throat regions (though their facial structures are just enough like a Hutt's that you can sort of believe they're somewhat related).

They evolved on the Hutt homeworld of Varl (I talk a little about Varl in the Rybets entry here) and, like the Hutts, now live on the planet Nal Hutta. They are distinctly second-class citizens in Hutt society, but unlike others who interact closely with the Hutts, apparently aren't universally enslaved, haven't had their places of habitation turned into nature preserves they aren't allowed to be on, prone to being hunted for food, or anything like that. So, second-class citizens but nowhere near "property at best" in a position where that's often the norm.

Male t'landa Til can make special vibrations and empathic projections that combine to have a euphoria-inducing effect on t'landa Til females and also members of many other sapient species. While its primary purpose is obviously for mating, a group of t'landa Til in Hutt employ founded a cult that used the euphoric sensations to convince people they were holy and then used their recruits as slave labor because the rapturous effects of their "holy powers" were highly addictive. The species was obscure enough on the galactic scale that their close association with Hutts was unknown at the time, and so a lot of people were taken in, including Han Solo's first girlfriend, who after he helped her escape the cult would become a violent Rebel operative known for massacring slavers and was also somehow involved in capturing the Death Star plans (small galaxy, especially since that means she's not the only person who was at some point romantically involved with Han Solo who was involved in capturing the Death Star plans). Those t'landa Til would later be mostly killed, especially since one of them poisoned a Hutt. (The Hutt was Aruk the Hutt, the extremely old and rather doddery parent of Durga the Hutt, who after Jabba's death would be one of the biggest crime lords in space and a major competitor to Jabba's clan beforehand. Durga actually personally killed Jiliac, Jabba's uncle/aunt that Jabba took over from, when Durga found out that Jiliac had ordered the t'landa Til minion to actually perform the poisoning. Hutt gang wars are kind of fun.)

Rating: 5/5. T'landa Til are kind of loveable in a scumbag sort of way.

1069. T'rinn. They have bright plumage of some sort.

Rating: 1/5.

1070. T'surr. T'surr are huge, blue-skinned guys with four eyes and four arms (although their second pair are much smaller than their first). They are noted as especially dangerous and "predatory," their threat level supposedly mitigated only by their relative rarity.

Hilariously, apparently the male T'surr are noted as being extremely threatening and cunning, brutalizing each other and members of other species, but also as being incredibly dominated by the female T'surr, and supposedly most T'surr found off of their homeworld are male T'surr who essentially seem to be seeking freedom from their significant others.

Rating: 4/5. Huge brutal henpecked guys. That is the concept, and it is a treasure. They look cool, too.

-Signing off.

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