Friday, May 16, 2014

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#120)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)

(Just discovered that I've been titling the past few of these incorrectly. It's not a big deal, just annoying; and it's all fixed now.

Of course, that means I ought to start work on the third index post now, and I'm nowhere near ready or in the mood to finish the last two, much less start a new one. Meh.

Also, I excluded the Vagh Rodiek from this entry because they're mutated Rodians that seem to have lost their intelligence and also seem not to breed true, if they can even breed at all; this rather disqualifies them from being a sapient species twice over.)

1191. Vahla. Vahla are basically human, except they're more flexible, all Force sensitive, and prone to joining a specific dark side cult.

What did I say last time, guys?

Rating: 1/5.

1192. Varlians. The Varlians are the cut-content ancestors of the Hutts.

Specifically, in a set of novels that would have tied Star Wars together with THX-1138 (no, seriously), the Varlians were rulers of an old empire that dominated the galaxy; this ended, however, when members of the species spontaneously (and bizarrely) stopped metamorphosing to their adult stage, becoming permanently immature and greedy. I.e., Hutts.

Rating: 2/5. While I think this is a dumb origin for the Hutts, I like that "Varl" crept into the lexicon as the name of the original Hutt homeworld, and I think it's an interesting bit of trivia.

1193. Varvvans. Varvvans are apparently large, and can extend their eyeballs from their sockets. They're supposedly fearless, which is funny, because popping one's eyeballs is a sign of surprise/fear in cartoons.

Rating: 2/5. They have me a bit curious, but there's nothing to go on.

1194. Vashans. Vashans are bug people who have four legs that they walk on and a pair of arms. They have basically buggy proportions, with stick-thin limbs and kind of beetley bodies. They're described as being "known to be powerful and tireless workers."

They also have odd (to the sensibilities of others) eating habits and like to store non-food items in a special part of their digestive tracts; while people like the idea of employing them for their skill/endurance/"power" as workers, they're also put off by the fact that they eat things and puke them back up all the time.

They are supposedly deeply religious, and have priests that 1) are probably named after the priests of a specific real-world religion, which is unfortunate, and 2) it seems they can't keep the spelling of said name straight. They have a ceremony that involves them puking.

Rating: 3/5. I took off a point for the weird religion thing having issues, but these guys are awesome.

1195. Veeza. According to a Hutt play, Xim the Despot killed all of them.

Rating: 2/5. That rascally Xim.

1196. Veknoids, or Velkoids. Veknoids/Velkoids (one presumes there were some pretty poor real-world editing jobs at some point) are charmingly ugly individuals with tusks and spiky tails. As with many aliens introduced in Episode I, one was a podracer and another was a Jedi.

Rating: 3/5. They're charming-looking.

1197. Velabri. Near-humans (-1) with pure white eyes (not according to the illustration-that's a -1) and silver spiky hair (they all have the same haircut-there's a -1), and they're also warlike, and have a strict honor code and despise crime.

I wouldn't have rated them higher than a 2, so I think that's a -1/5, which I'm not going to treat as a legitimate score.

Rating: 1/5.

1198. Velmoc. Velmoc are cool ugly insectoid dudes. They have a warrior culture or something, and coexist with a human culture on their homeworld; some of these humans hate them and others apparently think they're keen.

One, oddly named Jedidiah (Jedidiah? Get it? ...Some writer needs a swat), was a guy who'd wanted to be a Jedi, but then took a bad blow to the head and wandered around remembering basically nothing but that fact ever after.

Rating: 3/5. This is on the weight of their appearance; they might have gotten more if they'd been colored better.

1199. Vendarans. Near-humans (-1) who live on a planet with predatory slug-things called skeegs, which apparently provide good material for making natural perfume or something.

There are apparently legends of giant sea-going skeegs that were hunted for meat and poison creation.

Their homeworld was apparently far from the Yuuzhan Vong invasion route.

Rating: 2/5. They got a point by osmosis from being associated with the skeegs, which look awesome and would make great video game enemy designs.

1200. Ventooinans. Ugh, more particularly weird Marvel Star Wars.

Near humans (-2) who trade some sort of spice with the galaxy at large, but even their leaders don't seem to know diddly about blasters (-1 for stupidity).

Their leaders used to have a magic rock they passed down called the shadeshine. The shadeshine would kill you a year after you first touched it, but as long as one holds it, it grants various rather nonsensical powers. The leaders would use it for a year, then have themselves put in suspended animation just before they ought to die, maybe in hopes of there being a cure someday, or maybe because this story made no sense.

Thankfully, Han Solo ended all that nonsense by throwing the shadeshine into the business end of the Millennium Falcon's engines.

Rating: 1/5. The shadeshine sounds slightly interesting, but its powers are, frankly, completely ungrokkable.

-Signing off.

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