Friday, June 13, 2014

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#124)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)
The Second Less Massive Index (Posts #111-#120)

("Ancient Order of the Whills" has been omitted because here's no real indication what it actually is.)

1231. Waterspouts. Waterspouts, despite their name, are apparently humanoids.

And... uh... that's all we know.

Rating: 1/5.

1232. Weequays. Weequays are thick-skinned, rough-skinned, and essentially human in appearance aside from their craggy faces. Their skin is supposed to be an adaptation against their planet's harsh desert climate. Male Weequays are generally seen wearing braids; this is because they have a tradition wherein they grow one braid for each year they've been off their homeworld; they take the braids off when they return. Otherewise, the vast majority of Weequays (including women) shave themselves bald.

They have a lot of religion, apparently; Quay is the name of one of their gods and "Weequay" means "follower of Quay." Rather comically, at least one group of Weequays purchased what are known as quays (note the small "q"), which are essentially electronic magic 8-balls that use more serious, portentious language, and took them to be connections to Quay.

Weequays are seen as stupid and taciturn because of a quirk of their biology; they can communicate with pheromones (though only within clans), and so they generally skip having names and only feel the need to use sentence fragments when speaking among themselves. Only Weequays who live among outsiders (aliens or members of foreign clans) take names, and sometimes not even then.

Weequays are forced to share their homeworld with the Houk, who forcibly colonized it at some point. Understandably, they aren't happy about this.

Weequays generally consider individuals less important than the group, and thus treat themselves and each other as expendable.

Rating: 4/5. Many aspects of the Weequays are quite alien; if they were a little less racist/disturbing and/or the Weequays looked more alien, I'd give them a higher rating.

1233. Wetakk. Wetakk have a "serpentine" build and six arms.

Except for one who fought a Jedi, who had five arms. Afterwards, anyway.

Rating: 2/5. It'd be nice to get more specifics, but I like what I hear otherwise.

1234. Whaladons. Whaladons are basically indisputably fully sapient humpbacked whales. They live on the planet Dac, homeworld of the Mon Calamari, Quarren, Amphi-Hydrus, Knowledge Bank, Moappa (see Mon Calamari link), and also extinct mermen.

They are described as peaceful except when being territorial against the Mon Cal and Quarren, willing to attack submarines and other vessels that intruded into their territory. On the other hand, while they supposedly didn't get along with the Mon Cal, some Mon Cal could understand their songs and speech, including Admiral Gial "It's a trap!" Ackbar; apparently despite being big ol' whales they have quite a bit of high culture, including ballet (uh... huh?) and opera (okay, I'll buy that one).

Because of hamhanded old books, the Whaladons were introduced in a story about environmentalism, particularly involving an Empire-friendly corporation whaling them to cook them up and serve them to wealthy folks. Their severe decline in numbers caused an imbalance in the plankton that the Whaladons eat... although I should note that supposedly this plankton grows on the sea floor, which is, in actual fact, completely contradictory to the definition of what plankton is. (Planktonic organisms are tiny free-floating creatures that cannot fight the current of the ocean or whatever other body of water they inhabit. By definition. Such creatures only really thrive near the surface of the water.)

Because Ackbar spoke their language, a Whaladon was able to contact him and get the New Republic to undertake a mission to stop Whaladon whaling. The species would also end up surviving the ecological mundicide of Dac roughly a hundred years later at the hands of the New/Second Galactic Empire.

Rating: 3/5. ...Honestly, that's mostly pity points. I'd like to see more actually alien alien whales.

1235. Whiphids. Whiphids are huge warthog-faced furry guys. (They really are a pretty close likeness.)

Their fur is thick and they're supposedly further protected by blubber; on their homeworld of Toola, they tend to be extra-shaggy and bulky because of the cold climate, but most who live in the galaxy at large are much less so. Generally, Whiphids are nomadic and live in small groups, mostly hunting various large game for food.

Whiphids have a naturally long lifespan, ranging to about two hundred and fifty years.

In the wider galaxy, they're sort of known for bounty hunting, though there is also a particularly infamous Whiphid Jedi, K'Kruhk.

He deserves his infamy: During the Clone Wars, he was seemingly killed by General Grievous, one of the few individuals not known for his Force skills to rack up a large Jedi body count; however, even though the evac team didn't extract him, he survived, and not only survived being severely wounded with a lightsaber and then abandoned, but would then survive Order 66, rescue a number of Jedi younglings, survive being shot by a pirate, and, while disappearing from history for a while, would eventually emerge to become the teacher of Cade Skywalker, a descendant of Luke Skywalker's (probably a great-grandson, though exact lineage is ambiguous). That's right, he was around during the prequel era and then was still around at least a hundred years later, despite taking some pretty severe punishment in the interim. And then he became a major leader in the galactic government.

(Whether his hat had anything to do with it, as the fandom has speculated, is still unknown.)

Rating: 5/5. The Whiphids are simple but awesome.

1236. Whirlwinds. Whirlwinds may be gaseous in nature. (It should be noted they're from the same book as the earlier Waterspouts.)

Rating: 1/5. (No jokes.)

1237. Wind Dancers. They're supposedly naturally graceful.

Rating: 1/5.

1238. Wirutid. Except for the fact that they're actually a form of extremely unusual fungus, Wirutid are essentially almost human.

Rating: 2/5. ...And that's all we know, which is enough to get them an amusement point.

1239. Wisties. Wisties are little flame-creature-thing fairy critters (mostly human-shaped when one can make them out. As one might expect, they're native to Endor.

Many believe they aren't sapient or even that they aren't living creatures.

All known Wisties are referred to by female pronouns.

Rating: 2/5. Eh, whatever, Endor, whatever.

1240. Wizards of the Night Spirit. Also involved with Endor, the Wizards of the Night Spirit are beings from an unspecified alternate dimension, who have occasionally broken through to cause problems for Endor's natives. They're hilariously over the top big-faced gargoyle things. Their known named representative is called the Stranger, and he broke through in a sort of spacecraft when the stars were right; hence, one imagines that armies of funky gargoyle guys must be a recurring problem on Endor.

Rating: 3/5, mostly for the amusement factor of the things.

-Signing off.

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