Friday, January 23, 2015

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#144)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)
The Second Less Massive Index (Posts #111-#120)
The Third Less Massive Index (Posts #121-#130)

1431. Unidentified tree-like species. This species invaded colonized the planet Karra at some point. The Karrans, who are large and nearly hive-minded insectivores, were "insulted" by the species' intrusion on their planet and wiped the colonists out.

Moral of the story: Don't screw with giant psychic rats.

Rating: 2/5, mainly because of the thought of a bunch of trees invading a place; it's amusing.

1432. Unidentified Underworld species. These guys live in Coruscant's underworld, that is, the area way down around the bases of those immense skyscrapers that are normally all we can see of the place. It should be noted that Coruscant has an extensive urbanized ecosystem and that a number of inhabitant species of it are believed to have had time to evolve to suit it.

They apparently have wings and green fangs, and supposedly revere Wookiees; I'd suppose that apparent reverence could just as easily be extreme respect for big guys who are strong enough to fight way outside their already heavy weight classes (as I've noted in an older post, Wookiees can physically trounce guys that are a lot bigger than they are). One of their customs is exchanging gifts with new-met strangers to prove a lack of ill will towards them; if you reject this, they'll want to kill you. ...Okay then.

Rating: 1/5. Eh, there's nothing especially jumping out at me, and even though I often like random collections of features these ones don't have anything about them that elevates them beyond being just a generic such.

1433. Unidentified UR41-284 species. UR41-284 is their homeworld; Grand Admiral Thrawn apparently had "everything within seventy kilometers of their museum district" destroyed in response to them resisting the Empire under his command.

So, like, their whole planet had exactly one museum district? Huh.

Rating: 1/5.

1434. Unidentified Usk species. This species' homeworld, Usk, was part of Hutt Space since the time of Xim the Despot or earlier, i.e. 25,000-plus years before the era of the movies, and they were slaves of the Hutts. They eventually went extinct, and their name was forgotten by the rest of the galaxy.

Ouch.

Rating: 1/5. I'd give them a sympathy point, but honestly they're too much of a nonentity for that.

1435. Unidentified Vatleria species. They apparently abandoned their homeworld (Vatleria) and moved to the Core Worlds.

It should be noted that "Vatleria" is an anagram of "Latveria," fictitious home country of Doctor Doom, and that the story the planet appeared in was a parody of the Fantastic Four wherein Darth Vader killed a group of vaguely Fantastic Four-like Rebels with deathtraps that had themes modeled after their Fantastic Four counterparts' powers, i.e. incineration, being crushed by rocks, being stretched to pieces, and vaporization.

It's kind of adorably stupid.

Rating: 1/5. But that has nothing to do with the species.

1436. Unidentified walking plant species. Apparently, as near as can be told, this species maybe lives as sessile plants as juveniles and need to be harvested somehow to become mobile adults... maybe? (I'm extrapolating quite a bit here.)

This made it really easy to transport them as slaves, and at some point they were near extinction; Han Solo and Chewbacca rescued a group of them who were stated to be the last survivors, and were probably going to take them to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk.

As far as appearance, goes, they seem to be basically just root-blobs.

Rating: 2/5. I might have given them a 3/5 if their nature was clearer/more explicit.

1437. Unidentified worm-textured-skinned ostrich-like species. And the award for most awkward descriptive article title goes to... these guys! (Because I'm not typing that again!)

They just kind of exist.

Rating: 2/5. They look modestly interesting.

1438. Unidentified Xantar species. They're Greys, basically, and one abducted Indiana Jones and took him to Xantar, which Luke Skywalker also visited.

In some ridiculous computer game, see.

Rating: 2/5 for the chuckle factor.

1439. Unidentified Yoberra species. A member of this species won the eight-legged-species category in a race of some sort.

Rating: 1/5. So they're fast for eight-legged types. That'd be informative if we knew anything else about them.

1440. Unidentified Zuggit species. They're apparently magenta, twelve feet tall, and have two heads.

Rating: 2/5. That's slightly amusing.

Also, this is the last "Unidentified * species" entry, and next time will see the end of the category. I might possibly take an extra week to do the article, because unless I change my mind because it'll take too long I'll be hunting up the species I missed because they didn't exist when I started the Guide. Oh gosh that'll be fun.

-Signing off.

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