Friday, February 27, 2015

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#145)

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)

(Excluded "water creature" because of reasons.

Obviously, it's been a bit since I last did one of these, but I have a good reason: Finding pages is going to be harder, since I now need to sift through list pages and figure out if there are entries I haven't done before. ...I have no idea how long this is going to take.)

1441. Vengnar Heiff's species. Described as reptiloid and apparently being from an icy planet (interesting), Vengnar Heiff rather typically had green skin and large claws, and was a nasty torturer.

Rating: 2/5 for being a reptile-like species from a cold world.

1442. Verhandle's species. They're pretty typical stone-faced aliens (from which I get the impression of being big and tall). But not in a bad way.

Verhandle himself is some kind of crime lord.

Rating: 2/5. Just some neat-looking aliens with no other particular characteristics of note.

1443. Verig natives. Verig natives apparently use bolas to hunt elephant-like animals, which inspired some Rebel to come up with the harpooning tactic used to trip up the AT-AT walkers during the Battle of Hoth.

...I don't know whether that's sad, awesome, hilarious, or all three.

Rating: 1/5. Eh.

1444. Voe Atell's species. The species superficially resembles the Zabraks, being near-humans without hair and with horns and different skin tones.

The known member of the species, Voe Atell, was a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems' Parliament.

Rating: 2/5. I like the look, but it's just kind of a placeholder. I considered knocking it back down to 1/5 because that basic design concept feels like it's shown up more than once, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.

1445. Voegliss's species. Voegliss's species is apparently predatory, with appropriate adaptations to some degree, and with a red carapace of some sort.

Very little is known of this species not only in the context of real-world knowledge of this fictional species, but in-universe knowledge of them is scarce as well-apparently they aren't known to the wider galaxy. There are only three known individuals, Voegliss and two others who presumably were his parents; some group on an expedition to some unnamed world encountered this pair of hostile unknown aliens, and ended up killing them; they found Voegliss as a baby nearby. The expedition's leader adopted Voegliss as his son (...I hope baby Voegliss wasn't being misgendered, or it's possible he's in for a rude shock if he ever reunites with his own kind...) until he was fifteen, at which point he was forcibly recruited by the Imperial army into some form of commando unit or assassin corps. When I say "forcibly recruited," he apparently killed fourteen men before they subdued him.

He eventually became a willing member of whatever it was he was doing, though he wanted to be reunited with his father and regain some degree of independence.

Incidentally, this character is from an RPG supplement. Kudos to whoever wrote it, because that's a fascinating character sketch.

Too bad there's no confirmed picture, though there's a picture that might depict the individual; unfortunately, it's not to be found on Wookieepedia that I can tell.

Rating: 3/5 on the strength of the character sketch.

1446. Vojak's species. This species' known member is a big purple essentially human being. He wanted revenge on the bounty hunter droid C-3PX for killing his brother.

C-3PX killed him.

The story sounded familiar to me, and so I doublechecked to make sure I wasn't repeating anything, and then I discovered that Feleen Bantillian's species was what I was thinking of-except that it was Boba Fett that they were trying and failing for revenge on. Except that the other story was much more off-the-wall (one of the individuals seeking revenge was a brain in a jar), so... eh.

Rating: 1/5.

1447. Yoda's species. Yoda's species is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in an editorial policy from George Lucas's fiat that declares that there should never be information on what the species is named, where they come from, or any of their history. In fact, there was a point where Lucasfilm discouraged even the implication that Yoda was a proper member of a species, though as there are now at least five named members (one of whom was originally intended to be Yoda but was retconned into not being Yoda), all of whom were Jedi (only one of which was not specifically a Jedi Master-Minch, AKA not-Yoda, was intended to be Yoda as an apprentice, and thus he may still could have become a Master at some point in the future).

People want to believe that Yoda's species is the same as the Whills, but there's no evidence that the Whills are actually a species, despite their categorization on Wookieepedia.

The only thing George Lucas has ever said about Yoda's heritage is that he's "a frog" and that he's Kermit the Frog's and Miss Piggy's illegitimate child.

I don't think that should be taken especially seriously.

Rating: 4/5, because Yoda is an essentially perfect execution of a great concept, the tiny, quirky-to-the-edge-of-incomprehensible master of something or other. (The only member of the archetype that even compares to Yoda is probably Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda.) The only reason I took a point off is because there really isn't enough information to judge the species itself, since all five known individuals are indisputably Jedi and four of these characters are heavily based directly on Yoda (and two of them would be virtually indistinguishable from him in a crowd).

1448. Yorgraxx species. A Sith Lord enslaved them and made them build him a fortress, which led to their extinction.

Incidentally, said Sith Lord used Sith alchemy to create a flying winged rancor subspecies/species called coloi. That's amazing.

Rating: 1/5. Boy, there were a lot of guys enslaved to build things who then went extinct in the Star Wars galaxy's history, weren't there?

1449. Aeropteryx. Poor Aeropteryx. They have wings but can't fly, and apparently all have bad vision so they all need glasses (!). I find the latter a bit dubious, but whatever.

Rating: 2/5, if only because of the amusing mental image of some bird wearing glasses.

1450. Anacondans. I could have sworn I covered these guys once already, but apparently I was imagining it?

Anyway, they're pleasantly ugly snake guys. One of the known individuals had no problems with eating the corpse of some dude he betrayed, but said dude turned out to still be alive, and killed him for being a jerk.

The other known individual was a bartender.

Rating: 3/5. I like how they look, simple as that.

-Signing off.

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