Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#109)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)

1081. Tammarians. Tammarians, like the Givin, need to be able to survive in vacuum, and thus have inflatable air sacs (I will point out that the Wookieepedia article uses the word "sack" which is not the spelling used for an anatomical structure), which sound like it wouldn't actually work terribly well (they'd have to be tough or they'd be prone to popping, and even without that they'd leak a lot). They're also mortally afraid of water because their planet doesn't have standing water (um... I mentioned this when I talked about the Kumumgah; it's very unlikely to find a planet with life on it that lacks oceans, though the vacuum thing is also a decidedly negative factor, I guess...).

Rating: 2/5. The Givin have many of these characteristics and have more going for them.

1082. Tammuz-an. The Tammuz-an are purple- and blue-skinned natives (again with the blue and purple? The Tahlbooreans met that description last week) of the planet of the same name.

The Kingdom of Julpa's inhabitants are purple while the inhabitants of the Outer Territories are blue. They're from the Droids cartoon, and thus are largely just human aliens, though with rather exaggerated facial structures.

Rating: 1/5. Incidentally, the Droids cartoon is still my favorite Star Wars cartoon as a Star Wars cartoon. (Read the article if you don't follow me.)

1083. Tamrans. They're from Tamra and have cherubic faces.

Rating: 1/5. ...Wouldn't it be funny if there was a fictional setting where words like that meant different things from the way we use them because they're associated with different things? (I mean, the modern conception of "cherub" is already very different from its original root-a "cherub" in pop culture is basically a little winged baby, but the original cherub is more like the modern idea of an archangel, i.e. the biggest, baddest, toughest angel in the hierarchy, because the root word means "great" or "mighty.")

1084. Tangrene. The Tangrene of the planet Tangrene were peaceful nomads who had remained such throughout their known history, their planet having been discovered by galactic society some three to five thousand years before the movie era.

Their planet being strategically located near a hyperlane, the Empire put a big Imperial Intelligence center on Tangrene; they pressganged the Tangrene natives for the dirty work, and then wiped them out when they were done.

That wacky Empire, it so evil.

Rating: 1/5.

1085. Tanjayans. Native to Tanjay IV.

Rating: 1/5.

1086. Tarasins. Tarasins are more or less dinosaur people, frilled lizard people, and anole (i.e. "American chameleon") people all at once, since they can change color and have frills.

They supposedly aren't terribly strong, and make up for this lack with their cleverness or whatever. They seem to be mostly a small-population indigenous people.

More notably, they're somewhat closely related to a creature called the kilassin, a large predatory near-dinosaur, which I like to call "Slender Saur." (Seriously, look at the picture. That thing's got some disturbing proportions and way-too-human teeth.)

Rating: 4/5, partly because they're neat lizard people and also because of the kilassin relation.

1087. Tarc. The Tarc are powerfully built four-armed arthropod people. Their harsh, arid homelands make them a harsh, unforgiving people, and they believe that emotions are a thing to be kept to oneself rather than shared, causing other species to see them as emotionless. The Tarc have difficulty speaking non-Tarc languages and have unusual digestive systems (supposedly they lack stomachs), and so can only eat small, soft-bodied prey. They are noted to be strong, durable, and dextrous all at once, with a pair of heavy pincer claws on their lower pair of arms for fighting.

The Tarc are excessively xenophobic, and believe that outside influence will weaken and harm their culture, which has some rather unusual fascist vibes, such as arresting people who refuse to vote. Unlike many xenophobes, they have no interest in conquest, but do violently slay any who try to enter their territories and maintain a relatively sizable buffer zone around their homeworld. They do not permit emigration, either, though it's been known to happen.

Their defensive nature brought them into conflict with the Empire, though we don't know any details.

Rating: 5/5. This is partly because they look awesome, and partly because I like a lot of the details.

1088. Targonnians. Targonnians are flipping ugly sort-of-bird people. When I say that, I mean it in a positive way, especially since if one looks at the pages for individual Targonnians, one discovers that they have a wide spectrum of individualized ugliness. (At the time I wrote this article, the Wikimedia site's been oddly sporadic, so there's been some difficulty seeing certain images.)

Their actual species name is uncertain; it's just known they're native to the planet Targonn.

Rating: 3/5. They're so ugly.

1089. Tarnab. The Tarnab are charmingly ugly, though not in the same way as Targonnians. They're described as having a tapir-like snout, which seems quite off to me, as tapirs' snouts have nostrils at the ends while Tarnab seem to have nostrils just about where humans do.

Rating: 3/5.

1090. Tarongs. The Tarongs are seemingly huge gryphon-bird people, with wingspans exceeding thirty feet, and are giant predators. They're picky eaters, though, finding reptiles unpalatable and refusing to eat anything that talks; to make sure that their potential meals don't talk, they chat them up for extended periods before killing them and chowing down. Despite their size and predatory natures, they are pacifistic, and will respond to attacks by seizing the offender and dragging him or her some distance away and gently putting him or her someplace isolated. They do not usually wear clothing other than as decoration, though if visiting a cold planet they'll don protective gear.

Interestingly, the Tarongs are native to two closely linked planets, and seem to be a hybrid species of now-extinct previous natives of the two planets.

Rating: 4/5. A lot of interesting bits there.

-Signing off.