Friday, April 18, 2014

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#116)

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

1151. Troigs. Troigs are a species that naturally has two heads and four arms, which is silly. (I've mentioned before: I think it's hilarious/cute how creature designers like to put features like extra eyes together with extra arms; extra heads and extra arms are not a bit less silly.)

As with certain real-world conjoined twins and many two-headed cartoon characters, the two heads represent two individuals who are highly coordinated with each other; the heads have separate names, such as "Jeff and Bob," represented further as "conjoined" names to refer to the unit, using the infix "-sin-," i.e. "Jeffsinbob." Unsurprisingly, while it's normal for them to get along, it's not remotely uncommon for them not to get along with... themselves?... and there's at least one instance of a Troig head seeking separation with its other half, which would always be fatal for the other half. (Although this is a galaxy with sophisticated cloning technology, and I'm not sure I buy that they couldn't just make a new body to transplant that person onto.)

Also, apparently Troigs occasionally have even more heads.

Rating: 3/5. Honestly, they're pretty one-note (heh), but it's a relatively entertaining note.

1152. Tromes. Tromes are basically gnomes with stupid-huge beards.

Naturally, they're from the Ewoks cartoon, and as such a small group of them had thematic variation along the lines of the Seven Dwarves.

Rating: 1/5.

1153. Troukree. The Troukree are apparently reptilian; a small group of them were close-combat experts and had a strong honor code, and thus were likely some form of relative primitives.

Rating: 1/5.

1154. Troxans. Troxans are amphibious creatures with individually distinctive external gills, such that they use their gill patterns for authentication the way we use fingerprints. These gills also are the primary source of Troxan emoting, apparently, shaking and changing color with their emotions.

Their most notable story presence involved them being part of the Separatist movement during the Clone Wars and being manipulated into fighting much more fiercely than they would have otherwise in order to waste Old Republic resources.

Rating: 3/5. Gill-emoting is a neat idea, although honestly not one that really works outside of prose.

1155. Truishii. They're supposedly known for their space-travelling caravans.

Rating: 1/5.

1156. Trunsks. First things first: It's really hard to type "Trunsk" rather than "Trunks."

Trunsks look rather like warthog/boar people, and are supposed to be fierce and pugnacious and all that. As the planet developed, it ended up with a large group of warlords fighting for territory; eventually, unification came at the hands of Tyl the Deplorable.

Because this horrible dictator united the planet, it was able to then rapidly advance without conflict, and went quickly through its information age and straight up to hyperdrive technology.

See that? That's a Star Wars source material writer telling us we should let a warlord take over the entire planet for the good of society.

Anyway, when the Empire showed up, it declared Trunsks were a permissible species to enslave, and set up a governor on their planet who made the Trunsks think he was on their side when he really was kidnapping them and sending them to be slaves all over the place.

However, Trunsks generally made poor slaves because they're aggressive and tough, and weren't very popular as slaves. Even after the fall of the Empire, however, their homeworld was within the span of an Imperial remnant and they were still legal to keep as slaves there.

A Trunsk with the awesome name of Sully Tigereye apparently once engaged a Defel (a member of a species who is essentially mostly invisible and also has claws and sharp teeth) in hand to hand combat and apparently ripped him to pieces, which means that Sully Tigereye at least is a pretty tough customer.

Rating: 4/5. They look sorta cool and one of them is named Sully Tigereye. That's enough reason for me.

1157. Tsils, spook-crystals, or smokies. The Tsils are a race native to the planet Nam Chorios, mentioned when I discussed the drochs. Do yourself a favor and go read about the drochs real quick. I'll wait.

Okay, back? Good. The Tsils are universally Force-sensitive crystalline entities that are the native life on Nam Chorios, though this wasn't known until the book that essentially starred them. Like the Shards, they're entirely immobile in their native state. Also like the Shards, they can control droid/robot bodies, but this ended less well for the Tsils, because some shady businesspeople basically started mindwiping them and using them as remote controllable brains in droids.

This was bad, because the Tsils are the only thing that keep the drochs under control; they used the drochs' natural mild weakness to light and made an immensely amplified, tailor-made version of that to inflict a vampire-burning-in-sunlight level aversion on the drochs. However, this radiation wouldn't work through the shielding or hull of a large spacecraft, so the Tsils and some allies they spoke to through the force organized a group of antiship artillery pieces over the whole planet to keep anything bigger than a fighter craft out.

Not knowing the nature of things, other inhabitants of Nam Chorios resented the restriction and worked to break down the guns, which would have lead to a resurgence of the Death Seed plague (you did read the other article, right?) that would have threatened the whole galaxy. When a ship holding an extra-intelligent, human-sized mutant droch and a whole cargo of drochs escaped, it looked like trouble, but fortunately, they were on a ship full of Tsil-brained droids, who the other Tsils spoke to through the force in order to force the ship to self destruct.

Rating: 5/5. They're basically a lot like Shards, who are great, but with other interesting ideas mixed in with them.

1158. Tsinimals. The Tsinimals have a religious objection to reengineering living creatures; this drove them to enslave the Langhesi, who had some pretty sophisticated biotechnology; this led many Langhesi to flee to the living planet Zonama Sekot.

Rating: 2/5. ...I like their name, even if they're grade A jerks.

1159. Tsyklen. The Tsyklen have excellent vision and nine digits (two thumbs and seven fingers) per hand. They're considered "wily" and are considered an important "client" species by the Hutts. Their homeworld was invaded by the Yuuzhan Vong at some point.

Rating: 3/5. Some interesting details are worth a point; a "homeworld got invaded by Yuuzhan Vong" pity point gives them another.

1160. Tuhgri. The Tuhgri are diminutive aliens native to the planet Ehjenla in the Kathol Outback. (I'm a little disappointed this is the first time I've seen the term "Kathol Outback," but there are only three species known to be native to it, and one of them doesn't have a proper name and the other's name starts with a "u." So whatever.)

As diminutive, primitive aliens, they have a tribe-oriented society and a nonexistent concept of personal property; specifically, their lack of concept of personal property is actually part of a religious belief in a being called the Great Creator.

Their tribes apparently are treated equally when their leaders get together to settle disputes regardless of how relatively powerful said tribes are.

Rating: 2/5. Some interesting details and some... kinda offensive ones.

-Signing off.

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