Friday, July 11, 2014

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#127)

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

1261. Yalarans. The Yalarans were apparently primitive sapients that some Jedi was worried weren't ready for contact with the galaxy, so said Jedi somehow built a cloaking device intended to protect them by... hiding their planet... maybe?

At any rate, it didn't work out too well, because later some Noghri Death Commandos were apparently sent to their planet to take possession of the cloaking device, and they apparently massacred the Yalarans while doing so.

...Oops.

Rating: 1/5.

1262. Yalor. The (technically unlicensed) Yalor were from Yaloris.

Rating: 1/5.

1263. Yam'rii, or Huk. The Yam'rii are basically giant praying mantids. Because the original puppet needed somewhere for someone to sit inside it, said puppet was essentially wearing an immense billowy dress, and later Yam'rii appearances sometimes depict them wearing similar clothing despite only appearing in other media, which is rather amusing. Because of artistic inconsistencies, some Yam'rii look less like mantids and more like mantid-gremlins.

Being mantis people, Yam'rii eat meat and eggs, supposedly including the flesh of their own species and the eggs of other sapient species. They're also just generally straight-up assholes, having invaded a planet and enslaving its inhabitants, the Kaleesh. When the Kaleesh rebelled against them with great success (and turning the name "Huk" into a pejorative meaning "soulless bug"), to the point where they started pursuing them to other worlds despite having started it all as primitives, the Yam'rii retaliated by convincing the Old Republic that the Kaleesh needed to be stomped on. (To be fair, the Yam'rii were apparently in danger of extinction. Ironically, the end result of all this was the "creation" of General Grievous [or rather, his conversion from Kaleesh hero to menacing Separatist minion], who ended up being recruited by the Yam'rii's allies. Although when Grievous in his cyborg identity found some Yam'rii on some world or another, he apparently quite gleefully had them slaughtered.)

While the Kaleesh apparently still caused them problems here and again, the Yam'rii were still around many decades later, and were one of the many species who fell under the sway of the Killiks.

Rating: 3/5. I've often talked about how some jerky aliens kind of need to be around to make antagonist fodder. These guys are such, and they're nasty enough that they end up in my "love to hate" category even if they are mantids.

1264. Yammosks, or war coordinators. Yammosks are huge tentacled creatures created by the Yuuzhan Vong (who are finally going to get an entry next article, barring unforeseen circumstances), and related to the dhuryam. Some of their longer, thinner tentacles can be about sixty miles in length, though most of them are much shorter. They each have a single immense "tooth" that emits acid in the manner of a spider's chelicerae emitting venom; one yammosk used this to burrow through the icy crust of a frozen planet into its interior ocean, so obviously they're very powerful physically.

However, a yammosk's strength isn't in its physical abilities but in the fact that it is essentially an immense brain designed to aid the Yuuzhan Vong in combat with its telepathy. Yammosks will actually telepathically link with every soldier in range and guide their military actions with eerie coordination, determined to protect the soldiers and ships it has linked to as if they are its offspring. While the Yuuzhan Vong are essentially invisible to the Force, yammosk telepathy interacts with Force-based telepathy quite strongly, begging a few questions.

Yammosks are seen by the Yuuzhan Vong as the physical incarnations of their war god Yun-Yammka.

Rating: 4/5. I've noted that I don't care for the Yuuzhan Vong, but I kind of adore the yammosks (I also feel I should have given the dhuryam a higher rating at this point).

1265. Yao. Some friend of Han Solo and Chewbacca was a Yao.

Rating: 1/5.

1266. Yapi. The Yapi are doglike creatures (heh-"yappy") who were created by the DarkStryder, creation of the Kathol of the oft-mentioned and much-adored (by me, at least) Kathol Rift.

Some served the DarkStryder; others rebelled against it. In general, while they obviously warred among themselves, they actually were capable of meeting peaceably on a regular basis for trade and exchanging information. They believed that only "a tribe's shaman" (which is an odd, ambiguous statement) could manipulate Ta-Ree energy (a Kathol Rift twist on the Force which was made of Kathol souls), which... wasn't true. When the FarStar, the main shipful of protagonists associated with the Kathol Rift, showed up to stop an alliance between an Imperial moff and the DarkStryder, at least some Yapi, along with the Charr Ontee and a sapient species that the Yapi regard as food (reportedly, allying with such was tricky for the Yapi) allied with the FarStar's crew against the moff and the DarkStryder.

Rating: 3/5. Even minor players among the Kathol Rift are generally entertaining, and these guys are about as uninteresting as the Rift gets, to be frank.

1267. Yarin. Yarin resemble trees despite being a mobile, sapient species.

One individual was the harbormaster of a resort on the planet Dac/Mon Calamari.

Rating: 1/5. There are more interesting tree-beings in Star Wars.

1268. Yarkora. The Yarkora are camel aliens.

They apparently have redundant internal organs, which contributes to them having very long lifespans and being much less likely to die of natural causes than many species. They apparently are rather solitary by nature, rarely living together, and have a very slow reproductive cycle that makes it impossible for them to have more than one child every fifteen years, which creates a societal pressure for all female members of the species to have at least one child. Their homeworld's location is a deep secret, which as I've mentioned is a thing often used in science fiction that doesn't make much sense in the the crowded Star Wars galaxy.

Yarkora have excellent eyesight and hearing, and are believed by some to be able to affect the emotions of others; they are known to be creepy and off-putting.

Rating: 3/5. The Yarkora are really odd, and I think of them as mostly being one of the "texture" species, i.e. they create "texture" to make the general feel of the universe they're in more interesting.

1269. Yatir. The Yatir are "humanoid" and were sympathetic with the Rebellion, causing them to be suppressed by the Empire, initially without much success (though they didn't last forever). Their planet may have been only relatively recently contacted by the Old Republic (in the last thousand years), although we don't really know.

Rating: 1/5.

1270. Ychthytonians. Ychthytonians have four arms and an awesome name.

Rating: 2/5. Not much else to say.

-Signing off.

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