Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#106)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)

1051. Sulituans. Sulituans are cool-looking creatures that are basically air-living, gravitationally improbable nautilus creatures. Adorably, they come from the planet Archae Teuthis.

Rating: 4/5. Sometimes you just need some vaguely cephalopod aliens with a planet named after the giant squid.

1052. Sullorians. From Sulloria.

Rating: 1/5.

1053. Sullustans. Also known as Bomewrights, Sullustans have odd flaps of skin on their heads, but are still classified as near-human, a term that has become progressively more confusing the more often I've seen it used. You might, looking at Sullustans, recognize them as the species from which Lando Calrissian's Death Star run co-pilot comes.

They're basically mole people who became naturally good at navigation because of living in tunnels or something, and who aren't very susceptible to becoming drunk. They are presumably good drivers because of this. They also are known as a culture to find xenophobia a foreign concept, which you wouldn't expect out of people whose culture was born in tunnels.

Also, Sullustans practice polyandry, and despite most lacking hair altogether are known for their skill in hairdressing.

Rating: 4/5. That's quite a lot of peculiar, interesting features together.

1054. Sumrias. The Sumrias come from the Lol system. Yes, really.

They apparently developed base-eight mathematics because at least one of their castes have four fingers per hand, and their system of calculating artillery range was adopted as standard by the Empire, which doesn't sound at all practical for people usually reliant on a base-ten system. (Why not? Long story short: When counting in base eight, it would be represented "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10." Don't tell me you'd be able to keep that straight when using base-ten simultaneously.)

Rating: 2/5, for coming from the Lol system more than anything.

1055. Sunesi. The Sunesi are "amphibian" humanoids, which in this case means they look like humans with big bulgy heads and odd skin. They actually start life as some sort of hairy, nonsapient creatures, and then go through a metamorphosis into hairless adults.

Central to the metamorphosis is something called cirrifog, which is an airborne crystalline substance which is highly toxic to offworlders; the cirrifog is converted into a cocoon by the maturing Sunesi. When the Empire mined the planet, it started depleting the cirrifog from the atmosphere, and the Sunesi objected, resulting in the Empire treating the Sunesi like trash.

Uniquely, the Sunesi worship a being called the Maker, and this being is explicitly intended to be the same being that droids sort of worship.

Rating: 3/5. Those are some odd details, and that's good.

1056. Surronians. Surronian society centers around guilds. Each of these guilds apparently is governed by a hive-mind of some sort, although the hive-mind apparently also lets individuality exist (maybe).

Surronians are known for their ship designs, which are relatively unusual, and unlike many known shipbuilders, have at least three specific designs attributed to them (Starlight light freighters [a light freighter being an accurate albeit inadequate description of the Millennium Falcon as well], Conqueror-class assault ships [which are a sort of long-range fighter], and Surronian Farstars [which are seen as valuable collectible vessels, three of which were bet by Lando Calrissian to persuade an opponent in a high-stakes card game to bet the Cloud City mining platform, hence a shiftless gambler outlaw being a wealthy mining baron in charge of an entire city]).

Rating: 3/5. Their cultural setup sounds interesting, and their "known for shipbuilding" description means something.

1057. Suurjans. Suurjans appear to be somewhat proverbial, for a character in a story remarked "they'd have heard you on Suurja" and received the reply "Suurjans don't have ears."

Apparently, they don't have ears.

Rating: 2/5. I just realized that sloppily pronouncing "Suurjan" sounds a lot like "surgeon." "Surgeons don't have ears."

1058. Svivreni. Svivreni are described as "equinoid" (horse-like), but only have cloven hooves (which horses don't have) to mark them as anything other than flop-eared "near-humans." They're apparently in the three-feet-or-shorter range but have powerful musculatures and are capable of outrunning some species taller than themselves, though supposedly not humans. (This comes from odd quirks of a Star Wars rpg, where a possible typo was canonized in a way that let Svivreni be treated as "medium-sized" for any purpose but dodging and targeting, for which they are considered "small.") They also often grow their hair long and are slightly longer-lived than humans (which isn't remotely unreasonable, as cats live somewhat longer than dogs and are generally smaller).

They apparently consider any variation of the phrase/word/term "goodbye" bad luck, and so instead say "the journey begins, so go," and have various other linguistic quirks established.

Rating: 3/5. I kind of find their artwork/description clash annoying, but I like a fair bit of the rest of it.

1059. Swamp Maidens. Swamp Maidens are an all-female species known for producing some of the galaxy's best exotic dancers.

What.

I mean, really, what.

Who wrote this? Whose idea was this, exactly? Who thought it was a good idea to come up with the idea of a race of all-women dancers of an implicitly sexualized nature?

I'm genuinely curious, because this is weird as heck.

Rating: 1/5.

1060. Swaze. The Swaze are an advanced civilization, but they're totally into the advice given by the Rellarin.

It took a lot of effort to not add a surferdude/hippie-style "maaaaan" to the end of that sentence.

Rating: 1/5. It's kind of silly that there's a group who's entirely defined by the fact that they think the Rellarin are rad. I mean, the Rellarin are rad, because they're huge, intimidating guys with spikes for mouths who are also reknowned for kindness and wisdom, but still.

-Signing off.