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Jawas | Sand People | Tauntaun | Space Slug

Jawas

Intelligent but smelly scavengers of the desert, these rodent-like creatures are natives of Tatooine. About a meter tall and constantly jabbering in their own language, Jawas live in clans.

To protect themselves from the fierce double suns of their planet, they wear coarse, homespun cloaks with hoods; only their glowing eyes are visible.

Jawas travel and live in bands, using giant, treaded sandcrawlers for mobility and shelter. The crawlers can hold many dozens of Jawas as well as the droids and other machinery that they scavenge, repair and resell to Tatooine moisture farmers and others; as they did with C3P0 and R2D2. Once each year before the storm season, Jawas make a trek to the great basin of the Dune Sea for a huge, secret rendezvous that becomes a great swap meet where they exchange news and salvaged items.

Jawa scream wav

Sand People

A nomadic and often violent species, the Sand People of the planet Tatooine are as fierce and savage as their harsh desert environment. Also known as Tusken Raiders, even their appearance - born of necessity - lends them an air of menace. Wrapped in gauzy robes and strips of cloth from head to foot, their faces are concealed with breathing masks and goggles to protect their eyes. The frightening visage of a bandit Tusken Raider can terrorize as easily as their weapons.

The Sand People are easily intoxicated by sugar water and are most dangerous during their adolescent years, when they must survive rigorous rites of passage--such as hunting krayt dragons--to become adults. Since there is no written Tusken language, the storyteller-historian is the most respected member of Tusken communities. Many Tusken Raider clans of 20 to 30 individuals return annually to their traditional encampments in the Needles, a section of the Jundland Wastes, to wait out the dangerous sandstorm season.

The Sand People have an almost symbiotic relationship with their bantha mounts. A member who has lost his bantha is considered incomplete, and an outcast among his people. Likewise, when a Raider dies, his mount engages in a usually suicidal frenzy and is turned loose in the desert to survive or die on its own.

Tuskens live in an uneasy, and frequently shattered, peace with Tatooine moisture farmers. They attack settlements from time to time, using their traditional weapon, the gaderffii (or "gaffi") stick, a kind of double-edged ax, or older projectile rifles. Targets of opportunity also include individuals or small parties roaming the desert, such as Jawa scavenging parties.

Tauntaun

Easily domesticated reptilian creatures insulated with gray-white fur, Tauntauns are sometimes called "snow lizards."

Wild tauntauns roam the frozen wastes of the ice planet Hoth, where they graze on lichen. Although initially ornery, the spitting tauntaun can be tamed and ridden.

The animals are used as mounts and pack animals by members of the Rebel Alliance when they venture out from Echo Base on Hoth.

While their thick fur protects tauntauns from extreme temperatures, they can't survive Hoth's brutal nights and must seek shelter. During the day, several species of tauntaun herds can be seen running across the plains of ice and snow, with larger populations in the area of equatorial tundra.

Space Slugs

Worm-like creatures growing as large as 900 meters, space slugs inhabit deep caverns on larger asteroids near the planet Hoth. It has long been rumored that a space pirate planted the huge slugs as guardians for his hidden treasure and bases.
The slugs are hardy, existing on virtually no atmosphere. Silicon-based life-forms, they live for long periods by breaking down rock and subsisting on mineral content.
Space slugs are plagued by parasites known as mynocks, which they sometimes feed on. Space slug flesh has a number of commercial uses. The creatures reproduce through fission, splitting into two separate beings.