Banthas are large hairy quadrupeds found roaming the plains of a great variety of worlds. They are readily domesticated as both eadible livestock and beasts of burden, and can adapt to a great range of climatic conditions, from arctic terrain to scorching desert. They are so widespread and have been used for so long that their native planet has been lost to galactic history.
Adult banthas stand three to four metres tall at the shoulder, and at least one of their sexes possesses curling spiral horns of over a metre diameter. The maw is about a metre wide, and the two black eyes are set under a heavy fur-shaded brow. Fett are flat and clublike in shape, and the claws are blunted nails.
A herd a wild banthas roaming Tatooine's desolate Dune Sea.
Tusken Raiders of Tatooine have developed a strong rapport with their bantha steads.
Dexterity 2D
Perception 2D
Strength 8D
Special abilities:
Horns: Strength-1D damage.
Trample: Strength damage.
Move: 5
Grey-green finely-scaled flying reptile with a wingspan of no less than a metre, with a total body and tail length of between one and five metres. In addition to the membraneous triangular wings there are two pairs of more conventional vertebrate limbs, indicating that the dominant vertebrate phylum on Dagobah follows a hexapodal (six-limbed) body plan. The thin legs terminate in delicate fingers well suited to climbing and perching among leaves and branches, or the seizure of prey while in flight. The tail is similarly slender and may have prehensile flexibility. Eyes are large in comparison to the rest of the head and are positioned to allow excellent vision in the forward direction, and to the sides with only a small blind spot to the rear. The mouth is broad and equipped with sharp and tiny teeth which are well suited to catching insects and other minor animals.
The bog-wings' bold screeching and observed tendency to join flight near other members of their species suggests that they are highly social creatures. Young are born live while the mother is airborne.
Closeup side view of a bog-wing.
A large bog-wing flags across the clearing into which an unfortunate X-Wing pilot has crashed.
Decipher's SWCCG cards depicting bog-wings.
The bubo is a bulbous two-legged brownish reptile of about forty centimetres' diameter. Its most striking feature is wide maw filled with thin, sharp, needle-like teeth. The shape of the teeth does not seem sturdy enough to gnaw large active struggling prey. They seem better suited to catching and impaling prey which is slippery or wriggles; perhaps fishlike creatures. The shape of the mouth and head suggests that these would need to be smaller animals, able to be swallowed whole. This notion is supported by the relevent sections of Tales from Jabba's Palace, which say:
Bubo knew he was being used ... They, along with most of the universe, looked upon his kind as nothing more than drooling, mindless, bug-eating frog-dogs ... a reputation which the species did nothing to correct.The Bubo story in the anthology, Tongue-tied: Bubo's Tale, indicates that this species is semi-intelligent, or at least believe themselves so, despite the fact that they have no means of vocal communication, no manipulative appendages or technology. In fact the Bubo in this story regards itself as a highly refined mind, although its antics show no evidence of anything other than the impulses of a rather bad-tempered dog-like mind.
Closeup detailed views of the Bubo beast. In the second image, he seems to be under the control of a Jawa handler.
Bubo huddles in the main entrance to Jabba the Hutt's throne room, ready to bark at unwary passers-by.
Bubo lurks in the light behind the Twi'Lek dancer Oola as she protests against the beastial affections of Jabba the Hutt.
After being spat out of the unseen maw of a large aquatic beast on the remote bog planet of Dagobah, R2-D2 landed violently among tree root on solid peat. He came to rest against a bare partial skeleton belonging to some kind of large animal. Sections of spine and several ribs are visible. Their size indicates that the living animal was at least two metres in girth. Unfortunately the ribs are broken short. The impossibility of determining their natural length and taper prevents us from guessing at the length of the creature, but it should be at least as long as it is wide. It might have been over five metres long, weighing several tons.
Unfortunately very little can be determined about the more specific characteristics of the beast, beyond the fact that it is a vertebrate, it died in a swamp and it probably died less than a year before R2-D2 encountered it. (Decomposition works rapidly in a swamp environment, and objects eventually sink into even what looks like firm ground.)
R2-D2 teeters upended between a gnarled root and the ribcage and spine of a long-dead Dagobah beast.
Luke Skywalker races to the site of his droid's impact, near an intriguing partial skeleton.
Dewbacks are solitary reptiles native to the planet Tatooine. They grow to approximately five metres long and two metres high. They are generally covered in smooth polygonal scales but a finely tufted patch of pale fur grows along the spine from the crest of the neck to somewhere near the rump. It is this hair which gives the species its name.
A dewback's exceptional shyness and docility in comparison to its size and strength makes this an ideal species for use as desert stead or beast of burden. However the domestication of the dewback is not as advanced as some other riding beasts of the galaxy: they are sometimes unruly, snuffling and sniffing at bystanders when a more thoroughly tamed creature would keep its attention to itself. The dewback's instinct of mating only in the wild, deep desert is not conducive to systematic breeding programs.
Imperial stormtroopers rode Tatooine dewbacks in their search for the stolen Death Star schematics.
The dewback card from the Special Edition series of SWCCG.
Dexterity 3D
Perception 2D
Strength 4D
Brawling 4D+1
Move: 35; 100 km/h (during day); 7, 20km/h (at night)
Orneriness: 3D
Dianogas are fleshy tentacled creatures which feed on waste materials and smaller animals in countless locations throughout the galaxy. In most environments they are merely a hardy pest species but sometimes they grow to a size which makes them a menace to the local inhabitants. A dianoga in the refuse system of the original Death Star nearly drowned and ate Luke Skywalker. In form, the dianoga consists of a bulbous body sac with tooth-filled maw (which normally remains submerged) and several eyestalks and long grasping tentacles.
The fact that such a massive animal was found aboard the new battle station indicates some important characteristics of the species. It could not have come aboard in its obtrusively large adult form without being detected and exterminated. Dianogas probably spread to new environments by means of numerous inconspicuous tiny spores, eggs or larvae. Once supplied with plentiful food, the young must grow rapidly, otherwise the Death Star specimen could not have attained its great size within the duration of the station's construction and operation (which was several months, according to Death Star Technical Companion).
A dianoga in the refuse-strewn wastes at the outskirts of a white-domed metropolis on the muddy moon of Panna watches as Boba Fett's huge mount beast swims past in the distance.
Tentacle detail of a dianoga dwelling in the oily waste waters of the Death Star garbage system.
A dianoga peers above water with one of its periscope-like eye-stalks, searching for prey.
A lucky dianoga captures a thrashing human meal.
Dexterity 2D
Perception 3D+1
Strength 6D
Special abilities:
Colour: Can change colour to match surroundings (+4D to sneak)
Tentacles: target must make opposed Strength roll to escape and not be dragged along.
Move: 3
Many large and dangerous predators prowl and swim through the swamps of Dagobah. The astromech droid R2-D2 encountered one of them when Luke Skywalker visited that world after the rebel rout at Hoth. An olive green creature, seen only as a section of leathery hide intermittently cresting muddy water, actually attempted to devour the droid. The curvature of the visible parts of the beast suggest that it is at least a few metres thick and probably significantly longer than its width. Apparently the animal disdained the taste and texture of the astromech, and it powerfully spat the droid high into the air to crash in the thickets. The shape of the animal's back is bilaterally symmetric about its direction of motion and particular features are suggestive of a vertebrate body plan.
The water beast which swallowed R2-D2. In the first image a pair of human divers, obviously members of a foolhardy doomed zoological expedition, examine the creature's back. The second photograph shows a section of hide which has somehow been removed from an unfortunate specimen.
A small lizard-like creature is kept as a pet by Chirpa, Chief of the Ewok village which allied itself with the rebel commando team at the Battle of Endor. Chirpa's ownership and evident affection for the creature suggests that these animals are domesticated and well-regarded by Ewoks of high social status. Chirpa's familiar s free to clamber on the Ewok's head and body during important village council sessions, though the Chief might hold the end of its tail in order to prevent the precious pet from wandering too far. The lizard is about thirty centimetres long, with fine grey scales. The long, thin tail is banded alternately in dark brown and light grey.
Chief Chirpa grasps his lizard's tail as it perches contentedly during a gathering of village elders.
Much is unknown about this creature, including its name. The only specimen seen to date was seriously mutilated and hung on a stake as part of an animal trap laid by Ewoks. The furry beast looks as if it weighed about fifty kilograms. The short and coarse hair was mostly tan except for the bright white fur of the underbelly and mouth region. The mouth was small in comparison to the overall head and bore only a few small tusks and incisors. The size and shape of the one intact limb suggest that the animal is quadrupedal and stands at about half a metre high in life. The reddish colour of the exposed flesh hints that the creature uses an iron-based substance akin to human haemoglobin for a circulatory fluid.
Several different views of the mutilated remains of the tusked animal, used as bait in a trap created by Ewoks.
Gundarks are strong elephant-sized predators which appear to be found on several worlds throughout the galaxy. The hide is tough and pinkish-orange, with a distinctive warty crest running the length of the long neck and around the mouth and eyes. The head is hammer-shaped and flat, with the eyes on the extremes to either side. This arrangement provides excellent binocular vision and spatial judgement used to aim the enormous muscular tongue, which thrusts from the rounded mouth to lengths of over five metres, ensnaring and constricting prey. In addition to raw strength, the tongue seems to bear suckers and what looks like a sticky excretion. It is said that once a gundark latches its tongue onto something, it never lets go.
Princess Leia and C-3PO were unlucky to meet a pair of voracious gundarks on an uncharted jungle planet during the search for a new base to replace the Hoth facilities.
The aquatic mollusks favoured as a live snack by Jabba the Hutt are about twenty centimetres long. They consist of a fleshy olive-green mantle covering the elongated abdomen, a red-brown head and approximately ten tentacles of length fifteen centimetres and one centimetre thickness. The tentacles do not all converge at one point, but are paired. The mouthparts are anterior to the frontmost of them. Two jade-coloured bulbous eyes are set on opposite sides of the head, which is characteristic of the arrangement of a creature which is not at the top of the food chain in its native environment. Nevertheless the eye positioning does provide for some forward binocular vision, which hints that this squid-like animal might be a minor predator in its own right.
Jabba keeps several in a bowl of water in his hooka pipe system. It is possible that the smoke bubbled through the water flavours the creatures. It doesn't seem harmful; they seem to float contentedly, without attacking or interacting with each other, until the Hutt seizes one as a morsel. When alarmed, the creature squeals noisily and thrashes about.
Tales from Jabba's Palace p.49 names the creatures as Klatooine paddy frogs. It is explained that they are kept in a flavoured brandy, which has a depressent effect intended to suppress their natural tendency to fight and killing each other.
Three of Jabba's food squids, beached on a wooden platform and then returned to the comfort of their water bowl.
Mynocks are vermin of the spaceways, able to drift through the hard vacuum of interplanetary space but lustfully attracted to the warmth and power of passing starships. Physically they consist of a limbless slug-like body about a metre long, with leathery delta wings. The head consists of little more than two rounded eyestalks and sucker of about twenty centimetres' diameter for attachment to starships or other sources of food.
The mouthparts and head of a mynock can be seen clearly here as it attaches itself to the Millennium Falcon's cockpit window.
The delta-winged form of a mynock chewing on external power cables is not a pleasant sigh for starship owners. Blasting off the vermin is an odious task.
Decipher's SWCCG mynock game cards.
Dexterity 3D
Perception 1D
Strength 1D
Special abilities:
Energy drain: survive by draining energy from starships.
Flight: mynocks who drain enough energy can fly.
Silicon life forms: silicon-based life forms and can survive in the vacuum of space.
Move: 9, 1 (space units per turn)
A bright blue stilt-legged avain creature was seen standing in the rubbish at the base of the domed city on the mud-covered moon of Panna. The creature's bulbous yellow eyes give it nearly omnidirectional vision, good for detecting and escaping predators. The long proboscis might be an adaptation for picking small morsels from cracks in the rocky cliff-face and similar environments. The stilted legs suggest that the bird spends much of its time wading in shallower mud near rocky outcrops; it would not be able to gain foothold or swim in the deeper offshore mud.
The blue bird looks on as Boba Fett and Chewbacca flee the domed city astride Fett's immense mount beast.
This large bloody-red horned monster dwells in the mud oceans of one of the moons of the Panna system, where Luke Skywalker met Boba Fett for the first time. This ferocious beast attempted to chew off sections of Skywalker's crashed Y-Wing starfigher until it was scared away by Boba Fett. The monster has the forward-facing eye-placement suitable for binocular vision, which is valuable for predators. Its diamond-shaped body tapers into a long thin neck and a short tail. There are four flipper-like limbs. A dorsal row of jagged spiney plates runs along the spine and three sharp horns sprout from the back of the head. The creature seemed unaffected by Skywalker's blaster fire into its mouth, but experienced excruciating pain when Fett zapped it with his distinctive electric shock rifle.
The monster looms over Skywalker's Y-Wing, chewing on components which it has bitten off.
Luke Skywalker first met Boba Fett on a red mud-covered moon in the Panna system, as depicted in STAR WARS Holiday Special. Fett fought off a hideous monster which sought to devour Skywalker's crashed Y-Wing starfighter. In this adventure Fett rode a docile long-necked mount beast of immense proportions. The creature seems well-adapted to life on the red mud-covered moon, being able to swim across the gelatinous surface at speeds comparable to those of a three-man Imperial armoured landspeeder.
Although tame and friendly, the beast had a voracious appetite, which Fett considered to be a trait of the species in general. Like the more ferocious and wild monster which Fett scared away, the mount beast was attracted to the taste of the inert Y-Wing, but seemed quite satisfied to consume Skywalker's entire ration pack with one slurp of its prehensile tongue.
The enormous mount beast from the Panna system.
The beast has such a thick hide that a saddle can be painlessly bolted onto it.
Rancors are huge, voracious, long-armed predators which roam the forests of the remote and little-known planet Dathomir. They are also found on dozens of other worlds. The leathery brown hide is thick enough to allow a rancor to shrug off hits from hand-held blasters. Their maws are full of sharp, triangular teeth which are primarily used for gripping and rending prey; a rancor does very little chewing, preferring to swallow food in large chunks. The specimen owned by Jabba the Hutt was a juvenile in poor health, standing at only five metres tall. Wild rancors grow to greater dimensions.
On Dathomir local Force-sensitive witches use rancors as tame mounts. Although Jabba's rancor is clearly non-sapient, at least some of the rancors of Dathomir seem to approach intelligence. These rancors are social creatures, hunting in family-based packs.
It is not clear whether this is the natural state of the rancors, or whether they are have been altered by Force-based sorcery. The notion that rancors may be artificial or modified life-forms finds support in the fact that Emperor Palpatine kept an army of vicious sub-intelligent rancors at his Citadel on the Deep-Core resort world of Byss. These rancors were referred to as "crysalis beasts" and seemed to be among the menagerie of monsters deliberately created in experiments with the Dark Side of the Force carried out by Palpatine and his adepts. It seems possible that rancors might be one of the standard monstrousities available for creation via the ancient arts of the Sith. Indeed the Sith were infamous for the creation of abominations of nature, as seen in Dark Lords of the Sith, The Sith War and The Jedi Academy Trilogy.
The abuse rancor emerges into its public feeding area.
The rancor feeds on a gamorrean.
A closeup view of a rancor's head, with mouth agape.
The rancor SWCCG game card confirms Dathomir as the species' planet of origin.
Dexterity 4D
Perception 1D
search: tracking 3D
Strength 7D
Special abilities:
Armour: adds +3D to Strength for damage purposes.
Claws: Strength+3D damage.
Teeth: Strength+5D damage.
Move: 20
The dungeons of Jabba the Hutt's Tatooine palace are home to grey-white creatures that look remarkably like terrestrial rats. Three were seen together on one set of bars when C-3PO and R2-D2 were escorted to face EV-9D9. Either they are social animals that prefer to keep company with their own kind, or they may have been attracted into the open by some resource near the bars.
Rats in Jabba's dungeon.
The ronto card from the Special Edition series of SWCCG.
Dexterity 2D
Running 3D
Perception 3D
Strength 5D
Special abilities:
Heat endurance: Rontos are extremely adaptable to desert conditions, though they still need water to survive.
Sense of smell: Rontos have a keen sense of smell. They add +1D to any Percpetion roll involving smell.
Skittish: Rontos are easily upset by any machines that move significantly faster than they. Add +3D to their orneriness when around fast-moving vehicles.
Move: 10
Size: 4.25 metres tall
Orneriness: 1D
Most of the body of a sarlaac is buried beneath ground, with only the gaping, pink, mucous-lined, toothy, circular maw exposed. More than half a dozen slender tentacles sprout from the walls of the mouth; they are used to sieze prey and to remove unwanted material from the feeding cavity. During feeding a large horny beak is extruded. This is the mouth proper. When closed, the beak is nearly filled by what seems to be a fat tentacle specialised to act as a tongue.
Sarlaaci are found on many remote worlds throughout the galaxy. They thrive most effectively in moist environments, though some are known to live in such inhospitable places as airless moons and the arid wastes of Tatooine. Depending on environmental conditions, an adult sarlaac may grow to dozens of metres across, or may have an appature of as little as a metre. Sarlaaci propagate via spores which drift through interstellar space, though how the planet-bound adults release the spores into space remains a mystery.
Animals devoured by a sarlaac remain alive indefinitely, digested over a thousand years. This is accomplished via the slow exchange of body fluids with those of the sarlaac. In effect, the victims are digested from within.
Sarlaaci possess little more than a vegetative intelligence, only enough to percieve and entrap prey which wander within reach of the mouth's tentacles. The sarlaac which briefly held Boba Fett on Tatooine seemed to exhibit a cumulative memory and remnants of the personalities of all its victims, at least according to Fett's delerious perceptions of the hellish experience. The nature of this effect is not exactly known, although one of the assimilated personalities encountered by Fett, a deceased Jedi, speculated that the group consciousness is carried by some kind of messenger RNA which circulates through all the victims as they are digested.
According to The Mandalorian Armour, the sarlaac on Tatooine was present throughout a network of tunnels under the Dune Sea. Either this contradicts the notion that it remains in place at the Pit of Carkoon, or else its body is larger than generally believed, able to send extensions very far away from the mouth.
The teeth and fleshy tissues of a Sarlaac's mouth in closeup.
The sarlaac's horny inner beak, extruded from the mouth for feeding, is seen in close-up. The beak appears to contain a fat tongue.
A tentacle delivering prey to the beak.
View from above a Sarlaac as a meal is about to be delivered, courtesy of a certain well-known gangster.
Dexterity 2D
Perception 1D
Strength 6D
Special Abilities:
Tentacles: have a Strength of 6D, reach up to four metres outside pit; do not cause damage, but victims must make a successful opposed Strength roll to escape.
Bite: 5D damage.
Acid digestion: Any creature dragged into the sarlaac's maw suffers 5D damage from digestive acid until the victim is knocked unconscious and dragged into the sarlaac's digestive tract --- at that point, the victim normally wakes up, but by then it is normally incapacitated by the sarlaac's paralysing digestive enzymes, 7D stun damage.
Move: 2
This gray quadrupedal omnivorous reptile from the planet Dagobah is about two metres long as an adult, and about half of this length consists of the tail. The legs are short and stumpy, only about thirty centimetres long, and are splayed to the sides. Each foot ends in about five slender clawed toes suitable for climbing through foliage. When disturbed, the sleen utters a low, loud, aggressive moan.
Decipher's SWCCG card describing the sleen.
Corssectional diagram of a starslug in its burrow, not to scale. Illustration is from an Imperial xenobiological report from the chief surgeon aboard the Executor, based on studies of a specimen captured shortly after the Battle of Hoth.
View from the Millennium Falcon inside the gut of a giant space slug, looking towards the mouth. Note the ridges and bumps on the upper surface, which seem to indicate the presence of internal support structures analogous to the ribs and spine of a vertebrate.
Teeth of a giant space slug are polished and shine in the starlight. A fleeing Corellian freighter indicates the enormity of the dentation.
A giant space slug lunges from its tunnel in pursuit of a starship which has been irritating its interior tissues.
Dexterity 2D
Perception 1D
Strength 6D (creature scale) / 5D (starfighter scale) *
Special Abilities:
Vacuum: Space slugs are native to the vacuum of space and can survive in this environment with no assistance.
Teeth: Strength+1D damage.
Move: 6 (creature-scale slugs only).* For a 6-metre-long and 900-metre-long slug respectively; Strength varies dramatically by the length of the slug; extremely large slugs are in the starfighter or capital class.
These tiny animals are known to range from a few centimetres to about fifteen centimetres long. Their orange feathery plumage is sufficiently long to obscure most of the body details. The creature is generally conical, with the feathers trailing behind it. A pair of fine antennae sprout from the anterior. The mode of locomotion is unknown due to the feather cover, but when alarmed, the creature is capable of moving distances comparable to its body length in one second.
These bugs appear to care for their young: one adult was observed playing with what seemed to be a small number of miniature versions of itself outside Jabba's palace, at sunset on the day before the Hutt's demise. Unfortunately, before the animals could be seen in much detail they were devoured by a nearby worrt. The bug's senses were acute enough for it to become aware of the danger when it was roughly a metre from the predator. Upon disocvery of the threat, the smaller animal chirped in alarm and made a futile crawl for safety.
A large specimen plays in the sand with several smaller companions, possibly its offspring.
Tauntauns are readily-domesticated herd-living herbivores which roam the icy wastes of the sixth planet in the Hoth system. They feed upon fungal growths which can be found in sheltered ice caves, and beneath shallow snow. Tauntauns are the primary prey of the huge and vicious semi-intelligent wampas. Female tauntauns are distinguished from males by the presence of large curved horns on each side of the head. The horns are using in ritualised fights between females during the mating season. Tauntauns have four nostrils.
Body temperature is regulated at a level which is above freezing point and is considered "warm" by human standards. Although they are officially called reptiles, their hair and probable endothermy mean that tauntauns cannot be reptiles in the usual terrestrial sense. However the modern terrestrial notion of a "reptile" becomes problematic and ambiguous when prehistoric examples are considered: hairy pterosaurs; feathered carnivorous dinosaurs in China; and mammal-like reptiles of the Triassic period which may have had hair and which did have nasal turbinates seemingly shaped to warm air travelling to the lungs. Since tauntauns don't have visible mammery organs they needn't be called "mammals", and they can probably be considered "reptiles" or "reptiles in a derived state".
The abdominal cavity of a tauntaun is filled with translucent white sausage-like innards. As with most carbon/water life-forms, the insides of a tauntaun are moist, but if there is a circulatory fluid akin to human blood then it is either transparent or else it passes through the abdominal region in only small rates. (This is according to observations of a gutted tauntaun in The Empire Strikes Back. The usual cauterising effect of a lightsabre beam could not alone account for the bloodlessness of so deep an abdominal wound.)
At the time of Return of the Jedi, tauntauns were known to citizens of the galaxy other than those members of the Rebel Alliance who had been based on Hoth. This is attested by the presence of a tauntaun head mounted on the wall of the throne room of the Tatooine palace of Jabba the Hutt. The head was situated to the left of Jabba's favorite decoration, the carbonite-encased body of Han Solo. It can be assumed that minions of the Hutt engaged in a tauntaun hunt at some point. It would be interesting to know whether this happened before or after the events of The Empire Strikes Back. The planet Hoth might not be as isolated and unvisited as the rebels had hoped.
Dissection of tauntaun by lightsabre. Note the absence of recognisable blood or equivalent fluid.
A domesticated female tauntaun carrying a rebel officer races over the wastes of Hoth.
Skeleton of a tauntaun lies in the lair of a wampa. Note the thickness of the vertebrae. Long ventral spines may be attachment points for powerful musculature. The absence of visible ribs may have more to do with the eating habits of the wampa than with tauntaun anatomy.
Dexterity 2D
Perception 3D
Strength 4D
Special abilities:
Charge attack: Strength+1D+1 damage.
Arctic creature: can withstand frigid temperatures.
Move: 16
Orneriness: 1D
These ferocious brutes are native to the planet Hoth, where they use their white camoufalge fur and wiley semi-sentience to stalk the tauntauns of the desolate ice fields. Wampas resemble thickly-muscled long-armed humanoids over three metres tall. Like their favorite prey, they seem to appear to be both horned and hornless beasts. Presumably the horned animals are the females.
Wampas are not exclusively solitary animals. In fact a female wampa shared the same cave as the male specimen which captured Luke Skywalker. It was the female which the Jedi apprentice maimed during his escape; he was probably wise to flee the cave in case his original captor returned.
Wampas appear to be as bloodless as tauntauns. Even the most severe lacerations or loss of limb results in very little spillage of any visible circulatory fluid. We have observed the bloodless removal of wampa's arm by lightsabre. Similar wounding of a human at the wrist may cause little blood loss, due to cauterisation of the wound, however lightsabre removal of an aqualish arm at the elbow has been observed to results in some spillage. The difference may be due to the level of circulation in the limb section removed, whether and how hard the cut tissue strikes the ground, and other factors. In any case, the absence or scarcity of blood in tauntauns seems well estabilished. Having a similar basic biology hints that wampas would not be too unlike tauntauns in this respect, and the observations do at least suggest that wampas are not more blooded than tauntauns.
Several wampas terrorised the rebel base before soldiers learned to subdue and trap them. A number of the creatures were imprisoned in a large secure chamber. There it was discovered that wampas are extremely sensitive to high-pitched noises and even the beeping of a nearby astromech droid is sufficient to send them into a frenzy. The captured wampas gained their release during the confusion of the stormtrooper invasion of the base. (A particularly astute protocol droid removed the warning signs from the door to the wampa chamber. Several unwitting stormtroopers subsequently entered the danger zone.)
An apparently hornless wampa snarls and lunges at its unsuspecting victim.
The primary attack of the wampa is the swing of its massive arms and the swipe of the wickedly-clawed paws.
A horned wampa in its lair, finishing a meal of tauntaun. The predator leaps up to investigate the escape of it human prey.
An amputated wampa limb seems completely bloodless.
Luke's wampa cave seems to be situated on high ground overlooking a flat expanse of ice. The mouth of the cave seems to be in the crest of an ice hill, partly concealed by snowy mounds. There isn't any evidence of rock nearby. The cave may be at a high side of a glacier, but not exactly at the edge or the source.
Skeleton of a tauntaun lies in the lair of a wampa. The absence of visible ribs may indicate something about wampa eating habits. It is possible that the ribs were torn off and either eaten with the flesh or else discarded to a different location.
Dexterity 3D
Perception 4D
Search: tracking arctic 6D
sneak: arctic 7D
Strength 7D
Special abilities:
Claws: Strength+1 damage.
Teeth: Strength+2 damage.
Camouflage: +3D to sneak in arctic climates.
Heat-diffusing body: adds +2D against detection by sensors.
Howling language: allows wampas to commuicate using Hoth's winds to hide their speech.
Move: 13
Hideous giant mollusk approximately seventy centimetres long lurking in the palace of Jabba the Hutt. Seen only once in Return of the Jedi, the fiend clung to the ceiling of the Hutt's audience chamber and attempted to lick C-3PO. The leathery body is brownish-pink and sluglike in proportion and smoothness. The face consists of a pair of dark brown milky eyes positioned for binocular vision, a pair of feelers and a broad boneless mouth. The red, fleshy, prehensile tongue extends up to a metre from the body.
Wol Cabasshite removed from his ceiling perch, with tongue extended.
Wol Cabasshite maquette and model under construction.
These bulbous reptilians dwell in rocky areas of the planet Tatooine. They are about forty centimetres in diameter and have a drab brownish colouration. The creature's back is studded with defensive horns and spikes. The mouth is broad and lipless. Toes at the ends of each of the two pairs of limbs bear soft suction cups as an aid to climbing and maintaining purchase on stone surfaces. Worrts are best known for their lack of intelligence and for their virtually-indiscriminate voracity. The beast will flick out its long sticky tongue to attack any moving object smaller or of similar size to itself.
A worrt near the palace of Jabba the Hutt prepares to spring upon a smaller animal.
Dexterity 1D
Perception +2
Strength 1D
brawling: tongue attack 4D
Special abilities:
Tongue attack: Worrt will attack anything its size or smaller; tongue causes 1D damage.
Move: 3
Joshua Nolan, student of biochemistry, offers the following:
You state that tauntauns (is that the plural?) and wampas don't appear to have much blood. I've come up with a few explanations (theorising that their biochemistry isn't vastly different to terrestrial life - which is the universal cop-out...)Perhaps the implications of the wampa feeding in TESB:SE can be avoided? There is no proof that the meat being eaten is really from a tauntaun. It might be part of a rebel soldier who died and was dragged away during one of the wampa attacks which was cut from the film but which exists in the novel and comic versions of The Empire Strikes Back.1) They rely on oxygen diffusion through their tissues instead of blood. This would require they have a body temperature of a lot less lower than freezing (which could still appear 'warm' in comparison with Hoth's temperature). The largest terrestrial adult organism that uses this method is the Antarctic icefish, at temperatures of about -1.9 degrees C. I don't feel that this is too feasible, since to lower the freezing point of the fluids to a degree where such large organisms can rely on it requires a high concentration of dissolved material (sugars, salts, and so on), and at these temperatures they wouldn't dissolve very easily.
2) They use a different oxygen-transport molecule - I can't remember the names, but there are a couple of haemoglobin-analogs that are colourless when deoxygenated - I would have just said haemocyanin, but I can't recall if it has a colourless phase. Their amount of blood depends on their internal temperature - if it is close to freezing, they could conceivably have very little blood, but if it is actually warm (say >20 degrees C) then they would require blood in quantities that we'd expect from terrestrial beasts of comparable size.
3) Or perhaps the cauterising effect of lightsabres is greater than you seem to feel, and the bleeding from the severed limb in Mos Eisley was the exception to the rule. Perhaps the owner of the limb suffered from a disease akin to haemophilia that reduced the cauterising effect, or perhaps it is a characteristic of that species's blood. (I know, radically different biochemistries, but I seem to recall the limb gave a spurt or two, rather than gushing like you might expect if it's not cauterised at all, which would suggest it was imperfectly cauterised.)
I'm personally in favour of the third - if I remember correctly, the tauntaun is shown to have red blood when the wampa eats it in the Special Edition (I could be wrong, it's getting late and I might be hallucinating) and the wampa obviously thinks Luke resembles food, which would seem to be evidence against the 'radically different biochemistries' cop-out.
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