Resource The Fanon Thread

It is just that I don't image the wookiees claws to be that god for carving - climbing, yes; fighting, yes; carving, not really.

If I use the khraashyr I will probably have that you have to create it with out any help from machines but that you can use tools

 

It seems that@Findswoman 's extensive work on Gands gave her mind-reading skills, because her post is the perfect introduction to our new discussion topic, namely...​

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Alien species​

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The GFFA is depicted in Canon/Legends as being populated by Humans but also a wide variety of near-Human and non-Human species. Some were given a thorough background in the EU, others are mentioned just in passing, with little to no details about their history, biology and culture. Many of us fanfic writers like to take one of the latter and run away with it, others choose to add tidbits to well-fleshed-out species, others yet invent their own. The purpose of this discussion is to tell each other how we went about it and hopefully give each other a few useful ideas and techniques. ​

Here are a few questions to jump-start the discussion, but feel free to say just about anything that crosses your mind about this topic ​

• Did you create an alien species, or did you expand on an existing one?
• Did you focus on the species biology? Culture? History? All of the above?
• Does your species have a homeworld? Is it a canon planet or did you make it up?
• What specific difficulties did you encounter when trying to imagine an original species? How did you overcome them?
• What specific difficulties did you encounter when expanding on a canon species? How did you overcome them?
• What resources would you recommend to writers working on developing an alien species (books, forum threads, internet resources)?
• Did you seek inspiration from real-life cultures/species? What and how?
• Did you borrow a species or elements of a species from other fandoms? What did it take to make it starwarsy?

NB: If you already used up your fanon post for November, don't worry! December is just around the corner.​

 

Tusan också, I had planned to post fanon Force traditions in december. but then again many of my traditions are for all species or just one species of non-humans so maybe that counts?

 

We're planning to host a discussion on Force traditions in the coming months. Now we know who to call upon for the opening post

In the meantime, I remember that you developed a very detailed description of the Worrite, a little-known EU species. Would you like to discuss how you came up with that?

 

Ooo, I guess I can wait a month...

I can do that

 

FanonSock you said that "For the purposes of this thread, a fanon post is a post where you expose your idea(s) about a species, planet, piece of technology, theme, etc." and I was wondering if can you post a larger post about f.ex. many different Force traditions that you have created/expanded/modified?

Also, regarding next month's topic so was I planning to post my fanon about the worrite but I would also have lot of small fanon stuff for other species and I was wondering if I could also post that in my December post after the worrite part?

 

Gamiel You may of course do both. Your post can be about "Force traditions" in general or about "aliens species" in general, and you can go back and add details as you make them up. If you see along the way that you're expanding too much and that your posts are becoming too big, you can always cut-and-paste the section about species A in another post and let us know by PM so that we update the index accordingly.

Just to clarify, a post where you don't "dump information" but discuss the process to develop the information (as in "I tried to develop a new species from scratch and these are the difficulties I encountered") does not count as a fanon post and you can write as many of those as you want

 

Have updated my word list. Among other things so has it now some more "mystical" word (most stolen from World of Darkness RPG books), Findswoman may find 'taklah' of some interest.

Thanks

 

Creating cultural diversity among existing non-human species

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Every time a human come from another planet or part of space they have a new culture but non-humans: they mostly share the same culture (or are part of space culture) no matter were they come from.

Among the races that we know something about so can I just now think of wookiees, mon calamarians, rodians and the yuuzhan vong. Then there is also the twi'leks that has been shown to have more then one culture, thanks to tCW.

So if we picked one of them to have a new culture should it be something completely different from the standard or a variation on the original theme?

Since I know the wookiees best so will I use them as an example. First what can we say are important/notable points of wookiee culture/society: they are forest-worlders with a high or on a standard (depending on how you see it) level of technology; seems to live in a balance with nature and blend it with their technology; a big part of them live high up in the trees and associate the ground with danger; they take pride in their martial power but don't seem to be warlike and many of them take honour seriously.

I would say that one of the easiest way to change their culture would be to take a way the high trees, so a world with no/few/only short trees; then we will have to ask how they adapted to this world. Maybe by building all their homes in the mountains or creating skyscrapers or maybe all their cities are flying? Another idea is that they instead adept to this new world by becoming semi nomadic farmers-pastoralists-hunters with just some cities that produce high technology - living like many afrikan and indians of old. This would probably be best in an time/area were space travel were unreliable and they could not relay on import from the outside.

Another way to show a different culture could be one that hade fully embraced the warrior culture and preferred technology over nature. The problem here would be to differ them from other high-tech warrior societies.

There is also the idea of having them colonize a world that is not livable for them without technology. Ex. a water-world, one with poisonous atmosphere or maybe a dead planet. Here they would have to chose on technology over nature, but at the same time nature would probably be highly important in the form of oxygen-factories and farms to feed them – it could be that those wookiees reveres nature even more than the normal group because it is so important for their survival and there is so little of it on their new home world.

One excellent way to show a new/different culture is to have its members dress differently than the previous seen. F.ex. if the wookies from the Greendale district of Coruscant (I made that district up so no need to look it up) were shown to near-all be dress in flower patterned kilts it would show that they were different from their kin on Kashyyyk. This work best when you use a visual media (like comics, TV or movies) and I am a bit disappointed that so few actually use it; to many non-humans either look like they did in the movie or is given the spacer-look.

To give an example, if we saw a group of wookiees dressed like this pic below the spoiler they would give a different impression then wookiees dressed in the “traditional” way.

Spoiler

 

Gamiel You make a really excellent point, and one I hadn't thought of myself but which makes me even more excited because I had recently been thinking slightly this direction after realizing that I tied my original species, the Tilasa, to the Sullustans by calling them "close" and a "group of races" without giving it much thought and definitely without explanation. Turns out upon reading further again this was a good choice made very sub-conscously, but I don't want to elaborate just yet since I want to ghost and start word-racing. Especially with Chyntuck in tow it seems there's a lot more that could be said about the relations between non-human and human cultures, so thanks for adding more fuel to the discussion. And consider this a place holder for things I'm mulling over for the time being. Cheers!

 

I've been meaning to post here for ages, and since I have some time tonight I'm going to do it before DRL strikes again.

A few questions for Findswoman (ladies first!) I am woefully ignorant about Gands in canon, so I went and did some reading on the Wook to get some context on your list above. If I understand correctly, you extrapolated on the idea that Findsmen are a religious tradition and fleshed out its codes and practices. What I would be curious to know is how you imagine the code of honour that would accompany this tradition and how this would reflect the social codes of the Gand at large (including the average Gand citizen) -- especially as the Gand have this reputation for being a very humble species, whereas it seems to me that the profession of bounty hunter may require a very strong personality.

Another question I have is your personal fanon about the relationship between the Gand and the Force -- the Wook says they reject the idea that their abilities stem from the Force -- and if in your mind all Gands have Findsman abilities to one degree or another.

Lastly, I wanted to ask if you borrowed from a real-life language for the words you invented?

(Okay, the answer to the above is a whole fanon post, so I'm not expecting you to reply overnight )

On to Gamiel 's post about cultural diversity among alien species. That's a number of fair points you've got -- most importantly the fact that we tend to describe aliens as monolithic species whereas humans are more diverse. I'll add that we tend to present aliens as more attached to their homeworld and that, even when talking about species that are ubiquitous in the GFFA (e.g. Twi'leks) we still make them stick to their culture. However, as soon as we go into lesser-known species, I would argue that keeping it simple is a narrative necessity: there is so much you need to explain about a species (biology, appearance, history, social structure, governance, etc) that, unless you want your story to turn into an encyclopaedia, you pretty much have to mention things in passing. I'll add here that, for the same reason, human cultures in the GFFA tend to be pretty monolithic in their own way because they're planetary cultures. I'd love to read a fic that elaborates on the differences between Alderaanians of the northern/southern hemispheres and how by colonizing different planets they ended up developing stronger differences.

Another element I'd like to point out is that, while the GFFA is populated with a number of near-Human species that are believed to be descended from Humans in profic and fanfic (e.g. the Kiffar, the Chiss, etc) there are few examples that I am aware of for alien species (actually, I know only of one: the Duros/Neimoidians in profic) even though several species are described as having a spacefaring tradition, so there is no good reason we shouldn't see more of this.

This is something I've been working on for two canon species, the Talz and the Gree, not so much to develop a sub-species but to imagine a different evolution of their culture as a group of them chose to resettle to a planet of the Unknown Regions -- specifically, the former decided to take their fate in their own hands and escape the Empire, whereas the latter withdrew into their original culture and thus made it even more rigid, but enabled it to survive. In the case of the Gree, developing this concept is fairly easy because they are described in great detail in SW Insider # 8, but for the Talz it's a bit more tricky because there's little to start from in canon, and what is there is dispersed in a variety of sources that aren't necessarily consistent with each other. In both cases though, what I find difficult when expanding from an existing species is to integrate the canon/fanon elements in my narrative without it turning into a dissertation.

I'm also working on two original species from the Unknown Regions and, after reading about Gands on the Wook (the sentence that jumped at me was "religious tradition of bounty hunters", which is quite an oxymoron), I realise that they might be a little cliched because the "good guys" are the nice, white, fluffy, cute equine aliens whereas the "bad guys" are heavy, reptilian, inelegant six-legged tortoises with a slimy prehensile tongue. Developing original species was a laborious process for me because I don't have a visual imagination (is that a thing? anyway, I find it difficult to create an image in my head) but I'm also realising through this discussion that I ended up picturing these species in a way that mirrors their role in the story -- and while I know that Lucas did the same for Jabba's entourage, it doesn't have to be that way. I'd be curious to know if in most fanfics mammalian species tend to be described as nicer/more human-friendly than reptilian species or insects etc.

That's it for me for the moment. Viridian-Maiden I'm looking forward to hear about your process to develop the Tilasa, and I'd also like to hear from Ewok Poet on your bits of fanon about Ewoks.

PS 1: Gamiel I totally dig the Wookiees in Hawaiian shirts

PS 2: I'd be interested in reading fics where the protagonist(s) is/are aliens and/or that take place in a majority-alien society/culture. If you have any ideas, please PM me links.

 

To continue with the culture creating, this time we build from som old post from another thread

To give an example of what we can create using this system: an Weequaian Inca/Maya/Gaucho fusion culture with dieselpunk technology in an environment resembling Greece that is protected by mystical masked wrestlers.


Another way you can go is by just taking a culture and radically change its technological “level” and continue from there. Also it is important to remember that just because a culture have this technology don’t mean that they have that technology; Fire nation from Avatar the Last Airbender is an excellent example of this: they have highly advanced steam engines, tanks, propeller driven ships, etc. but lack any kind of fire arms, they don’t even have canons.
Also sometime a type of technological “level” is also genre in itself f.ex. cyberpunk.

Lets make an example: Firs lets begin with the Inca empire and give them a level of technology comparable to... 1910’s west Europe, that means trains, guns, triplanes, simple dirigibles, etc.. Now to have all this you need an industrial system with many fabrics and a large working class but beside that can I see the Inca have this level of technology without many real social-cultural changes comparably to the classical Inca, at least if keep them an similar environment.
Now this is rather boring from a world creating perspective so lets get creative . Now first lets chose a nonhuman species that can live this culture, lets choose wookieeis for simplicities sake. Second step will be to break the mould that we have now created and that is rather easy buy changing some of the technology – the Inca lived mostly in the mountains and the wookiees have a cultural dislike for the ground so lets say that all the energy and ingenuity that went into crating ships and cars instead went into air travel and into science/technology regarding light, especially sunlight since the Inca were sun worshiper, maybe they have even created a gummiscope?
So now we have Incan wookiees who use steam trains to transport things up-n’-down the mountain and airships to transport them from mountain to mountain. They communicate with telephones within the large cities, electrical telegraphs up and down the mountain and heliographs were the telegraph line can not be build (the most advanced who can also be turned into laser canons). Unlike 1910’s Europe so is probably most of the factories, knowledge and rights to create things like advanced machinery and gunpowder in the hands of the worldly and spiritual aristocracy.
They try to stay away from the valley bottoms, the plains and any other landscape that don’t allow them to look down at something and when they have colonised all of the mountain chain they live in so will they probably try to use their air ships to travel to other mountain chain without having to use the ground.


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@Findswoman
* how do a findsman go bad/evil and are those findsmen called anything special? Like bad/evil Dathomir witches are known as nightsisters

* are there any findsmen abilities that are legendary? I mean things that we are told that the most humble hero from ages past could do but we have not seen in modern times.

* what kind of equipment are recurring among findsmen?

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Also to quote Chyntuck "@Viridian-Maiden I'm looking forward to hear about your process to develop the Tilasa, and I'd also like to hear from Ewok Poet on your bits of fanon about Ewoks."

 

In WotC's Coruscant and the Core World a new species was introduced: Worrite. We were given no information about it beside their physical appearance so I desidet to create some information about them and thier technology.

Their canon information are presented together with my fanon below:

The worrite are not a people united by a planetary government, instead their planet is made up by a number of countries who are more-or-less, usually less, united by an UN like organisation. One of the things that makes the “worrite UN” a bit more powerful the our UN is that it controls the hyperspace program, so all hyperspace capable ships are owned by the “UN” and theoretically crowded by a multinational crew.

As for now so do they have colonised the rest of their solar system, all dead planets, and the colonies are more-or-less self-sufficient and the largest once have actually become small nations in them self. Outside of their solar system so do they have a handful of colonies, of which two are on living planets. Non of those colonies are self-sufficient, at least in technology, and the worrites actually lack the population for any kind of planet wide colonisation.

The worrite homeworld is highly humid and rather warm – there are no permanent polar ice caps.

As earlier said so are not a united people, either politically or culturally but all colonies celebrate their founding day and all the space ships the day of their first flight.

As a group so are the worrite carful in their dealing with outsiders since they know they are not even a big fish in small pond and don’t want to enrage somebody more powerful. This is possibly also the reason why many worrites as persons have tendency to be rather cocky in their dealing with outsiders in a man to man situation since they are nearly always the physically much more dangerous.

Worrite technology
By galactic standard so are the worrite a bit primitive; they lack blaster, military force field technology and Ion weapons, their hyperspace and astronavigation technology is primitive and most likely reverse engineered. They only have the most basic of AI:s.
Because of their chitin armour so did worrite never developed swords for close combat, instead warhammers and axes were the weapons they used.
In range combat so are slug throwers their main weapon and of some reason so have all their automatic weapons drum magazines.

Their sea-life like spaceships are crafted around a living coral skeleton/frame and have chrome hulls with highlights in a different (usually primary) colour and are equipped with foldable, fanlike gravity sails. They are usually of a similar mass to an ISD but their hyperdrive, astronavigation systems and power plants are at beast only 1/6 as good as the galactic standard model of similar size. Their oxygen factories are actually mangrove-like parks that also work as fruit and vegetable gardens, fish farms and recycling plant for the crew’s excrement.
I was imagining their ships to look like this but with the above mentioned colour scheme and gravity sails

Their land transportations are usually wheel based, even if they also use primitive hovercrafts but don’t seem to have any knowledge of repulse technology. Of some reason all their wheeled vehicle have at least three pairs of wheels.


If possible they like to incorporate biological material in their technology and use technology to make useful life forms more cooperative. As they explore the galaxy and get their hands on more advanced technology they may abound this approach or continue now with a galaxy of life forms to use.

Ukû: a beetle-lizard armed with an ink spit that is usually carried on the shoulders. It will use its spit against anybody that it doesn’t know that come toward it to fast or in stressed situations, just near it and anybody that surprise it. The ink is sticky, lightly acidic and poisonous and the Ukû always go for the eyes. So if you are wearing protection you will most likely need to wash it to be able to see through it again, if you are not wearing protection: you will be blinded, it will be highly painful and you better wash it out before your eyes are damaged beyond repair.
Is usually given a cyborg implant that help it’s owner to control its mood and temper.

Gimba: a tick coral cane or staff with a jelly-squid living in symbiosis in it. The staff has a control unit on its side that compels the jelly-squid to fire its three tentacles toward the nearest heat source it is pointed toward. The tentacle tips are covered with nematocyst toxin that is strong enough to go through finer leather. The poison is painful and will paralyse any limb it hits.

Kellax: a ankylosaurus like beetle-lizard with a mean temper and an ability to eat nearly anything, even minerals and metals. In its natural state they usually live in harems of three to six females and one male. Its temper and domestication was fixed with chem- and brain implants that made it a lot more easily controlled if very dim-witted.
They are used as pack animals and weapon platforms since they are extremely fearless and will without problem walk into a hail of blaster fire. They can also be turned back into their old aggressive selves and will then, usually charge toward whatever is in front of them. There have also happened that the implants don’t fully work when the kellax subject to a sudden great pain or surprise and it will for a short time attack any non-kellax that’s near it.
They are also used for their meat, their bones that are usually high in metal and hardy skin that make excellent protective leather. With the right diet their dung will also be of interest for many chemists.

Rikit: a six-limbed crustacean–insectoid animal around equally at home on land as in water, that comes in sizes ranging from a large dog to an A-pony. They are as smart as a dog and are used by the worrite in a similar fashion.
Combat trained rikit are often given an manet for extra protection and some of them have been given lighter cybernetic enhancement like adrenaline injectors and life trackers.

Ant/wasp grenade: A small container full of fertilized ant/wasp eggs in a jelly that stop their development wile keeping them alive. The grenade is activated in two steps: the first pump in a chemical in the jelly that makes the eggs begun to quickly develop and within three to four days all the eggs have hatched and the ants/wasps are doing their best to eat up what is left of the jelly. The second stage is that you activate the release timer and throw or place the grenade on the enemy. It will then open up and the insects will angrily well out of the small container to the terror of most enemies. The grenade has to be used within at most six days after being set or most of the insects will have died.
The ants/wasps used are highly aggressive have large mandible/stingers that are capable of penetrating clothes without problems and a potent poison that is very painful to most species. In the ants case it has show that zabraks are hyper allergic to its poison and often die after just one bite.

Acid rifles: fires a projectile of gelatin acid. The acid is sticky and rather corrosive against organic material but ineffective against most modern fabricated materials.

[animal] throwers: fires an [animal], a centipede like animal with a metal shell that feeds on energy. When it hits the target it will be newly awakened, angry and hungry and will go for the closest larger energy source, like a blaster’s power cell, easily show through the covering and begin to eat. As it is eating its body will be electrifying anybody/-thing that is touching it, the electric charge will depend on the size of the power source it is feeding from.
The [animal] comes from one of the living worlds that the worrite have colonized.

Manet: near transparent amorphous creature that comes from the deeper parts of the worrite’s planet's sea. They are highly adaptable and capable of changes structure, for example growing ticker when confronted by physical violence. The worrites use them as body armour; they are good against physical attacks can take a hit or two from a blaster but is quickly pierced through by acid. It is usually worn on the front and/or back as a harness, as a cape or in the cases of larger manet as a full bodysuit. In the later case it can also work as a pressure suit, as long as you have a helmet.
The manet also clean their wearer’s carapace armour from dirt and parasites and works as a lighter compress when the wearer is wounded. Most non-worrite finds it highly uncomfortable to wear a manet and they usually come of rather red skinned.
In their natural environment so do the manet live of plankton and similar small organic material, in environments with less biological material just drifting to them, like spaceships, so do they need to be feed.
They don’t work below subzero and need to be constantly rehydrated in dry environments.
Right now so are the breeding programs to create manet who are more resistant to blaster fire or acid.

Creators comment: I actually created most of this originally because I like bio-tech and disliked how the vong’s tech to often seems tailor made to be pitted against the GFFA's instead of having developed on its own. So I decided to create my own.

Since I have decided to try not to create new species to SW*, there are already so many species that need love, so did I choose one of the many species that the RPG:s have created for a one-of encounter who lack any real culture/society/technology that we know of.
Since the worrite also come from a world that was unknown to the larger galactic community so did I not really need to come up with explanations to why we have not seen their technology being used or why they use stuff that are not as good as or good against standard tech.

*I don’t count creating a sub-species a new species

One of the problem with this approaches is that I have created very little culture for the worrites. If anybody has any suggestions so are they welcome.

EDIT: The fanon on the kiffars, jedi, spacer and mandolorians have been moved to this post
EDIT 2: All the fanon regarding other species then Worrites have been moved here
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EDIT: am I the only one who is going to make a fanon post in December? Do you have nothing to chare Chyntuck , Viridian-Maiden , Findswoman , Ewok Poet ?

Also am I the only one who expect TrakNar to post an illustrated explanation to why hypon is gand's best pokémon?

 

Oh, I'll definitely post -- I promised you stuff about the Kiffar after all and I'll update my post about Wookiees. I'm just waiting for the Chyntuck tribe to leave on holiday so I have a few days to myself to write!

 

The Gand signal has been lit!

And I just got back from Christmas/grocery shopping. Let me eat my dinner, and then I'll look over it.

 

I love this.

Post coming up, if only just so I can create a place holder I guess.

 

Here is some examples


Also a puzzle box can contain another puzzle box.

And remember that the wookiees' are second best in the galaxy which means thaty they can craft even more advanced and beatiful puzzle boxes then the one in the video.

Glad you do

 

Moi, tagged? Twice What, when, why?

 

We're discussing alien species (either fan-created species or fan-developed elements about canon species) until the end of the month (see here) and we were wondering if you had any elements of personal fanon about Ewoks that you'd like to share (if you do, please check out the rules of this thread on page 1 before posting).

 

BITS AND PIECES ABOUT THE KIFFAR

As requested by Gamiel in another thread, here are a few elements on the Kiffar and their culture.

Canon information on the Kiffar here.
Canon information on the Kiffu Guardians here.

EDIT 16 March 2015: items put behind spoiler tags to make the size of this post less daunting.

Origin and differences to baseline Humans

Spoiler

The Kiffar were the descendants of a group of 107 Humans who found themselves stranded on Kiffu at an unspecified time in the very distant past, before the establishment of the Old Republic. One of those Humans, whose name was Ayesha Vos, was likely a Force-sensitive and had the gift of psychometry, hence the fact that this ability became relatively widespread among the Kiffar people. This individual was the direct ancestor of clan Vos. The population multiplied over the millenia and evolved in a slightly different way than baseline humans due to Kiffu's isolation because of the electrical storms generated by the proximity of Kiffu's sister planet Kiffex. By the late years of the Old Republic, the Kiffar were considered a near-Human species.

Approx. 1% of the Kiffar people have psychometric abilities [canon]. The Wook describes psychometry as a Force ability but given the above origin tale, I consider that one does not need to be Force-sensitive to have it (I might end up agreeing with Gamiel that it's a psychic rather than a Force ability.)

Because of the constant electrical storms, the Kiffar are more resistant to electricity than baseline humans (borrowed from Gamiel).

In terms of physiology however, the Kiffar are extremely similar to baseline Humans. They can be treated by Human doctors and can breed with Humans or other near-Human species.

Social, clan and family structure

Spoiler

The Kiffar were a clan-based society that is patrilineal unless the father is not a Kiffar, in which case the Kiffar heritage is transmitted by the mother [canon]. The clans were defined by their direct ancestor in the original group of Humans stranded on Kiffu (although all this is a bit lost in legend and memory) and there were therefore a total of 42 clans because there were 41 adult men on the stranded ship, plus one woman (Ayesha Vos) who had a teenage son. Legend has it that the men among the original colonists wanted to be polygamous in order to better ensure the survival and multiplication of the community, but the descendants of Ayesha Vos fought this idea and Kiffar society ultimately became monogamous.

According to legend, Ayesha Vos was a strong woman and she managed to keep the little community together. Her descendants became the ruling clan on Kiffu until the late days of the Old Republic. She established the tradition of coloured facial tattoos (Qukuuf) to distinguish clans from each other. The Qukuuf in canon are yellow lines across the face for clan Vos, a black pattern on the cheeks for clan Moxla and blue chevrons on the cheeks for clan Konshi. I have added another clan, clan Malki, whose characteristic Qukuuf would be vertical red lines on the forehead and I am hereby adopting clan Mun from Gamiel, with a red Qukuuf on their chin. The basic element of a Qukuuf defines the clan (e.g. yellow for clan Vos) whereas the specific pattern defines the sub-clan (e.g. horizontal line across the face for Quinlan Vos's branch of the clan, vertical band from hairline to chin for Tinté Vos's branch, etc.)

Another practice through which the Kiffar marked their belonging to a specific clan or sub-clan was giving the name of an ancestor to their children. The most common approach was to give the names of grandparents to grandchildren, starting with paternal grandparents (i.e. the first son and daughter get respectively the paternal grandfather's and grandmother's name while second-borns get the maternal grandparents' names -- NB: this is a real-life Greek tradition) but some people would also choose the names of ancestors with a glorious history, especially the 42 founders of the Kiffar clans. The first name "Ayesha" was therefore very common in the Vos clan. The Kiffar could identify one another from their Qukuuf, but children were also expected to learn and memorize their genealogy to be able to prove their identity if need be.

There was a lot of intermarriage between clans in the early years of the colonisation of Kiffu because there was such a small population to marry from. This resulted in the patrilineal structure of Kiffar clans to ensure that what little property there was remained in the family. As a result, everyone on Kiffu is a little bit cousins. However, as the population expanded, it became tradition to marry from the same clan, and by the time of the fall of the Old Republic, the Kiffar would recognise as family only people from the same clan. Kiffar clans were tightly knit together and had an obligation to provide help and support to a member in need.

Clans held collective ceremonies to tattoo their children with the clan's Qukuuf. Children received their Qukuuf to mark the transition from infancy to childhood, when they became able to walk, and the children who received their Qukuuf together were defined as an age class regardless of differences in actual age (meaning that they would come of age as a group, not on their individual birthdays.) Once the child has received his/her Qukuuf he/she became officially part of the clan, with the obligations this entailed for the clan as well as for the child. This meant however that many Kiffar sought to tattoo their children as early as possible, even before they were able to walk, in order to guarantee them the clan's protection. This applied in particular to the Kiffar who were off-world and could not participate in a collective ceremony.

Politics

Spoiler

The rivalry between clans is a phenomenon established in canon (in particular clan Moxla vs clan Konshi). The historical enemies of clan Vos were clan Malki, whose founder was also probably Force-sensitive given the large number of Force users in that lineage. Clan Malki was also a powerful clan on Kiffu and the Vos had to compromise with them in order to govern, so nearly all sheyfs from clan Vos had a senior advisor from clan Malki, who was usually in charge of diplomatic relations with other worlds. Periods when the sheyf refused to compromise with clan Malki were periods of civil war. The wars always ended with the victory of clan Vos, which had control over the Kiffu Guardians. The rivalry between the two clans, combined with the constant victories of clan Vos, resulted in large numbers of Malki Force-sensitives turning to the Dark Side.

The Guardians were established as a police force, which later evolved into an army when Kiffu was able to contact the rest of the Galaxy again in the early years of the Old Republic. Kiffu Guardians were formidable fighters and warriors and, due to the psychometric ability of many in their ranks, they were highly sought by other civilisations as detectives and investigators for their own law enforcement groups. Meanwhile, in order to keep members of clan Malki from infiltrating the organisation, the Guardians developed a series of extremely secretive practices, including adopting the original language of the Kiffu colonists, known as Old Kiffar. Old Kiffar had been quickly replaced by Basic after the discovery of hyperspace travel, and the language was lost except for the records kept by clan Vos, who were able to revive it for the Guardians. After a series of desertions at some point in the past, leaving the Guardians or even betraying any of their secrets to an outsider became a crime punishable by death, and any Guardian who abandoned his/her post was hunted down and killed by his/her peers.

While some of the original clans prospered and became powerful in their own way, others evolved into a plebeian underclass and constituted the proletariat of Kiffu. They were confined to specific geographical areas and could exercise only specific professions. Many of the prison guards on Kiffex were from these clans, as it was a way for them to climb in society.

NB: I need to develop on this last point. The idea comes from RL situations in Sudan and Somalia, where IIRC blacksmiths and cobblers respectively come from specific tribes/clans and are considered outcasts.

Beliefs

Spoiler

Because of the Kiffar's insular, clan-based mentality, relations with other species, including Humans, was a complex issue, and while marrying and having offspring with Humans and other near-Humans was not forbidden, it was frowned upon. However, the approach to other species and cultures varied from clan to clan. Clan Malki was most vocal in opposing opening up to other species, arguing that it would destroy Kiffar identity, and therefore also opposed Kiffu joining the Old Republic. Clan Vos on the other hand was rather in favour of ending the isolation of Kiffu and opening for trade and exchange with other planets. This became a key issue during the Clone Wars, when Count Dooku was able to manipulate the differences between the clans to his advantage (in canon, the then-sheyf, Tinté Vos, was on the xenophobic side.)

The electrical storms became an important element of Kiffar culture -- with a religious/superstitious component in earlier times, but also as a source of artistic inspiration. Kiffar music in particular used various instruments powered with energy harvested from the electrical storms. Children had a sort of kite that enabled them to collect residual energy from the atmosphere and power their toys. It was believed that the Qukuuf were originally designed to represent lightning. The Festival of Lightning was a yearly feast that corresponded to the day Kiffu and Kiffex are closer and therefore the electrical storm more intense and was observed as a public holiday on both worlds. Holy places on Kiffu were spots that had been hit by meteorites with a high metal content and that attracted lightning during the storms. (NB: The children's kites and meteorites attracting lightning are ideas borrowed from the Yoko Tsuno albums Les trois soleils de Vinéa and Message pour l'éternité.)

Economy

Spoiler

Kiffu was known for its textiles and metal artifacts, much of which was produced by forced labour on the prison planet Kiffex. Kiffex also acted as the Galaxy's prison, accepting to hold prisoners for the Republic for a fee, thus generating substantial revenue for the twin planets. Another major source of revenue was the technology developed to harness the energy generated by the electrical storms between Kiffu and Kiffex and the export of batteries and other energy-storing devices to low-tech worlds.

Because of the constant risk of lightning, the Kiffar developed materials that were not conductive to electricity. An important resource on Kiffex was a mineral whose name I am yet to determine and that could be used for a wide variety of things, from the Guardians' armour to architectural structures and decoration. The mineral was mined by the prisoners and its electricity-repelling properties were such that it protected the whole mining zone from the lightning storms. Only very small quantities of this mineral were exported because of the high demand on Kiffu and Kiffex.

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As a side note, I also updated my post about Wookiees with some minor tidbits.

 

All right, this is also a work in progress but I wanted to get this up so I can use my fanon post for the month.


Tilasa -- The Tilasa were a species of nomadic, generally space-dwelling humanoid aliens.

The Tilasa bore striking resemblance to the Sullustans species, (most notably their black eyes, round ears, and less pronounced but distinguishable dewflaps) although there was more variation in their skintone, and they tended to be taller. Biologists disagreed at various points in history about whether the Tilasa were, in fact, a separate species or merely a minor ethnic subset. Differences and similarities in culture could add fuel to either side of that debate, but there’s no question than the Tilasa considered themselves separate and distinct.

Unlike the Sullustan species, there is no record of any Tilasa being Force-sensitive. The Tilasa practiced a unique and esoteric religion understood by few outsiders.

There were some small planetside outposts of Tilasa within the systems surrounding the main nomadic body, but the bulk of the Tilasa lived in space ships and stations near Corellia, and they tended to cluster at various points around the Kessel Run. As nomads and space-dwellers, the Tilasa were not xenophobic or culturally insular, but they were political isolationists. They cared very little about the Federation or wider galactic politics, preferring to deal with specific planets on a one-on-one basis.

Tilasan names had three parts – first was the name “Tilasa” itself which was used by all Tilasa in their dealings with outsiders. Second came the name of the individual’s tribe, and finally a given name. Thus, Tilasa Si Nhala was immediately known to outsiders who understood their naming conventions as a member of the Tilasan species of the elite Si tribe.

Like the Sullustans, the Tilasa were polyamorous although Tilasan social structure differed from the Warren-clan system in very significant ways.

Tilasan society was mainly structured into tribal groups based on ship or station, but the most important aspect of societal structure was its highly lateral nature – the more important relationships being the bonds between siblings, rather than those between parents and children. This was partly due to the loose mating structure among the Tilasa, which allowed for multiple partners during years of fertility. While marriage in the human sense of the word was not native to their culture, there was some incorporation of the idea into Tilasan society through the use of mating contracts.

A Tilasan male or female who had reached maturity was free to engage in a number of contractual arrangements that neither specified a time limit to the relationship nor incurred the expectation of exclusivity. Instead, the main feature of the contract was the portion naming precisely the number of offspring that it was mutually agreed should be born from the relationship. The number of contracts entered into differed for each male and female but 4 or 5 was usually considered the upper limit of feasibility. Contracts could specify any number of offspring as the intention of the relationship but usually specified no more than 1 or 2.

Females and males held more than one contractual bond, and females were free to mate with any one of those individuals until she had born each of them at least the contractually agreed-upon number of children. Rather than being a system of mating divorced from any kind of moral obligation or social attachment, the existence of a mating contract was understood to include social norms like mutual respect, life involvement, affection and even guardianship of one another. However, it was partly because of these customs, or in response to them and their diffusing effect on family relations, that fraternal relationships emerged as the strongest characteristic of Tilasan social structure.

While many (even most) Tilasa were the only offspring of their specific parental coupling, each Tilasa had multiple half-siblings and maintained equal closeness to both the offspring of his or her mother and father. Siblings who shared both mother and father were closer, and despite often large age gaps between the two, were something similar to human twins although they were more in number than twins among humans.
In many instances, this structure resulted in the development of smaller, clan-like groups of siblings with extremely tight interactions and very complicated blood ties. The initial choice of the Tilasa to send a delegate group of siblings to open ties with the Naboo was a reflection of this social order.

(For example, the following demonstrates the ties among the Tilasan delegation to Naboo where letters indicate mothers and numbers indicate fathers. Parentheses show who each individual had an actual blood relationship to, but the group as a whole is indicative of the way clannish-sibling groups formed around a common set of mothers and fathers even when not all the individuals actually shared blood.)


Tilasa Delegation to Naboo:

Tilasa Si Ashera’ (M)– Born to B, 3 (shares blood with Lilyyli, Rreyi)
Tilasa Si Lilyyli (F)– Born to B, 1 (Ashera’, Summa, Nhala)
Tilasa Si Summa (F)– Born to C, 1 (Lilyyli, Nhala)
Tilasa Si Rreyi (M)– born to A, 3 (Nhala, Ashera)
Nhala (F)– born to A, 1 (Rreyi, Summa, Lilyyli)

 

Viridian-Maiden, awesome! Loved reading the family structure details and description of how it affects the Tilasans' social lives.

 

Chyntuck thanks for the fanon about the Kiffar , I have now added it to my fanon post and I feel a need to continue exploring the kiffar. For example what kind of storm based religious/superstitious traditons they have and what other planets there are in the Kiffu sector...

Viridian-Maiden I really like how complicated the Tilasa's family structure is . Do they have any special clothes stile? Do they decorate their spaceships interior/exterior in any special way? Any group/species that they have prejudice to? Any unique superstitions? Is there a kind of technology/gadget that they don’t have/use or is unique to them?

Beside adding the Kiffar to my post so have I also added Mandolorians and uppdated wookiees and kwa