STAR WARS
Novel References


Han Solo and the Lost Legacy

(page numbering according to the collected volume STAR WARS: The Han Solo Adventures)
PAGE QUOTATION COMMENTS
380

At last Han and his companions arrived at Fadoop's slapdash cargo ship. Despite her reassurances, Han was relieved to see the new arrivals were not Imperial stormtroopers — "snowmen" or "white-hats," as they were called in slang-talk — but an unassuming pair, human and humanoid.

Imperial stormtroopers are colloquially called "snowmen" or "white-hats" by people in Solo's social circles.

380

The humanoid — a tall, reedy, purple-skinned type whose eyes, protruding from an elongated skull, held tiny red pin-points of pupil — nodded at Han. "Ah, Captain Solo? A pleasure to meet you, sir!" He stuck out his thin arm. Han clasped the long, slender hand, trying to ignore its greasy skin secretions.
... The humanoid took up the conversation. "I am Hissal and Brigia is my homeworld. ..."

aliens - Brigian

398-399

Determined to put the incident out of his mind, he entered the spa. It offered specific creature comforts to a huge variety of human, humanoid, and nonhumanoid species. There were zero-gee massagers, ozone chambers, effluvial rinses, and many other options for humans; mud tanks for visiting Draflago; dermal autostrippers to service a Lisst'n or Pui-Ui; gill-flushes for any of a number of piscine or amphibian life forms; and as many other ablutive and restorative amenities as could be packed into the huge complex.

Description of a spa facility in a local recreation centre on the university planet of Rudrig in the Tion Hegemony. The passage contains evocative hints at the variety of intelligent species whose members may be found at the university. Draflago. Lisst'n. Pui-Ui.

414

Xim the Despot has left behind legends of whole planets despoiled, of mass spacings of prisoners and other atrocities. And Xim the Despot had ordered that stupendous treasure vaults be built for the tribute to be sent him by his conquering armies. The treasure never arrived, and the vacant vaults, all that remained from Xim's reign, were a minor curiosity generally ignored by the big, busy galaxy.

Summary of the history of Xim the Despot.

415

"... They have a partner, Egome Fass, their enforcer. He's a big, mean humanoid, a Houk, even taller than Chewie there. ..."

aliens - Houk

416-417

Skynx was a Ruurian, of average size — a little over a metre long — low to the ground, his natural coat a thick, wooly amber with bands of brown and red. He moved on eight pairs of short limbs with a graceful, rippling motion. Feathery, bobbing antennae curled back from his head. Skynx had big, multifaceted red eyes, a tiny mouth, and small nostrils. Behind him rolled a baggage-robo with several crates and boxes on its flatbed.
Skynx paused and reared up on his last four pairs of extremities. The digits of his limbs, four apiece, were mutually opposable, deft, and very versatile. He waved to the humans. "Ah, Badure," he called in a rapid, high-pitched voice, "and the lovely Hasti; how are you, young lady? This fine Wookiee I've already met. So you would be our captain, sir?"
"Would be? I am. Han Solo."
"Delighted! I am Skynx of Ruuria, Human History subdepartment, pre-Republic subdivision, whose chair I currently hold."
"What do you use it for?" Han asked, eying Skynx's strange anatomy.

aliens - Ruurian

420

"Never saw a Ruurian until I met you," Han interjected. "Skynx, there's more life forms in this galaxy than anyone's bothered to count, you know that. Just listing the sentient ones is a life's work."
"Of course. To explain: we Ruurians go through three separate forms after leaving the egg. There is the larva, that which you see before you; the cycle of the chrysalis, in which we undergo changes while in pupa form; and the endlife stage, in which we become chroma-wing fliers and ensure the survival of our species. The pupae are rather helpless, you'll understand, and the chroma-wings are, um, preoccupied, caring only for flight, mating and egg-laying."
...
Skynx resumed. "All that leaves for us larval-stage Ruurians is to protect the pupae and ensure that the simple-minded chroma-wings don't get into trouble — and to run our planet. We are very busy, right from birth."

Skynx explains the biological basics of his species: Ruurians.

420-421

"I studied the histories of your own scattered species, and I came to be fascinated with this concept, adventure," Skynx confessed as if unburdening himself of some dark perversity. "Of all the races who gamble their well-being on uncertain returns — and there aren't that many, statistically — the trait's most noticeable in humans, one of the most successful life forms. "

An expert in human history discusses the status and distinctive features of humans. This is particularly interesting because Skynx is of a species quite unlike humanoids; this is the best available outsider's view of humanity in STAR WARS.

453

"Why?" Ham and Badure asked together.

error: Solo's name is misspelt.

471

They trod blue moss; cold wind made the landscape seem barren and free. In this manner they proceeded over the hill.

They were well up into the heights when the blue-white sun set.

The sun of this system appears to be a hot, short-lived O or B star however the planet is home to higher life including moss and plesiosaur-like beings. How did they have time to evolve? Are these species truly native, or were they introduced from elsewhere, perhaps from some kind of galactic bilge water from a passing spaceship millions of years earlier?

526-527

Suddenly a response squad started up the hill to engage them, two human males with disruptor rifles, a horn-plated W'iiri scuttling on its six legs and bearing a grenade thrower, and an oily-skinned Drall, its red hid gleaming, lugging a gas projector.

aliens - W'iiri; Drall.
This is the first known reference to the Drall species, which was shown shown to be native to the Corellian system in the more recent Corellian Trilogy novels. Interestingly, the Drall in the newer books are described as hairy beings.

534-535

Han saw a stocky Maltorran run up behind a robot with a heavy beamdrill cradled in its brachia and press it flush against the machine's back. the robot exploded, and the drill, exploding from the backwash, killed the Maltorran.

aliens - Maltorran

535

Elsewhere, Han saw a robot grappling with three W'iiri who had swarmed onto it, tearing at it with their pincers. The machine plucked them off one by one, smashing them and tossing them aside, broken and dying; but in the next moment the robot itself toppled over, disabled by the damage they had done it.

aliens - W'iiri
This is the second passage to mention an individual of the W'iiri species.

541

At the halfway point they came upon the body of a fallen mining tech who had died before she could complete the crossing, a T'rinn whose bright plumage was now charred and burned from combat. Han gently took a shoulder-fired rocket launcher from her lifeless claws, the weapon still containing a half-magazine of rockets.

aliens - T'rinn

555

Han shucked his other gear and lifted a heavy-duty fusion cutter into place. Skynx, taking the com-link, tried to contact the others and inform them of the find, but could raise no response.
"The walls are probably too thick," Han suggested as he set to work. When it has been built, the wall would have withstood any assault that could have been made with portable equipment, but Han was the beneficiary of a long technological gap. Chunks of wall began to fall away.

The technological gap must be greater than 25,000 years because the reign of Xim ended before the establishment of the Galactic Republic. This is an indicator of the rate of technological advance during the length of the history of the Old Republic: significant but perhaps hundreds of times slower than that experienced by the real civilisation of twentieth-century Earth. In the civilisation of STAR WARS all the crucial developments of science and engineering probably took place millenia ago, leaving little scope for further discovery. Although Palpatine-era technology exceeds that of Xim, the difference does not seem to be as transcendently great as if there were perpetual development at Earth's rate.

560-561

"This stuff's kiirium! You can get it anywhere; Skynx, what's it doing in with the treasure?"
...
"There would seem to be a great deal of it here, Captain. And a huge quantity of mytag crystalline vertices and mountains of enriched bordhell-type fuel slugs, among other things." "Mytag crystals?" Han repeated in puzzlement. "They run those things off by the carload; what kind of treasure's this? Where's the real treasure?"
...
"This is it! Or was, an age ago. Don't you see, Slick? Kiirium is artifical shielding material, not very good by modern standards but a major breakthrough in its time, and tough to boot. With quantities of kiirium to shield heavy guns and engines, Xim could field warcraft that were better armed and faster than anything else in space at the time.
"And mytag crystals were used in old subspace common and detection gear; you needed lots and lots of them for any spacefleet or planetary defenses. And so forth; all this was critical war materiel. With the stuff in these vaults, Xim could have assembled a war machine that would have conquered this whole part of space. But he lost big at the Third Battle of Vontor, first."

Kiirium; mytag. Ancient materials technologies.

561

"Artworks, hmm? Chewie and I can just stroll into the Imperial Museum with a bunch under our arms and start haggling, right?"

This is the first known mention of the Imperial Museum.


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