Taloron

"Crutag's a Taloron Hunter. He ain't gonna give up on us."

- A Rebel Alliance operative

The Talorons were species of sentient, blue-skinned humanoids native to the Wild Space Taloron system. For much of their existence, the Talorons were peaceful farmers and merchants. However, when pirate groups set up operations in the Taloron system and began preying upon its peaceful denizens, the Talorons were forced to regroup and militarize lest they be wiped out completely from the predations. This war, the Taloron Pirate Conflict, completely reshaped Taloron society and birthed the infamous Taloron Hunters, distinguished by their trademark armor.

Once the Talorons had driven the pirates from their system, many members of the species turned their strong reverence for law and order toward careers as bounty hunters and assassins. During the Galactic Civil War, members of the species split their loyalties: the Taloron Hunter known as Crutag, for example, supported the Galactic Empire and pursued bounties on members of the Rebel Alliance, while the Hunter known as Korgath supported the Rebels as a member of the Special Operations Scandium Team. Another Taloron, known by the alias "Blue" Imcrix, smuggled spice after the rise of the New Republic. The Talorons manufactured the starship known as the Taloron Prey Chaser.

Biology and appearance
Talorons were sentient, blue-skinned humanoids with a physiology similar to that of Humans: a head, four limbs, and five-fingered hands. Members of the species had sunken features and small eyes. While some Talorons were tall and thin with broad shoulders, others were shorter. The species had both male and female members. A 67-year-old Taloron was considered middle-aged.

Society and culture
"If they are law abiding citizens, then I wouldn't need to discipline them, would I?"

- Crutag

Talorons valued order, a penchant that reached the point of zealous obsession. For much of their history, they were a peaceful people, with most Talorons earning their living as farmers or merchants. However, the despoliations of the Taloron Pirate Conflict reshaped them into a warrior culture. The species' native language was known as Taloron; Talorons could learn to speak and understand Galactic Basic Standard as well.

After their society had been reforged through war, the organization known as the Taloron Hunters came into being. Members of this group were known as callous and single-minded bounty hunters and assassins, well-known in less reputable corners of the galaxy as aggressive, testy predators. Their reputation was such that the Ocsinin martial artist Cene Gilvent, a member of the Zulirian Swordmasters, wielded a three-bladed sword named Soknar, the Taloron word for several. Taloron Hunters were noted for their distinctive armor, which included a padded undersuit, armor plating, a wide helmet with two thin projections to the sides, a hip pouch, and a cylindrical backpack. Typical armaments for the class included a blaster carbine with a vibrobayonet and a standard sword. Other galactic toughs adopted this style, such as a Human croney of the Aleena crime lord Sollima.

The Talorons had access to technology on par with much of the rest of the galaxy. They manufactured their own starships, including the Taloron Prey Chaser. This vessel was forty meters long, and, although it required only a single pilot, could hold up to twenty-five passengers.

History
The Talorons hailed from the Taloron system of Wild Space. They developed a peaceful society made up largely of traders and farmers.

Over time, bands of space pirates began moving into the Taloron system under the leadership of a ruthless pirate chief named Halgir. The brigands primarily preyed upon the Talorons, whom Halgir cowed into acceding to his demands. By several years before the outbreak of the Galactic Civil War, the system had been overrun by bandits, and the Talorons realized that they could no longer tolerate Halgir's oppression. In a conflict dubbed the Taloron Pirate Conflict, the system's native denizens turned on their pirate overlords, using farming tools as weapons or fighting with their bare hands. Halgir and his forces responded by razing villages and killing any who opposed them. At the peak of the hostilities, the Talorons fell to the brink of extinction.

Nevertheless, the surviving Talorons regrouped, their determination only hardened by Halgir's despoliations. They retooled their army into a guerilla force that resisted the pirates with tactics that emphasized ambushes and hit-and-run assaults. The elite warriors known as the Taloron Hunters also formed at this time. The Taloron Pirate Conflict continued through the fall of the Galactic Republic and the rise of the Galactic Empire before the Talorons finally defeated Halgir. They captured him alive and presented him to the Imperial authorities in their region.

Despite the end of the war, Taloron society did not return to its previous state of peaceful trade and agriculture. The conflict had remolded their culture into one based on warfare and violence. As a result, several Talorons left their home system to find work as bounty hunters, turning their intolerance toward pirates to take the fight to pirates and criminals throughout the galaxy. Decades later, by 137 ABY, the Taloron system had fallen into a region of space influenced by the Chiss Ascendancy, a society of blue-skinned humanoids known as the Chiss.

Talorons in the galaxy
After the resolution of the Taloron Pirate Confllict, many Talorons coupled their newfound martial prowess with their species' natural desire for law and order to find work as bounty hunters. These Talorons plied the spacelanes apprehending pirates and other criminals. One such Taloron was Crutag, a Taloron Hunter and a veteran of the Pirate Conflict who left soon after its conclusion. After a stint with the Ragnar Syndicate, a member house of the Bounty Hunters' Guild, Crutag left with his Taloron Prey Chaser, the Scent of Fear. He gathered a diverse crew, which at one point included a Taloron lieutenant, who eventually died on a hunt. Although Crutag boasted that he had never failed to apprehend a target, he was in reality only a moderately successful bounty hunter. Nevertheless, his reputation was one of single-minded determination and violent cruelty to his targets. Although he publicly professed loyalty to only himself, Crutag believed that the Galactic Empire was the rightful government of the galaxy. Between 2 BBY and 1 BBY, Crutag learned of a bounty on a group of Rebel Alliance operatives. The Taloron chased the Rebels from Kwenn Space Station to the nearby planet Trinta. When the Rebels crash landed, Crutag and his minions gave pursuit. However, they encountered strange apparitions that cost the life of several hunters. Unbeknownst to them, these were Force illusions created by the fallen Jedi Halagad Ventor. Crutag did not realize that he had come to the attention of Ventor, who wanted to seduce and corrupt the Taloron to be his dark side minion. Nevertheless, the Rebels managed to escape the Taloron Hunter.

Another Taloron Hunter, named Korgath, joined the Alliance to Restore the Republic during the Galactic Civil War. The Taloron served as an Alliance infiltrator, eventually joining Scandium Team, one of the Rebellion's earliest Special Operations units, to take his fight to the Galactic Empire. Even after Scandium Team disbanded, Korgath officially maintained his position as an infiltrator, even if his missions tended to be more like those of a Special Operations soldier. Although friends described him as kind and friendly, Korgath wore Taloron Hunter armor and&mdash;though shorter than most Talorons&mdash;cultivated a fierce reputation, capitalizing on the widespread perception that Taloron Hunters were callous and violent.

After the fall of the Empire, the Taloron smuggler and crime lord known as "Blue" Imcrix ran shipments of rokna blue, a kind of spice derived from rokna fungus found on the Forest Moon of Endor. Imcrix eventually gave up drug running. Nevertheless, soon after the outbreak of the Yuuzhan Vong War, the Taloron learned that an old spice-processing center named Rokna Station housed a new strain of rokna blue that had been slow-aged since the drug fell out of popularity years earlier, after the Black Fleet Crisis. Imcrix brought the station's slave-rigged security and weapons systems back online in a bid to lure the New Republic to the site. The plan worked, and a New Republic Security Force team arrived to disable the ancient station to prevent its weapons systems from harming innocent bystanders. However, Imcrix hijacked their starship and took them hostage, intending to use them as bargaining chips when further New Republic forces arrived and attempted to destroy Rokna Station and to help him fight through the reactivated weapons systems to reach the spice harvest. In the end, "Blue" Imcrix was captured by his own hostages, who turned him over to the authorities to await trial.

Behind the scenes
Authors Bill Slavicsek, Bill Smith, and Curtis Smith created the Taloron Hunters for The Star Wars Sourcebook, published by West End Games in 1987 for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. The authors based the group's appearance and standard equipment on a previously unused production sketch for one of the Star Wars feature films. The book makes no indication whether Taloron designates a distinct species. The Taloron Hunter named Crutag features prominently in the West End adventure Domain of Evil, written by Jim Bambra and published in 1991. The background description for Crutag indicates that he has blue skin, the first source to mark the Talorons as non-Human. With the republishing of Domain of Evil as part of Classic Adventures: Volume Two in 1995, editor Eric S. Trautmann greatly expanded on Crutag's background, detailing the history of the Talorons in general as well&mdash;although his revised description omits any mention of skin color. "Cracken's Rebel Operatives," written by C. Robert Carey and Trevor J. Wilson and published in 1996 as part of Star Wars Adventure Journal 11, includes the first unambiguous indication that the Talorons are a species and not a race of Humans. According to Classic Adventures: Volume Two, the Taloron system is located in the Outer Rim Territories. However, Star Wars: The Essential Atlas Online Companion instead places it in Wild Space.

The comic book Star Wars Adventures Volume 1: Han Solo and the Hollow Moon of Khorya, published by Dark Horse Comics in 2009, features a character wearing Taloron Hunter armor. The figure, drawn by Rick Lacy and colored by Michael Atiyeh, has pale skin like a Human rather than blue skin, like Crutag. The character's species is not mentioned, although this article assumes the figure is not a Taloron due to the skin-color discrepancy.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Adventures Volume 1: Han Solo and the Hollow Moon of Khorya