Wampa/Legends

"The kid ran into something, and it wasn't just the cold."

- Han Solo, referring to Luke Skywalker's wampa attack

Wampa ice creatures were carnivorous predatory reptomammals indigenous to the ice planet Hoth. The bipedal beasts stood over two meters in height with shaggy white fur constantly stained by the blood and guts of slaughtered prey. Wampas were armed with jagged yellow teeth and deadly claws. Primarily solitary hunters, wampas occasionally hunted in packs, preferring to ambush their prey from the camouflage of Hoth's snow banks and blizzards. Stunned victims were carried back to the creatures' lairs, typically large ice caves, where the wampas ate at their leisure. The planet's omnivorous tauntauns formed the bulk of the wampas' prey, although they would attack anything they encountered.

While rarely seen away from their remote homeworld, wampas were known to have participated in gladiatorial combat venues. They were highly valued among big game hunters for the challenge that came with hunting the creatures, as well as for their pelts, stuffed heads, and other miscellaneous souvenirs.

The Alliance to Restore the Republic's Echo Base on Hoth came under constant wampa assaults in 3 ABY. Shortly before the base's discovery by the Galactic Empire and subsequent invasion during the Battle of Hoth, Luke Skywalker fell prey to a wampa attack while scouting Hoth's icy wastes. Only with the aid of his burgeoning Force abilities and use of his lightsaber was he able to avoid becoming a meal for a large female wampa.

Biology and appearance
Covered with white fur and standing at heights of up to three meters, wampas were lethal predatory beasts. They possessed long, powerful arms, razor-sharp claws capable of carving layers out of ice, and a deadly, fanged maw. Older wampas possessed horns, which grew larger with age. Aided by an acute sense of smell and a well-camouflaged coat of thick fur, they roamed Hoth's icy plains preying on near-helpless animals. Wampas rarely killed their prey outright and never hunted when they were hungry. Instead, they stunned their prey, hauled the still breathing victims back to their caves, and secured them in the ice for later consumption. Their primary prey were Hoth's omnivorous tauntauns.



Although tauntauns were relatively plentiful on Hoth, a single wampa had to cover more than a hundred kilometers when seeking prey. However, wampas learned to adapt to this necessity. They had a very faint scent, preventing tauntauns from detecting a wampa's approach. Their white fur allowed them to blend in perfectly with Hoth's blinding blizzards, enabling them to attack their prey without prior detection. Although they had few weaknesses, wampas were sensitive to high-pitched noises. Their physiology was well adapted to conserving heat in the extreme cold. They failed to show up on most life-form sensor scans, which is how they managed to avoid detection for so long.

Wampas possessed at least a rudimentary level of intelligence, with the ability to organize massively-coordinated attacks when hunting in groups. They also possessed, at least in one case, the ability to retain long-term memory.

Sub-species
Sub-species of wampa included the giant wampa, a variation of the Hoth wampa representing either a long-lived individual, a sub-species, a freak mutation, or a separate species altogether; the cliff wampa, a beast bioengineered by the Galactic Empire and used as sentinels on the Outer Rim Territories moon of Gall; and the swamp wampa of Dromund Kaas, genetically altered by the Sith. There also existed Tatooine Howlers, colloquially named "desert wampas" for their strong resemblance to wampas. It was often mistaken for a relative of the wampa and as a result was called such.

Society and culture
Wampas typically made their homes out of the large ice caverns beneath Hoth's surface. They were created by carving down into the ice and hollowing out an area sizeable enough to occupy and store food in. Wampa caves were surprisingly spacious when compared to the manufactured dens of other large predators. The purpose of the cave was to shield these large predators from the bitter cold nights and raging storms that swept across the glaciers.



They hung their recently captured prey from the ice ceilings of their dwellings, using a method of coating their prey with an anesthetized saliva combined with their hot breath to freeze them in place. Preferring their meals to consist of fresh meat, their prey was often kept alive before consumption. Wampa lairs often housed huge amounts of stored prey, a testament to how deadly a single beast could be.

They were primarily solitary creatures, though some wampas were known to occasionally hunt in packs. The wampa attack on Luke Skywalker in 3 ABY suggested a sort of pair bonding between male and female wampas. While Skywalker was attacked by a male wampa, he regained consciousness in the den of a female. It is unclear whether or not wampas were monogamous or if they traveled about hunting and bringing food to various mates. After mating, female wampas would birth up to three cubs per litter. If, however, a cub wandered out of the den and made its first kill, other wampas would commonly give extreme attention to that cub.

Wampas were capable of emitting a terrifying hunting roar that could compete with Hoth's howling winds. Their howl was one of their greatest natural gifts, for it could blend in almost imperceptibly with the winds. Only the creatures themselves could tell the two sounds apart. Thus, the howl provided wampas with a highly efficient form of communication that often proved lethal to disoriented prey.

If a wampa was injured, the rest of its pack would band together to repel the threat. Wampas were also extremely territorial, fiercely guarding their hunting grounds, often engaging in deadly bouts with one another.

History
"Hey! Steady, girl. Hey, what's the matter? You smell something?"

- Luke Skywalker, to his tauntaun, before a wampa attack

The attack on Echo Base
As a measure of security, the Alliance to Restore the Republic's Standard Operating Procedure at Echo Base included setting up external sentry stations, placing sensor markers, scouting kilometers of territory, and setting up a blanketing sensor array. With these measures in place, the personnel of Echo Base originally encountered no life forms other than a few passive tauntauns and the occasional snowmouse. As a result, a sense of security settled over Echo Base. There simply seemed to be very little danger on the remote ice planet. Dispatched mounted scouts originally rode in pairs so that they might be better prepared in the case of unforeseen danger. But the lack of any apparent danger and a lack of trained personnel soon forced the scouts to travel by themselves. They reasoned they could cover twice the territory that way.

The first sign the Rebels saw that they were not alone was the discovery of a dead tauntaun just outside the base. When the dead animal was brought before 2-1B, the base's chief medical droid, he determined that the tauntaun's neck had been snapped. Knowing how strong saddling the stubborn animals were, the thought that some creature was strong enough to do such damage was more than frightening to the base's personnel. Major Bren Derlin, head of security at Echo Base, logged the incident into his reports, but gave it little more thought, as there were more pressing matters to attend to.

Soon thereafter, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were on a routine mission to place sensor beacons around the perimeter of the base. Solo informed Skywalker that he had encountered an animal carcass, which he believed to be a recent wampa kill, and urged Skywalker to be on guard before he headed back to Echo Base. Solo later told base personnel that he had discovered some wampa kills out in the snow. Skywalker, however, failed to report in from his scouting work, as he was attacked by a wampa while astride his tauntaun. The wampa landed a crushing blow to Skywalker's face with a swipe of its powerful claw, knocking him unconscious and opening up a gash on the side of his face. His tauntaun was killed instantly with a crushing grip that snapped its neck. The creature carried Skywalker and his tauntaun back to its den. When Skywalker awoke, he found himself hanging upside down, his feet frozen to the cave's ceiling and another wampa eating the corpse of his mount. Using the Force, Skywalker was able to escape the wampa, cutting off the creature's arm with his lightsaber before it could attack him.



After Skywalker revived from his medical treatment inside of a bacta tank, he confirmed the Rebels' worst fears. He described being attacked by a large creature three meters in height with deadly claws. Although he had only knowingly seen one of the beasts, where there was one, the Rebels reasoned, there was likely to be more. As a result, the base immediately stepped up its security measures. Patrols went back to the buddy system.

The following evening after Skywalker's recovery, Echo Base came under attack. It started with the sound of howling, a noise not unusual to those in the base, who were accustomed to Hoth's howling winds. Still, this noise was louder and angrier. Shortly after the howling started, the base's command center received a brief comlink call from Bervin, a perimeter scout, which was abruptly cut off by a bellowing inhuman roar and a horrified, distinctly Human scream. Derlin and others in the command center rushed to Bervin's post. There, they found only the signs of a struggle, but no sign of Bervin himself. Blood was scattered against the far wall of snow, where a large cave-in had occurred. The blood trail followed the shallow trench where Bervin's body had been dragged out of the post and into the icy-cold night of Hoth.

Before long similar calls began to come into the command center. Reports of attacks all along the base's perimeter were reported. All described the same: a lone sentry, attacked and dragged off into the night. Efforts were made to ready the base's T-47 airspeeders, but there was no need. The wampas came to them, crashing through the carefully-carved ice walls of the facility. The base was soon filled with a hoard of claws and fangs glistening with the blood of fresh kills and the howling of deafening attack roars. The personnel of Echo Base were ready to protect their fortress, however. They held off the beasts with concentrated artillery barrages, while the wampas outside the base were similarly repelled by the Rebels' blaster fire. The creatures inside the base were rounded up with the help of the droids C-3PO and R2-D2. At the heart of each attack was one commonality that had gone unnoticed until the droids brought it to the attention of Major Derlin. They noticed that the high-pitched beeps of the base's astromech droids drove the wampas into rages. The Rebels were able to use recordings of astromech droids to drive the creatures out of their dark, icy crevasses. They stunned the wampas into incapacitation, and stored them in heavily shielded pens in less vital sections of Echo Base. The pen doors were marked with yellow and orange warning signs, nicknamed by those in the base as "do not disturb" signs. The Rebels believed that the wampas had attacked the base to defend themselves from what they perceived as an invasion of their territory.

During the desperate haste to escape Echo Base in the face of the Imperial invasion during the Battle of Hoth, C-3PO came upon one of the pen doors while trying to catch up with Solo, Princess Leia Organa, and the Wookiee Chewbacca on their way to the Millennium Falcon. In an instant, an ancient holdover from one of his previous daring masters took over. Knowing an advance group of snowtroopers was directly behind him, Threepio tore off the door's warning label and proceeded to disappear around another bend in the corridor. The pursuing troopers reached the door. Their leader punched the controls to slide it open, knowing it would take more than locks to stop an Imperial advance. The group marched into the pen with military efficiency, only to be slaughtered by the caged wampas. Once Darth Vader reached the room, all he saw were piles of blood-stained snow, a cave-in exposing the pen to Hoth's daytime sun, and some of his most seasoned, well-trained troops dead on the ground.

Other encounters


Of those in the galaxy aware of the creatures' existence, many held to the theory that wampas possessed at least rudimentary intelligence. Through extensive research into the records of other creatures appearing similar to the wampa, evidence had been found suggesting mass coordinated attacks made by the creatures. In some cases, these attacks laid waste to entire outposts of colonists on other worlds. This was later substantiated by the Rebels of Echo Base.

A certain sub-class of big game hunters also existed who specialized in the "sporting" hunt of large predators like the wampa. They often traveled to the remote Hoth system to hunt the wampas themselves. Wampa pelts or stuffed heads were prized trophies among hunters. Wampa "souvenirs" and even clothing made of wampa fur had been known to command high prices at galactic trading posts by the time of the Galactic Civil War.

In one well-known case, the wampas' ability to organize coordinated attacks was well demonstrated. A group of failed stormtrooper cadets established a business as guides leading these big game hunters in pursuit of Hoth's wampas. Initially, they met with great success due to their advanced weaponry. However, by the fourth expedition the wampas had learned their enemies' secrets. The hunters landed and set out in search of their quarry. Meanwhile, the wampas found and destroyed the expedition's starship. Over the course of the next several nights, the wampas circled the camp, howling madly. The frightened hunters wasted their ammunition shooting at shadows until the wampas attacked. The beasts dragged away just one hunter with each assault. Finally, the last two survivors killed one another rather than allowing themselves to fall prey to the wampas.

By 32 BBY, a Shi'ido Changeling impersonating the former Twi'lek Jedi Knight-turned pirate Reess Kairn had set up a lumni-spice mining operation on Hoth using the planet's wampas as food-collecting servants. He fitted several of the creatures with a type of bio-stimulant brain implant, making them more docile and able to understand and respond to the Shi'ido's verbal commands. They were instructed to retrieve tauntauns and bring them back to his subterranean cave, where they were taught to skin them in preparation for his consumption. Hoping to collect a posted price on Kairn's head, the bounty hunter Aurra Sing infiltrated the cave draped in the skinned hide of a dead wampa. She was able to neutralize the Kairn impersonator while simultaneously killing many of his wampas in a manufactured cave-in. The rocky collapse awakened a large Dragon Slug, who also crushed one of the wampas in its massive jaws.

The Arakyd Viper probe droid that located Echo Base in 3 ABY discovered a large mound of snow in the Hoth wastes while performing its reconnaissance work. Upon probing the mound with a low-powered laser beam, a large wampa emerged from the snow pile, having been sleeping. The probe droid quickly regulated the potency of its high-powered laser cannon and disintegrated the beast with a single blast. Also in 3 ABY, while hunting a herd of grazing tauntauns, a wampa encountered and attacked another Viper probe. After a short clash between blaster and claws, the wampa defeated the droid and dragged it back to its ice cavern, where it suspended it in the icy ceiling above the skeletal remains of former prey.

While attemping to escape the planet during the Battle of Hoth, mercenary Dash Rendar encountered several of the Rebels' caged wampas throughout the bowels of Echo Base.

The Balti smuggler Bingo Mehndra possessed a captured pet wampa in his Hoth base. When Jabba the Hutt sent his musical retainers, the Max Rebo Band, on a secret assassination mission to Hoth to kill Mehndra in 3 ABY, the smuggler threatened to feed the musicians to his wampa if he suspected a trick. The participants of Jabba the Hutt's demolition games encountered a single wampa while competing on Hoth shortly before 4 ABY.

Skywalker later re-encountered the wampa he wounded with his lightsaber nine years later during a subsequent journey to Hoth with the Jedi Knight Callista Ming. There, they discovered a group of stranded refugees, though the group was soon attacked by a pack of wampas led by the dismembered beast, who recognized the Jedi Master and his lightsaber. The refugees were slaughtered by the pack. Skywalker slew the wampa, and escaped the planet with Ming. The wampa's recognition of Skywalker gave rise to the belief that the creatures possessed long-term memories. On a similar mission to Hoth in 14 ABY, Jedi student Jaden Korr encountered three wampas.

Wampas in the galaxy
During the Clone Wars, Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress faced a wampa, among many other lethal opponents, in the Cauldron, an infamous gladiatorial arena on the rocky planet of Rattatak. She hoped to persuade Count Dooku to accept her as his Sith apprentice by demonstrating her abilities in combat. In similar fashion, the Jedi Master Luminara Unduli faced off against a wampa in gladiatorial style combat while in the Arena of Doom, a gladiator stadium owned by Mondo-Mod the Hutt. Without the aid of her lightsaber or her Force abilities, Unduli defeated the beast by jumping, grabbing its horns, and flipping it. For her victory, Mondo-Mod revealed to her the location of a Separatist Droid Army factory on the planet Diorda.

While in pursuit of the bounty hunter Boba Fett late in 3 ABY, Rendar also encountered the Imperial bioengineered cliff wampa in Smuggler's Canyon near the Imperial Enclave on the moon of Gall. Mara Jade encountered the swamp wampas of Dromund Kaas on a mission to that planet in 10 ABY.

The Imperial TIE/ln starfighter pilot DS-61-11 went by the nickname "Wampa" during the Galactic Civil War for his icy precision in battle. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, Rogue Squadron Colonel Gavin Darklighter was familiar enough with the creatures to designate an enemy target as "Wampa" during a space battle. A Jedi Initiate training clan of the New Jedi Order&mdash;the Wampa Clan&mdash;was named after the Hoth creatures. The martial arts form Teräs Käsi consisted of two combat techniques named after the wampa&mdash;the Charging Wampa and the Slashing Wampa.

On Coruscant, wampas were imported and promptly migrated to the cooler northern reaches of the planet. It is also possible wampas existed on the Outer Rim ice world of Rhen Var, as well as the planet Bakura.

Behind the scenes
"We knew, for instance, of the scene where a wampa actually broke through into Echo Base and mauled a tauntaun...The wampa filmed in this shot looked absolutely hilarious with a big fluffy face and metallic round eyeballs. We saw the picture in a Kodak shoebox Photo CD Lucasfilm Ltd. provided us with some time ago."

- Jon Knoles, discussing Lucasfilm Ltd.'s contributions to creating Shadows of the Empire for Nintendo 64

Notable appearances
The wampa ice creature first appeared in Donald F. Glut's novelization of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, just prior to its theatrical debut.

The creature's on-screen ferocity made it a popular candidate as a video game mechanic for recreating its appearance in The Empire Strikes Back for several games including The Empire Strikes Back for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force for Game Boy Advance.

Other releases have sought to expound upon the wampas' attack on Echo Base, depicting their captivity by the Rebels. The Nintendo 64 release of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was the first visual representation outside of actual filmed footage to show the wampa pens. The game's designers were specially provided with images of deleted scenes of the wampa by Lucasfilm Ltd. The subsequent Star Wars Trilogy Arcade recreated the escape from Echo Base, in which the player must defeat wampas in an attempt to reach the Millennium Falcon.

From concept to creation
The creature may have been based on the cryptozoological phenomenon of the "Yeti," or the "Abominable Snowman," a humanoid beast believed to live in the Himalayas. Notes from early concept meetings suggest that the wampa, like the Yeti, may have supernatural powers as well. In early story discussions, the wampa was described as a fishlike beast capable of swimming through the snow.

In the winter of 1977, Mark Hamill was in a serious car accident which left him in need of reconstructive facial surgery. Many believe that the wampa attack on Skywalker was included in the film to explain Hamill's residual scarring and slightly altered facial features.

Additional scenes
Wampas originally played a much more prominent role in early versions of The Empire Strikes Back. In the treatment and the first draft, wampas storm Echo Base shortly before the arrival of the Empire. In the original shooting script, a tauntaun was killed when a wampa stormed into Echo Base. Shots of a wampa breaking through one of the walls of the complex and attacking Rebel soldiers were filmed but ultimately dropped from the final version of the movie. In addition, the wall did not crumble properly and the shot was never successfully achieved. Final versions of the script depicted a mass-coordinated wampa attack on Echo Base. There were several scenes shot for the film that showed this incident, as well as a sequence involving C-3PO tearing a warning sign off the door of a wampa pen, followed by a group of snowtroopers entering the pen only to be attacked by the wampas inside. However, these scenes were later deleted and did not make the final version of the film.

Production struggles
Originally the wampa was to be portrayed by actor Des Webb wearing a giant suit on location in Norway, where the Hoth scenes were shot. The costume, which required the actor to stand on stilts, proved too unwieldy. It was too heavy and hot, causing Webb to suffer heat exhaustion. All of the shots of the life-size wampa were eventually cut from the film. Creature designer Phil Tippett later built a small wampa hand puppet, visible in a quick close-up as the creature attacks Luke Skywalker.

For the Special Edition release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1997, George Lucas decided to expand the wampa scenes. In order to do so, Industrial Light & Magic artist Howie Weed constructed a more mobile version of the costume, without the stilts, which he wore in the film. The new shots were filmed within a scaled-down replica of a cave to create the illusion that the wampa was much larger than a normal Human.

Video games
The wampa has also made appearances in several other video games. They include Star Wars: Battlefront II, in which a group of wampas battles a variant force of Rebel infantry outside of Echo Base on the planet Hoth and also on Rhen Var. The wampa is one of many wild creatures that cannot be built or harvested for food, and who will attack any unit it comes near in the computer game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Wampas can be encountered on Hoth in Star Wars: Empire at War and the expansion Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption.

Non-canon appearances

 * LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
 * The Great Golden C-3PO Hunt
 * Hunger Pains
 * Ghosts of Hoth
 * Star Wars Infinities: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Choose Your Own Star Wars Adventure: The Empire Strikes Back
 * The Empire Strikes Back video game
 * Star Wars 78: Hoth Stuff
 * The Return of Tag & Bink: Special Edition
 * The Secret Tales of Luke's Hand