Letaki

"Now leave! Before I gut you like a Letaki's dinner!"

- Aurra Sing to Gardulla the Hutt

The Letaki were a species of sentient beings distinguished by eight tentacles, an egg-shaped head, four eyes, and a sharp beak. Two sets of gills allowed them to breathe in both air and water. They were able to focus their eyes on more than one object at a time, and to use their limbs to manipulate several items independently. As carnivores, Letaki gutted their dinners. The Letaki vocal range was higher than that of most species. The musician Evar Orbus, leader of Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-wailers, was a Letaki, and his species hailed from the Letaki system in the Outer Rim.

Biology and appearance
With eight tentacles and at least two feet, the Letaki were a non-humanoid sentient species. They were able to use several tentacles in tandem, which allowed a Letaki musician to play a number of instruments simultaneously. The sheer multiplicity of their appendages made it difficult for non-Letaki to keep all the manipulators apart, a weakness that the Letaki Evar Orbus exploited by wearing a prosthetic arm in which he hid a weapon. At least some Letaki sported pink skin mottled with a darker shade.

An ovoid head sat atop the Letaki neck and torso. The egg-shaped cranium featured four shiny, black eyes; a sharp, stubby, yellow beak; and two pointed ears. A Letaki was able to focus each of the four visual organs independently, an ability that allowed members of the species to monitor several directions at once. Their sense of hearing was comparatively less developed, falling below the aural capabilities of the Bith species. The Letaki tongue was dark pink in color. Six short, fleshy appendages with ventral suction cups formed a line across the brow. Letaki had two sets of gills, which enabled them to breathe both in an atmosphere and underwater. The air gills resembled flaps of skin, located behind the eyes.

Letaki came in two sexes, male and female. They were carnivores who gutted their dinner before eating it. Letaki blood was colored green. The species was capable of prodigious vocal abilities; the voice of Evar Orbus, for instance, ranged across eleven sectaves.

Society and culture
Letaki used their tentacles to gesture and point during communication. They expressed emotions through their sense organs, which fluttered to convey feelings. At least some Letaki were comfortable in arid environments like that of the planet Tatooine. Members of the species were known to wear clothing.

History
The Letaki evolved in the Letaki system. Outsiders reached the system at some point between 5,000 and 1,000 BBY, and it eventually became incorporated into the Steniplis sector of the Outer Rim Territories, part of a region of the galaxy known as the Western Reaches. In 9 ABY, during the hostilities between the New Republic and the forces of Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Letaki's home system fell within territory considered allied to the Imperial leader. Decades later, in 137 ABY, the system had fallen within the sphere of influence of the Sith Lord Darth Krayt's Galactic Empire.

Letaki in the galaxy
"Wait! I'm Evar Orbus!''" "So?" "''Of the Evar Orbus Galactic Jizz-wailers. Perhaps you've heard of us?"

- Evar Orbus and a member of the Modal Nodes

One Letaki who gained a level of prominence in the galaxy was Evar Orbus, a musician who founded a band known as Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-wailers. When Orbus and his group made their way to Tatooine under a contract to play at the Wookiee Chalmun's cantina, Orbus felt he had hit the big time. However, the cantina's current band, Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, resented the competition; under the pretense of sending an airbus to transport Orbus and his group to their new performance venue, they attacked the Letaki and his crew. Although Orbus was able to defend himself with a weapon hidden in a fake tentacle, he was fatally wounded in the skirmish. The other members of his group, under the nominal leadership of the Ortolan Max Rebo, renamed themselves the Max Rebo Band and found work for Jabba the Hutt.

Behind the scenes
Author John Gregory Betancourt created the Letaki Ovar Orbus for his short story "And the Band Played On: The Band's Tale," which relates the events that led the Max Rebo Band to join Jabba the Hutt's court. The story was included in the collection Tales from Jabba's Palace, which was first published by Bantam Spectra in 1996. Later sources, such as the Star Wars Encyclopedia, reference Orbus and his species but reveal no new information about them; The Official Star Wars Fact File 46 even misspells the species's name as "Lataki." A portrait of Orbus provided by artist Dennis Cramer-McClain for the article "Who's Who in the Max Rebo Band," published in the May 2003 Star Wars Insider 67, is the first and only visual depiction of the species. With the release of the March 2011 update of Star Wars: The Essential Atlas Online Companion, a supplement to The Essential Atlas, authors Jason Fry and Daniel Wallace added a Letaki system to the database, placing the species's home system for the first time.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Republic 12: Outlander, Part 6
 * "And the Band Played On: The Band's Tale"