Skrilling/Legends

Skrillings were the native people of the M'shinni colony world designated Agriworld-2079. If the primitive Skrillings had a name for their homeworld before the M'shinni arrived, it had long been lost to history. Even the original name of their species was unknown: "Skrilling" was originally a derogatory nickname (meaning "Bone Picker") applied to them by the M'shinni. In the M'shinni Sector and beyond, these stocky humanoids were known both for their natural skills as scavengers and for their sometimes obnoxious and wheedling personalities.

Skrillings evolved from egg-laying carnivorous mammals on Agriworld-2079. They were scavengers by nature, feeding on the decayed carcasses of grazing herd animals. Skrillings could not digest meat that had not rotted for less than a week. Primitive Skrillings quickly developed a complicated system to share carcasses with one another in order to avoid conflicts over the best pieces. Once they made contact with other species, this system of ritualized requests and appeasements translated into what seemed to non-Skrillings as constant begging and bargaining. Skrilling were intelligent enough to recognize that non-Skrillings could be angered by too much of this, however, and generally tried to avoid conflicts. They were also masters at finding a being's weak point in a bargaining situation, and managed to get what they wanted more often than not.

Skrillings were 1.0 to 1.9 meter tall humanoids with several rows of sharp teeth for tearing meat, a bony ridge on their skulls used by Skrilling hatchlings to break out of their eggs, three-fingered hands with a vice-like grip, and eight breathing tubes of their faces. These breathing tubes were among their most versatile organs. To help digestion, Skrillings used a mild digestive acid produced in glands inside their breathing tubes. This acid could also be sprayed from their breathing tubes as a defense mechanism, though it was not very dangerous unless it ended up in the target's eyes. To make up for poor eyesight, Skrillings relied on their keen sense of smell to discover food, by inhaling deeply through their breathing tubes. This produced a high-pitched whistle which could be heard for kilometers.

When the M'shinni arrived on Agriworld-2079, the Skrillings were primitive nomads. When the M'shinni rootlines took control and fenced in the planet's herd, the Skrillings were forced to adapt. Some started working for the M'shinni on their homeworld, becoming low-level employees and servants of various M'shinni rootlines. Others worked for the M'shinni on their other agriworlds, or spread out into the rest of the Galaxy. These Skrillings were often scavengers or second-hand merchants. Some of them wandered the spaceways in starships constructed from second-hand or salvaged parts. Skrilling wanderers often arrived on a planet soon after a battle, where they salvaged damaged machines. Some were even ghoulish enough to eat the corpses left behind after a battle, leading to the expression "Skrilling fodder" for one about to be killed. Skrillings of this sort often ended up in the entourage of the galaxy's criminal element. One of the most famous of these Skrillings was Pote Snitkin, a weapons smuggler who worked for Jabba Desilijic Tiure on Tatooine. Some more honorable Skrillings were valuable spies for the Alliance to Restore the Republic, using their natural wheedling abilities to get valuable information. Other Skrillings of the Galactic Civil War era were part of a struggle to free their people from M'shinni domination, though true to the Skrillings' nature, this was not an open, violent conflict.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi