Sanyassan

"The reptilian marauders work together in a powerful military fashion to bring terror to the Ewoks and cause damage out of sheer spite. How could we not like them?"

- Pfilbee Jhorn about the Sanyassan castaways of Endor

The Sanyassans were a reptilian humanoid species from the stormy world of Sanyassa IV. They had ape-like faces, scaly gray skin, and were on average over two meters tall. Often engaging in piracy, they had been the scourge of the Moddell sector since time immemorial. In the wider galaxy, these sentients had the reputation of being fierce fighters with a short temper and a lack of intelligence, and they were sometimes employed as bodyguards or mercenaries.

In the first century before the Galactic Civil War, a group of Sanyassan criminals known as the Marauders crash-landed forests of Endor. As they were unable to get off the forest moon, the Sanyassan Marauders established a colony in the Dragon's Pelt savanna, under the lead of King Terak.

When the Shi'ido anthropologist Mammon Hoole wrote his Essential Guide to Alien Species in the height of the New Republic, not many things were known about the Sanyassans, despite their occasional and discreet presence. At the time, the whole species were simply referred to as "Marauders" by most scientists, and few knew of their home planet.

Biology and appearance
"The marauders have greasy, thick strands of hair, usually pale, sometimes dark, sprouting from the crown of their flat heads, occasionally from the skin on their faces. Heavy protective brow ridges thrust like hoods over glittering eyes; pug nose-holes give the marauders a skull-like appearance."

- Pfilbee Jhorn

The Sanyassans were a sentient species with reptilian traits. They were humanoid in form, with four limbs: two legs and two arms. Most had two-toed feet and four-fingered hands with an opposable thumb, while some individuals only had three fingers on each hand.

Members of the species had powerful built frames. They could grow tall, between 1.6 and 2.5 meters, with an average of 2 meters. The Sanyassans had tougher hides than most humanoids, which made them more resistant to physical or energetic damage. Their skin was both leathery and scaly, and its variety of coloration included gray, brown, green, and yellow. Though much rarer, some pink or purple-skinned individuals were known to exist.

According to Human observers, their simian faces could be described as skull-like in appearance, with their skin pulled tautly over their bones, their pug nose holes and their deep-set eyes crowned with jutting browridges. Some of them exhibited cranial ridges on the parietal bones. They had high foreheads and a relatively small mouth with very thin lips. The fearsome looking Sanyassans had straggly manes falling on their shoulders. Some of them were bald, and other wore a single strand of hair styled in a top-knot. Occasionally, hair would also grow from the skin on their faces, in the manner of a mustache or a beard, but the Sanyassans had no eyebrows or eyelids.

The species had two sexes: male and female. Sexual dimorphism manifested predominantly in the presence of pronounced breasts in females. Sanyassan women also tended to have smoother skin and didn't grow facial hair.

Considered children until the age of eight, Sanyassans attained young adulthood when they turned thirteen. At the age of fourteen, they grew out of adolescence and lived their healthy adulthood for twenty-five years. At forty, a Sanyassan was considered middle-aged, and was viewed as elderly beyond the age of seventy. However, the Sanyassan Marauders who shipwrecked on Endor around 96 BBY were still alive a standard century later. This shows that supercentenarians were not uncommon, and they still were capable warriors in spite of their venerable age.

Society and culture
"Because they are stranded on Endor, and because they know no way other than preying on weaker people, the marauders regularly raid Ewok tree villages just inside the forest boundary, burning their dwellings and taking the Ewoks prisoner for use as slaves to perform manual labor."

- Pfilbee Jhorn

The Sanyassan society was divided into clanic structures&mdash;united groups of households tracing descent from a common ancestor. The Sanyassans knew of no law prohibiting them from preying upon others. Their culture was brutal, based on warfare and exploiting of the weaker. Moreover, their species as a whole was often described as unforgiving, ruthless and calculating. In the wider galaxy, these fierce brawlers were renowned for their bad tempers and low intellectual performance. But despite their aggressive nature, the Sanyassans were communal beings and didn't feel comfortable staying alone. They preferred to be in large groups, having arm-wrestling contests or playing cards with each other, feasting in banquet halls or even marching out to raid. When not fighting, they enjoyed drinking alcohol, clinking their cups together with loud guffaws.

Most Sanyassan commoners wore makeshift armor and ragged clothing, usually brown or cream in color, adorned with scavenged items and patches of animal fur. Some higher-class individual possessed more elegant attire, with golden plate pauldrons and forearm guards, flowing bluish-grey capes, quilted vests and cloth belts. Sanyassans typically wrapped their feet in rawhide or cloth and tied that on with laces for foot covering.

Technologically primitive by galactic standards, Sanyassans had stolen the secrets of space travel. They had a rather rudimentary grasp on technology, which caused more harm than good when they tried to use it. One of King Terak's goons was seen pouring water over an electrical device, which caused the machine to burst into sparks. As the Sanyassans never achieved space travel themselves, and they relied on poor instinctive piloting skills when trying to fly in a stolen ship. While they managed to keep their blasters functioning, many were battered and rusted. However, the Sanyassans were proficient in sword fighting and unarmed combat. Despite their poor intelligence, most Sanyassans could speak a broken form of Galactic Basic Standard in addition to their native Sanyassan language.

Sanyassan names were typically one word, with examples including Dranjat, Jorak, Krenna, Kresho, Luryk, Maygo, S'Zingo, Terakaya, Urkreg, Vortek, and Zaykul. Other known names included Bar'injar, Indar and Yavid.

History
"The long-lived marauders originated off-planet and crashed nearly a century ago on the Forest Moon."

- Pfilbee Jhorn

The Sanyassans evolved on the world of Sanyassa IV, a temperate planet located in the Moddell sector of the Outer Rim Territories.Like the rest of the sector, Sanyassa IV was ignored by the wider galactic community for most of its history, as it was considered a part of the Unknown Regions until the last centuries of the Galactic Republic. Millennia before the Galactic Civil War, the original Sanyassans were a much more advanced society than their descendants. Through time, the Sanyassan culture devolved into a might-makes-right kleptocracy. This may have been the consequence of the Din supernova that blew up and turned into a pulsar around 5,000 BBY, a cataclysm from which the species never fully recovered.

In the first century before the Battle of Yavin, a band of Sanyassan criminals known as the Marauders crashed forest moon of Endor. As their ship was damaged beyond repair, the Marauders settled on the moon. The name "Marauders" was later used as a generic name to describe the entire species, even amongst scientists.

Sanyassans in the galaxy
"Because their true name is unknown, this species is referred to in scientific circles simply as Marauders."

- Mammon Hoole

In the fourth millennium before the Battle of Yavin, a male Sanyassan known as Bar'injar joined the Crucible, a slave-trading organization founded by Ieldis&mdash;a Sith Lord of the Old Empire. However, despite their occasional presence abroad, the Sanyassans were not well known outside of their native Moddell sector: millennia later, during the height of the New Republic, Senior Anthropologist Mammon Hoole was still researching the species. Although his notes on Sanyassans were far from complete, Hoole felt they were worth mentioning in The Essential Guide to Alien Species, a guidebook based on his collected data. In his sketchy notes, Mammon Hoole used the nickname "Marauders' for the entire species, as he claimed their true name was unknown, even in scientific circles. Hoole also ignored which planet the Sanyassans hailed from.

Members of other species knew how to take advantage of the Sanyassans' cruel nature. The brutish humanoids were armed with the latest weapons and employed as shock-troopers, petty thugs or bodyguards&mdash;like "Plug-Eye" Maygo, who was hired by the Kintan Gunrunners, a group of Nikto smugglers. When working on their own, Sanyassans typically became scouts or soldiers, though some exceptionally cunning individuals became scoundrels.

Around 96 BBY, a group of Sanyassan space pirates, the Marauders, who were criminals and pariahs even amongst their own race, hijacked a spacecraft. Unable to operate their advanced vessel, they crash-landed on the forest moon of Endor. There, they built themselves a gloomy fortress, ruling over a section of the Endorian plains known as the Dragon's Pelt savanna. These Sanyassans armed themselves with poorly maintained blasters and more conventional weapons. These weapons gave the Marauders a technological advantage over most other species on Endor.

The Sanyassans of Endor domesticated local creatures such as horses and large reptilian blurrgs to use them as beast of burden or mounts. The Marauders' leader was the self-appointed King Terak, who ruled over the others by virtue of his size and strength. He was assisted by Charal, a rogue Dathomiri Nightsister. The commander of the Marauder troops was General Yavid, who formulated the battle strategies which kept the Marauders' lands from being overrun.

The Marauders were perpetual enemies of the diminutive Ewoks, whose villages they frequently raided. At some point, they were also enemies of other local species like the Phlogs and the Duloks. They also clashed with Morag the Tulgah witch, although Yavid did orchestrate a tentative peace with her.

Around the year 26 BBY, the Marauders captured a shipwrecked humanoid scout named Salak Weet. They misunderstood Weet's references to the power generator for his ship, thinking he was talking about a mystical power source that could make them rulers of the galaxy. The Marauders imprisoned and eventually killed Weet in an attempt to learn the secret of this power.

Many years later, during a raid on the Bright Tree Village, the Marauders captured many Ewoks including Wicket Wystri Warrick. They also captured a young Human named Cindel Towani, killed the rest of her family, who were themselves castaways on Endor. The Marauders also stole the crystal oscillator from the Towani's damaged spaceship. Warrick and Towani soon escaped, finding their way to the cottage of Noa Briqualon, Weet's Human partner. Warrick and Briqualon's friend Teek helped the two stranded Humans defeat the Marauders, retrieve the parts needed to repair Briqualon and Weet's spaceship, and kill Terak. And with her ring destroyed, Charal was trapped in her raven form.

In this power vacuum, General Yavid tried to take the Marauder throne. But he was not able to match Terak's feat of keeping order over such a rabble, and the Marauders turned on one another, foiling Yavid's bid for power. Yet this civil war was not the end of the Marauders: for Terak's son, the physically similar and equally brutal Zakul, eventually emerged victorious, reestablished order, and became king.

At some point under the New Republic, a white-bearded Sanyassan merchant sold blurrgs in the Coruscant Livestock Exchange and Exhibition, the largest livestock fair in the galaxy. He wore fine clothes that wer every similar to those of the warlord Terak. His likeness was reproduced in the annotated field journal of Lyrre T'enna, a famous zoologist.

Behind the scenes
The Sanyassan species was created for the 1985 made-for-TV film Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. They were designed by the American director and artist Joe Johnston. Johnston first envisioned the brutish Marauders as three-fingered and completely hairless, but it was changed later in pre-production, and the costume used in the actual movie had four-fingered hands and manes of greasy hair. However, many of the early Sanyassans concept arts were reused in the Endor chapter of The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, thus bringing the bald and tridactyl Sanyassans back into canon.

The Sanyassan Marauders of Endor also appeared in the defunct Star Wars-themed MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies. Their in-game appearance was designed by character artist Jason Temujin Minor. The Sayormi from the Dead Forest of Kashyyyk, another race that appeared in Star Wars Galaxies, closely resemble Sanyassans, but their exact relationship has not yet been explored. Not only the Sayormi share the same character models as the Sanyassans, but they also have the same type of martial culture.

In the early years of the Expanded Universe, the species was only know as the "Maraudeurs". The name "Sanyasssan" was first coined in Endor and the Moddell Sector, an article published in the Star Wars Gamer 9 on March 1, 2002. From this moment on, the use of the term "Marauders" has been restricted to the group of Sanyassan pirates who crash landed on Endor. The Essential Guide to Alien Species, which was published one year before the first occurrences of the name "Sanyassan", still listed the species' true name as unknown, even in scientific circles.

It should be noted that The Illustrated Star Wars Universe and the Ultimate Alien Anthology are in conflict on how old Sanyassans can get. While the former source states that the Marauders were already adults when they crashed on Endor one hundred years before the Galactic Civil War&mdash;making them supercentenarians, the latter gives an average lifespan of only seventy years.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 44: The Reaping, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Destroyer
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 48: Demon, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 49: Demon, Part 3
 * Knight Errant
 * Ewoks: The Battle for Endor
 * Ewoks: The Battle for Endor book-and-record
 * The Ring, the Witch, and the Crystal: An Ewok Adventure
 * The Ring, the Witch, and the Crystal: An Ewok Adventure