Cesta/Legends

"It looks like a giant skipper squid exploded on the battlefield, sir...I can't take two steps without putting my boot into blue slime."

- RSF Lieutenant Gavyn Sykes, reporting from the Great Plains battlefield near Theed

The cesta was a wooden military staff produced by the Otoh Gunga Defense League and employed by the Gungan Grand Army on Naboo.

Characteristics
The hand-carved cesta was used as a staff or a blocking device, but also doubled as a means of launching boomas at targets. Essentially a larger version of the atlatl, the cesta was tipped with a cradle large enough to accommodate a single energy ball. A proficient Gungan warrior used his cesta to fling a booma around one hundred meters, though such throws were not always accurate due to the primitive nature of the weapon. The cesta's cradle was often decorated with carvings of symbols and icons of personal significance to individual warriors. Survivors of the Battle of Grassy Plains memorialized their fallen comrades by carving their names into the handles of their cestas.

Cestas were commonly used by the militiagungs of the Gungan Grand Army. General Tobler Ceel set up a training ground near Lake Paonga known as the Scrumma Jawbone, which served as a "shooting range" for cesta, atlatl and arbalest users.



Behind the scenes
The word "cesta" in Spanish literally means "basket".

Episode I: The Visual Dictionary labels two different weapons as the "cesta", one of which is a simple throwing spear, the other is a cup-tipped weapon which other sources have correctly identified as the atlytl.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace