Tusken Raider/Legends

"Those Tuskens walk like men, but they're vicious, mindless monsters."

- Cliegg Lars

Tusken Raiders, less formally referred to as Sand People or simply as Tuskens, were a culture of nomadic sapients indigenous to Tatooine. The term Sand People should need no explanation on this desert world, and was in use from at least around 4,000 BBY; but the more formal name of Tusken Raiders was acquired much later, due to a period of concerted attacks on the settlement at Fort Tusken in 98-95 BBY. This later became the definitive name for the species. Specialists studying the past of the Tusken Raiders past also used the term Ghorfa to denote an earlier sedentary phase of their culture, and lastly Kumumgah, for the earliest stratum of sapient civilization on the planet, believed by some to represent a common ancestry shared by the Ghorfa and the Jawas.

The Tuskens were divided into small tribes or clans, and roamed widely across the desert surface of Tatooine, but the focus of their habitation-patterns seems to have been the Jundland Wastes, the one major area of rocky upland that rose clear of the shifting sands: in particular, the traditional sandstorm-season encampments of many clans were concentrated area known as the The Needles. They raided widely through both the Jundland Wastes and the Dune Sea, however, and any creatures, particularly offworlders, were subject to their savage attacks. Traveling on trained banthas, raiding parties would swiftly appear from the desert, riding in single file to conceal their numbers, and then disappear back into the cover of the dunes with trophies and prisoners. Due to their lack of advanced technology, their primitive society and viciousness, they were considered barbaric monsters by most of the Galactic populace.

The Desert Life
"On Tatooine, the very air and sunlight are one's enemies."

- Sharad Hett

Tusken culture was defined first and foremost by the climactic extremes of Tatooine: barren wastes stretching for days' journey on end, scoured by harsh, arid winds and searing heat by day; icy, deadly stillness after dark. Practical survival is the first priority in terrain like this, and to protect themselves, the Sand People learned early in their existence to cover themselves from head to foot in desert-colored rags and robes, leaving no bare skin exposed to the elements. It is perhaps no surprise that these outward trappings came to be the most basic tokens of Tusken Raiders identity&mdash;their mode of dress is, after all, a direct expression of their way of life.

Although Tusken garb varied from tribe to tribe, certain aspects of dress remained constant. The eyes of Sand People were covered with goggles or visors which shielded them from the harsh sunlight. Below the eyes two pipes protruded from the mask, most likely to facilitate breathing. A constantly open mouthpiece covered the area between the nose and jaw, while a moisture trap worn around the neck humidified the air taken into the lungs. Sand People were also recognizable by their fierce gaderffii weapons. While rejecting most examples of modern technology, long-barreled Tusken Cycler rifles and stoves made of scavenged or stolen metal were not uncommon.

All in all, the Sand People were frightening to behold. This fear was expanded upon by countless gruesome legends, and by even more gruesome truths, such as their tendency to spit streams of blood at their victims during attacks.

Female Tuskens wore variations upon the male Tusken garb, often incorporating womp rat tusks into their attire: in some tribes, their role seem to have involved maintaining the encampments while the males raided and hunted, but in other groups, perhaps more strictly nomadic in outlook, they may have lived and hunted more closely alongside their menfolk. Tusken children wore unisex masks; gender-specific coverings were not allowed until after they became adults.



Tuskens were forbidden to take off their protective clothing in front of others, except in a few very specific circumstances: at childbirth, on their wedding night and during coming-of-age rituals (two events which were often one and the same), and as adults, only in the privacy of their tents with their blood-bound mates. Breaking this rule meant either banishment or death, depending on the specific tribe rules.

The emphasis on outward appearance and concealment of physical form also enabled&mdash;and disguised&mdash;one of the most striking elements of Tusken culture: although the Sand People were regarded as alien savages by Tatooine's human colonists, an unknown proportion of the Tusken population were, at least by the last decades of the Old Republic, every bit as human as the settlers themselves.

Biology
"They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I hate them!"

- Anakin Skywalker

There are, of course, a number of means by which human groups could have been introduced and absorbed into an initial nonhuman population: Sand People are known to have adopted settler orphans after raids on human settlements and convoys, and some outlanders, like the Jedi Master Sharad Hett, could win a place in their tribes by virtue of their warrior prowess; nor can we overlook the possibility that earlier colonists may have been forced to adopt the Tusken lifestyle to survive. However, it is a singular fact that there is not one Tusken Raider of whom it can be said with certainty that they were not human.

Scientific studies of the few dead corpses found were said to have been inconclusive, and while in part, the lack of detailed knowledge can be accounted for by the hostility of the Tatooine climate, and in part, by the hostility of the Tusken Raiders themselves, it should be borne in mind that our knowledge of the Sand People&mdash;or what we think we know about them&mdash;is very often based on uncertain and inferential evidence.

History
"The Tuskens are. That, they say, is all anyone needs to know."

- Alkhara



Tatooine is said to have once been a lovely, lush world with extensive oceans, home to a civilization known as the Kumumgah, until drastic climatic change reduced the planet to desert and split the native inhabitants into two groups: the larger Ghorfas and the diminutive, scavenging Jawas. Some geological formations identified as products of this ecological change, such as Beggar's Canyon, are dated to as early as 2,000,000 BBY, but stories also persist that the Kumumgah defied the Infinite Empire some time between 50,000 and 25,000 BBY, and were punished by orbital bombardment, which slagged the surface of Tatooine into little more than fused glass; this crumbled over the subsequent tens of thousands of years, and became desert sand. However, while the intervention of the Infinite Empire is believed to have provoked major ecological transformations on other worlds, as on Kashyyyk, it is not entirely clear whether the dramatic, species-wide divergence between the tall warrior Tuskens and the diminutive enterprising Jawas can have been accomplished in a matter of just a few tens of thousands of years.

After Tatooine was rediscovered by the Republic in around 5,000 BBY, early Human settlers are believed to have disrupted the water-supply of a settled cave-dwelling society known as Ghorfa culture, precipitating the transformation of the natives into the nomadic Sand People. To survive, they were forced to steal and adapt the technology of the colonists, forging the distinctive desert survival gear by which they would subsequently become so well-known. By around 4,000 BBY, they were also engaged in endemic low-level warfare with the settlers, raids which were among the factors that forced Czerka Corporation to abandon their attempts to operate Tatooine as a mining world, and which, incidentally, allowed the Jawas to shrewdly take control of the miners' abandoned sandcrawlers as mobile clan fortresses, giving rise to the modern settlement pattern of Tatooine's second native sapient species.

Tatooine was, it seems, largely forgotten by the wider Galaxy for the next few thousand years, and indeed, the planet apparently had to be formally rediscovered in 1,100 BBY. By the sixth century BBY, however, a mining colony had been reestablished, and the key moment in the history of the Sand People and their relations with the outlanders occurred in around 550 BBY, when they encountered an offworlder and rogue named Alkhara.



Initially, Alkhara was an operative of the colony's Bureau of Ethnology and Socialization, studying the Tuskens, and seemingly gaining their trust. Eventually, however, he turned against the colonists and occupied the desert fortress that would be used in later centuries by Jabba the Hutt. It is not clear how closely his banditry was connected with his relations with the Tuskens, but in the most notorious incident of his career, he allied himself with a group of Sand People whose bivouacs lay on the Great Mesra Plateau to wipe out a police garrison, then afterwards turned on his Tusken confederates, and destroyed their camp. This, it is claimed, was the source of a subsequent blood feud between the natives and the outlanders.

However, it is unclear exactly what the feud can have meant for the Sand People at this time. Alkhara abandoned the planet in about 516 BBY, and the mining colony may already have failed by then. And it is by no means clear that the tribe from the Great Mesra Plateau were the only Tuskens who worked with Alkhara, or the most closely allied to him, and centuries of oral tradition may have reworked a more complex story as a justification for broader grudges against the non-native settlers.

Be that as it may, permanent settlement by offworlders&mdash;or outlanders&mdash;only seems to have resumed in 100 BBY, with the arrival of the settler ship Dowager Queen from Bestine IV. A new planetary capital called Bestine was founded, and a second settlement called Fort Tusken was established in at the northern tip of the Jundland range. At first, the new colonists seem to have been unaware of the Sand People, but a series of attacks between 98 and 95 BBY forced the abandonment of Fort Tusken, and from that point on, the human settlers of Tatooine referred to the natives as "Tusken Raiders".

Social Organization
"It's the misguided traveler who tempts the Tuskens' hospitality."

- Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker



Sand People organized into clans and tribes, the former being kin-groups of between 20 to 30 beings, and the latter being larger affinities with no strict bounds. In a typical tribe, the adult males typically assumed the role of hunter and protector, often leaving their camps for an extended period of time. Females, often accompanied by masstif guard animals, cared for the children, known as uli-ah, and the seasonal camps. After completing the rites of adulthood at the age of fifteen, the uli-ah were granted full status within the tribe and paired for marriage in a ceremony involving blood exchanges between the male, female and their banthas.

The bantha was another vital element of Tusken culture, a large, shaggy-coated quadruped capable of surviving for long stretches in the harsh terrain of the deserts; some banthas roamed wild, but the Sand People had learned to domesticate them. Every Tusken had their own mount from childhood, and they rode bantha-back for journeys of any length: small scouting parties of two or three mounts, or entire clan communities on seasonal migrations, they traveled through the dunes and rock-formations on the shoulders of their mounts, in single file.

Tuskens subsisted primarily on hubba gourds, and moisture farmers took great humor in the fact that they became intoxicated on just a few sips of sugar water. It is unknown if there was a carnivorous facet to their diet, but their violence would certainly suggest as much. Though it may just be due to aggressive pride or a superiority complex.

While leading a lifestyle that was primarily nomadic, there were two exceptions to the rule: when the hot season was at its height, semi-permanent camps would be constructed; and particular caves or hollows, spiritually connected to certain clans (usually where the dead would be buried or special ceremonies would be held) were frequently visited. Special water wells such as the one in Gafsa Canyon, sacred due to their rarity, were often vehemently protected.

Rituals
Many rituals held Sand People society together. In many tribes, adolescent Sand People were tasked with a ritual known as "bloodrite", in which a youth proved their hunting skills by capturing a creature and fatally torturing it with techniques extending the pain for weeks before death. Most opted for creatures like bantha or desert wraid, but the greatest prestige was reserved for a hunter who performed the rite upon a sentient being. The final test of an adult male was to hunt and slay a krayt dragon, and retrieve a stone from its stomach. Oftentimes, members of the tribe would create spirit masks out of natural materials for use in the ensuing ritual and celebration. During this ceremony, the leader of the tribe, the High Urr'Ak, would bestow upon the successful youth his first gaderffii. This was a time of great honor for the young tribesman, but it also represented a great responsibility. If the youth lost his gaderffii, he would be banished forever.

Additionally, Tuskens occasionally enjoyed firing upon podracers who participated in the Boonta Eve Races, as a sort of sport and show of marksmanship, and as retaliation for the intrustion of their lands.

A unique bond existed in Tusken culture between the riders and their bantha mounts, and when a mount died, the rider was often left behind to wander the desert alone. They held that if the fallen bantha's spirit wished for the rider to find a new mount, it would be so. If not, the rider would die amongst Tatooine's endless dunes. The bond worked both ways, as accounts have been told of riderless banthas intentionally stampeding over cliffs.

Language


The Sand People spoke a guttural language known as Tusken. Many individual names are long and marked by numerous stops, such as Grk'Urr'Akk, Grk'kkrs'arr, Orrh Or'Ur and Orr'UrRuuR'R. However, shorter names like Sliven are also recorded in some clans, and some Tuskens, like A'Sharad Hett and his mother K'Sheek bore patronymic (and perhaps matronymic) names formed from a parent's given name and a prefix: A' meaning "son of" and apparently K ' , "daughter of". We should also note the term C'rell'akt, "woman of Corellia", in which, on comparison with the initial K ' , the final -kt may indicate "woman".

Other known Tusken words include urtah (carrying pack) and urtya (light tent). As a rule, Tuskens also possessed a rudimentary knowledge of Huttese and Jawaese, as they came into contact with these languages quite frequently.

With no written language, the Sand People relied on oral history to pass down the legends and stories of their people. As such, storytellers were held in the highest regard and charged with the responsibility of memorizing by rote the story of every clan member and piece of clan history. For apprentice storytellers, the pressure to memorize the stories precisely was intense: a single mistake meant death. If an apprentice storyteller successfully recites a story perfectly, he becomes the clan's storyteller while the old one wandered off into the desert forever.

Notable Tusken Raiders



 * A'Sharad Hett, a Clone Wars-era Jedi (biologically Human, born within a clan)
 * A-Zulmun, tribal leader and slayer of Ranon Djlekh
 * Grk'kkrs'ar, a mythic fearless Tusken Raider
 * Hoar, the only known Tusken to master the ancient art of Teräs Käsi
 * Jundland Banshee, a rogue Sand Person
 * K'Sheek, a female warrior, mate of Sharad Hett and mother of A'Sharad (biologically Human)
 * Orr Agg R'orr, sniped Teemto Pagalies at the Boonta Eve Classic
 * RR'uruurrr, attacked Luke Skywalker in the Jundland Wastes
 * Raito, known for his ability to hunt and slay Jedi during the Great Sith War Era
 * Sharad Hett, Old Republic-era Jedi, father of A'Sharad (Human, adopted into his clan as an adult)
 * Sliven, foster father of Tahiri Veila
 * Tahiri Veila, Jedi Knight raised by Sand People (Human, adopted into her clan as a child)
 * URoRRoR'R'R, a skilled hunter who captured Luke Skywalker and R2-D2.
 * Grave Tuskens, a group of Tuskens on Sulon, one of the few cases of Tusken presence off-Tatooine.

Behind the scenes

 * Sand People fire upon podracers during the Boonta Eve Classic in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Humorously enough, they are accurate enough with their fire to actually hit one of the podracers, in spite of Obi-Wan's Episode IV comment, "these blast points... too accurate for Sand People. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise" (although Stormtroopers are notoriously atrocious shots in the Original Trilogy (see Stormtrooper effect), but this can be attributed to their rifles).
 * In the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, one of the side-quests requires that the player infiltrate a Sand People village. Upon doing so, an extremely long history of the Sand People is presented to the player.
 * In the Xbox adventure game Star Wars: Obi-Wan set during and a bit before the events of the Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi is forced to rescue the Queen of Naboo (or one of her doubles) after she is abducted by Tuskens during the layover on Tatooine. In the game, Kenobi must even stalk through a communal Tusken burial site. As Obi-Wan Kenobi the player must track the Raiders through their extensive canyon dwellings among old scavenged shipwrecks turned to fortresses and eventually do battle with a Tusken war chief a significantly larger Tusken than the others, who intended to keep the queen as a trophy. A sequence of cultural interest depicts the Tuskens solemnly and ceremoniously conceding defeat after Obi-Wan demands to be allowed to return to safety with the Queen since he has defeated the Tusken war chief.
 * Grave Tuskens appear in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II as henchmen to the Dark Jedi Jerec and Maw on the moon of Sulon. This is the only appearance of a Sand People group off Tatooine, although Hoar from Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi did travel offworld to learn that martial art from Arden Lyn.
 * However, in a panel of Crimson Empire II, a lone Tusken Raider is seen in the palace of Grappa the Hutt on the planet Genon.
 * Tuskens also appear in Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith in the Ka'Pa mission. The level vaguely resembles Tatooine, although the game doesn't specify the name of the planet the level takes place. It is possible it is another example of non-Tatooine Tuskens
 * In the PC game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds and its expansion pack Clone Campaigns, there is a hidden Easter egg in the first Chewbacca campaign; over in the far right corner of the first mission, under the fog of war, is a scene similar to the Obi-Wan mission mentioned above. This can only be accessed by using the cheat codes 'forceexplore' and 'forcesight', dissipating the fog of war. Success in the mission is lost if the side-mission is failed.
 * When a Tusken speaks, they sound like the sea lions of Earth, but in actuality their sounds were fashioned by Ben Burtt from donkey brays.
 * In Star Wars Republic 62: No Man's Land, an image is shown of a Tusken without a mask, although this may just be Anakin Skywalker's mental image of the Sand People, rather than an accurate portrayal.
 * Ghorfa is the name of the type of grain storage structures in Tunisia used for filming the slave quarters in Episode I: The Phantom Menace.