Wampa/Legends

"The kid ran into something, and it wasn't just the cold."

- Han Solo, referring to Luke Skywalker's wampa attack

Wampa ice creatures were carnivorous predatory reptomammals indigenous to the Outer Rim Territories ice planet Hoth. The bipedal beasts stood over two meters in height with shaggy white fur constantly stained by the blood and guts of slaughtered prey. Wampas were armed with jagged yellow teeth and deadly claws. Primarily solitary hunters, wampas occasionally hunted in packs, preferring to ambush their prey from the camouflage of Hoth's snow banks and blizzards. Stunned victims were carried back to the creatures' lairs, typically large ice caves, where the wampas ate at their leisure. The planet's omnivorous tauntauns formed the bulk of the wampas' prey, although they would attack anything they encountered. The Alliance to Restore the Republic's Echo Base on Hoth came under constant wampa assaults in 3 ABY.

While rarely seen away from their remote homeworld, wampas were known to have participated in illegal gladiatorial combat venues. They were highly valued among big game hunters for the challenge that came with hunting the creatures, as well as for their pelts, stuffed heads, and other miscellaneous souvenirs that commanded high prices on the black market. Wampas were later protected under legislation to prevent endangered species from falling into extinction by the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances.

Biology and appearance
"We thought they were dumb brutes&mdash;all teeth and claws, and no brains&mdash;but we were wrong."

- Burrk, a former stormtrooper turned big game hunter

Covered with white fur and standing at heights of up to three meters, wampas were lethal predatory beasts. They possessed long, powerful arms, razor-sharp claws capable of carving layers out of ice, and a fanged maw. Older wampas past the age of puberty possessed horns, which grew larger with age. Aided by an acute sense of smell and a well-camouflaged coat of thick fur, they roamed Hoth's icy plains preying on near-helpless animals. Wampas were classified officially as reptomammals, creatures combining the best defensive characteristics of reptiles with the more adaptable physiologies of mammals &mdash;specifically, they were linked to primates. Beneath their protective fur was a layer of blubber for greater insulation. They were also physiologically equipped with a self-regulating metabolism. Wampas comprised 11% of Hoth's total indigenous population.



Wampas rarely killed their prey outright and never hunted when they were hungry. Instead, they stunned their prey, hauled the still breathing victims back to their caves, and secured them in the ice for later consumption. Their primary prey were Hoth's many varieties of omnivorous tauntauns, though they also hunted antlered mammals called rayboo, and other, smaller unwary creatures. Although tauntauns were relatively plentiful on Hoth, a single wampa had to cover more than a hundred kilometers when seeking prey. However, wampas learned to adapt to this necessity. They had a very faint scent, preventing tauntauns from detecting a wampa's approach. Their white fur allowed them to blend in perfectly with Hoth's blinding blizzards, enabling them to attack their prey without prior detection. As such, wampas rarely engaged in extended chases. They traveled on two or four legs, preferring four except when stalking or during an attack.

The wampas' comfort zone as far as seeking prey was limited to Hoth's frozen plains and the cooler regions of the planet's subterranean caves. Often, Hoth's scaly tauntauns would gather among warmer cave areas heated by bubbling pools as a defensive measure, areas which wampas found to be uncomfortably hot. Nevertheless, wampas would utilize cunning methods to draw the scaly tauntauns out of their sanctuaries, sometimes rushing into the heated areas to scare their prey out into the cold where they might be cornered. Other times, wampas would simply stalk their prey by waiting in the colder regions between these heated tunnels until the tauntauns ran from one tunnel to another.



Wampas were sensitive to high-pitched noises, sounds that were similar to those made by a female in search of a mate. Their physiology was well adapted to conserving heat in the extreme cold. They failed to show up on most life-form sensor scans, which is how they managed to avoid detection for so long. Wampas were rarely themselves the victims of predators.

Wampas possessed at least a rudimentary level of intelligence and cunning, with the ability to organize massively-coordinated attacks when hunting in groups. On several occasions they demonstrated the ability to scout and determine their enemy's location and strength before formulating an attack. They also possessed, at least in one case, the capacity to retain long-term memory. One male wampa, named Ku-Kak, had a rare, natural affinity for the Force.

Sub-species
Sub-species of wampa were found on other worlds, clearly transplanted there from Hoth, though scientists were unable to determine the exact method by which this occurred. These included the giant wampa of Hoth, a variation of the Hoth wampa representing either a long-lived individual, a sub-species, a freak mutation, or a separate species altogether; the cliff wampa, a beast bioengineered by the Galactic Empire and used as sentinels on the Outer Rim Territories moon of Gall; and the swamp wampa of Dromund Kaas. Swamp wampas were identical to the Hoth wampa in almost every way, prompting scientists to theorize that they were directly descended from them. Though the exact nature of the swamp wampa's development was unclear, it nevertheless indicated a strong adaptability of the wampa species. There also existed Tatooine Howlers, colloquially named "desert wampas" for their strong resemblance to wampas. Although their appearance, with heavy fur and tusks, was similar, genetic testing proved no relation between the desert hunter and the wampa.

Society and culture


"They worked together, in coordinated attacks, probably to defend themselves from what they perceived as an invasion of their territory."

- Voren Na'al

Wampas typically made their homes out of the large ice caverns beneath Hoth's surface. They were created by carving down into the ice and hollowing out an area sizable enough to occupy and store food in. Wampa caves were surprisingly spacious when compared to the manufactured dens of other large predators. The purpose of the cave was to shield these large predators from the bitter cold nights and raging storms that swept across the glaciers. Wampas would shed guard fur, which was gathered for nests.

They hung their recently captured prey from the ice ceilings of their dwellings, using either a method of coating their prey with an anesthetized saliva combined with their hot breath to freeze them in place, or by impaling them on large icicles. Preferring their meals to consist of fresh meat, their prey was often kept alive before consumption. Wampa lairs often housed huge amounts of stored prey, a testament to how deadly a single beast could be.

Wampas mated during the warmer months of the Hoth yearly cycle, during which they gathered in regions where game was plentiful, to search for companionship. While the females waited, the males would go off in search of prey. After making a kill, the male wampa would commonly smear the blood of his victim across his chest and return with the dead animal to the females, thus demonstrating his ability to care for a mate. Sometimes the males would spar with one another for a particular female's companionship. The winners of these bouts chose their preferred mates. They were then considered the alpha males of that region until the following mating season.

In terms of their reproduction method, wampas could be considered marsupials. Their cubs were born live, but very underdeveloped, closely resembling a miniature worm that could fit on a spoon. After mating, female wampas would birth up to three cubs per litter. They would produce milk to nurse their young and were very protective of their offspring. These infants, after birth, would crawl to their mothers' pouches, where they nursed, grew, and developed over a period of roughly three months&mdash;after which time they left the pouch with a full set of teeth, needle-sharp claws, and an innate attitude of invincibility. As they grew, young wampas were taught how to hunt, survive in the cold, and how to care for game from their mothers and fathers.



Wampas were capable of emitting a terrifying hunting roar that could compete with Hoth's howling winds. Their howl was one of their greatest natural gifts, for it could blend in almost imperceptibly with the winds. Only the creatures themselves could tell the two sounds apart. Thus, the howl provided wampas with a highly efficient form of communication that often proved lethal to disoriented prey. In one unique instance, the Force-sensitive wampa Ku-Kaku was trained to naturally understand the Chevin language.

They were primarily solitary hunters, though some wampas were known to occasionally hunt in packs, particularly when something threatened the local wampa community. Wampas possessed a strong affinity for kinship. They were very protective of their own, and in the instance one was slain, they would fly into destructive rages directed at the killer. If the death was natural, wampas would instead vent their rage on their surroundings, sometimes causing avalanches and underground cave-ins, only causing more deaths. When their hysteria had subsided, the grieving wampas would bury their dead in the snow, keeping guard over it for several days to make sure nothing ate the remains. If a wampa was injured, the rest of its pack would band together to repel the threat. Wampas were also extremely territorial, fiercely guarding their hunting grounds, often engaging in deadly bouts with one another.

History
"Hey! Steady, girl. Hey, what's the matter? You smell something?"

- Luke Skywalker, to his tauntaun, before a wampa attack

By 32 BBY, a Shi'ido Changeling impersonating the former Twi'lek Jedi Knight-turned pirate Reess Kairn had set up a lumni-spice mining operation on Hoth using the planet's wampas as food-collecting servants. He fitted several of the creatures with a type of bio-stimulant brain implant, making them more docile and able to understand and respond to the Shi'ido's verbal commands. They were instructed to retrieve tauntauns and bring them back to his subterranean cave, where they were taught to skin them in preparation for his consumption. Hoping to collect a posted price on Kairn's head, the bounty hunter Aurra Sing infiltrated the cave draped in the skinned hide of a dead wampa. She was able to neutralize the Kairn impersonator while simultaneously killing many of his wampas in a manufactured cave-in. The rocky collapse awakened a large Dragon Slug, who also crushed one of the wampas in its massive jaws.

During a bivouac while scouting the expanses of Hoth shortly after the final construction of the Alliance to Restore the Republic's Echo Base was completed, Major Kem Monnon, head of the Alliance Corps of Engineers responsible for the base's construction, and an outfit of men heard the howls of wampas in the night&mdash;one of the first encounters, albeit indirect, between the creatures and the personnel of Echo Base.

The Arakyd Viper probe droid that located Echo Base in 3 ABY discovered a large mound of snow in the Hoth wastes while performing its reconnaissance work. Upon probing the mound with a low-powered laser beam, a large wampa emerged from the snow pile, having been sleeping. The probe droid quickly regulated the potency of its high-powered laser cannon and disintegrated the beast with a single blast. Also in 3 ABY, while hunting a herd of grazing tauntauns, a wampa encountered and attacked another Viper probe. After a short clash between blaster and claws, the wampa defeated the droid and dragged it back to its ice cavern, where it suspended it in the icy ceiling above the skeletal remains of former prey.

The Balti smuggler Bingo Mehndra possessed a captured pet wampa in his Hoth base. When Jabba the Hutt sent his musical retainers, the Max Rebo Band, on a secret assassination mission to Hoth to kill Mehndra in 3 ABY, the smuggler threatened to feed the musicians to his wampa if he suspected a trick. The participants of Jabba the Hutt's demolition games encountered a single wampa while competing on Hoth shortly before 4 ABY.

Following the formation of the New Republic, General Carlist Rieekan's personally-maintained historical records concerning the Rebellion's time spent on Hoth revealed a smuggler named Jonox Forb, who inhabited the naturally formed caves before their conversion into Echo Base. While the fate of Forb's smuggling band remained unclear, his personal logs detailing his experiences on Hoth were recovered from a wampa lair by the Alliance Survey Team Theta. On a mission to Hoth in 14 ABY, Jedi Master Kyle Katarn and his apprentice, Jedi student Jaden Korr, encountered several rogue wampas inhabiting the ruins of Echo Base.

The attack on Echo Base
"Had we remained longer on that frozen world, I have no doubt we would have had more nights filled with their horror."

- Voren Na'al

As a measure of security, the Rebel Alliance's Standard Operating Procedure at Echo Base included scouting the barren wastes surrounding the facility. Initially, only passive lifeforms were detected&mdash;there seemed to be very little danger on the remote ice planet. The first sign the Rebels saw that they were not alone was the discovery of a dead tauntaun just outside the base. When the dead animal was brought before 2-1B, the base's chief medical droid, he determined that the tauntaun's neck had been snapped. Knowing how strong the stubborn animals were, the thought that some creature was strong enough to do such damage was more than frightening to the base's personnel. 2-1B also assisted in an Echo Base investigation that led to the discovery and capture of several wampas from a nearby cave.

Soon thereafter, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were on a routine mission to place sensor beacons around the perimeter of the base. Solo informed Skywalker that he had encountered an animal carcass, which he believed to be a recent wampa kill, and urged Skywalker to be on guard before he headed back to Echo Base. Solo later told base personnel that he had discovered some wampa kills out in the snow. Skywalker, however, failed to report in from his scouting work, as he was attacked by a male wampa while astride his tauntaun. The wampa landed a crushing blow to Skywalker's face with a swipe of its powerful claw, knocking him unconscious and opening up a gash on the side of his face. His tauntaun was killed instantly with a crushing grip that snapped its neck. When Skywalker awoke, he found himself hanging upside down, his feet frozen to the ceiling of the creature's cave, and another wampa eating the corpse of his mount. Using the Force, Skywalker was able to escape the wampa, cutting off the creature's arm with his lightsaber before it could attack him.



After Skywalker revived from his medical treatment inside of a bacta tank, he confirmed the Rebels' worst fears. He described being attacked by a large creature three meters in height with deadly claws. Although he had only knowingly seen one of the beasts, where there was one, the Rebels reasoned, there was likely to be more. As a result, the base immediately stepped up its security measures.

The following evening after Skywalker's recovery, Echo Base came under attack. It started with the sound of howling, a noise not unusual to those in the base, who were accustomed to Hoth's howling winds. Still, this noise was louder and angrier. Shortly after the howling started, the base's command center received a brief comlink call from Bervin, a perimeter scout, which was abruptly cut off by a bellowing inhuman roar and a horrified, distinctly Human scream. Major Bren Derlin, head of security at Echo Base, and others in the command center rushed to Bervin's post. There, they found only the signs of a struggle, but no sign of Bervin himself. Blood was scattered against the far wall of snow, where a large cave-in had occurred. The blood trail followed the shallow trench where Bervin's body had been dragged out of the post and into the icy-cold night of Hoth.

Before long similar calls began to come into the command center. Reports of attacks all along the base's perimeter were reported. All described the same: a lone sentry, attacked and dragged off into the night. Efforts were made to ready the base's T-47 airspeeders, but there was no need. The creatures came to them, crashing through the carefully-carved ice walls of the facility. The base was soon filled with a horde of attacking wampas. The personnel of Echo Base were ready to protect their fortress, however. They held off the beasts with concentrated artillery barrages, while the wampas outside the base were similarly repelled by the Rebels' blaster fire. The creatures inside the base were rounded up with the help of the droids C-3PO and R2-D2. At the heart of each attack was one commonality that had gone unnoticed until the droids brought it to the attention of Major Derlin. They noticed that the high-pitched beeps of the base's astromech droids drove the wampas into rages. The Rebels were able to use recordings of astromech droids to drive the creatures out of their dark, icy crevasses. They stunned the wampas into incapacitation, and stored them in heavily shielded pens in less vital sections of Echo Base. The pen doors were marked with yellow and orange warning signs, nicknamed by those in the base as "do not disturb" signs. The Rebels believed that the wampas had attacked the base to defend themselves from what they perceived as an invasion of their territory. Additionally, research later revealed that the astromech droids' high-pitched beeps and wails were similar to the sounds made by females in search of a mate. This further justified the wampas' rampages, with males having discovered pieces of metal machinery after thinking they had discovered a new companion.

During the desperate haste to escape Echo Base in the face of the Imperial invasion during the Battle of Hoth, C-3PO came upon one of the pen doors while trying to catch up with Solo, Princess Leia Organa, and the Wookiee Chewbacca on their way to the Millennium Falcon. Knowing an advance group of snowtroopers was directly behind him, Threepio tore off the door's warning label and proceeded to disappear around another bend in the corridor. The pursuing troopers reached the door. Their leader punched the controls to slide it open, knowing it would take more than locks to stop an Imperial advance. The group marched into the pen with military efficiency, only to be slaughtered by the caged wampas. Once Darth Vader reached the room, all he saw were piles of blood-stained snow, a cave-in exposing the pen to Hoth's daytime sun, and some of his most seasoned, well-trained troops dead on the ground.

While attempting to escape from Hoth late during the battle, mercenary Dash Rendar encountered several of the Rebels' caged wampas throughout the bowels of Echo Base. After witnessing the havoc wreaked upon the base by the wampas, the Empire in turn bioengineered the cliff wampa to guard Imperial interests on the Gall moon.

Hunting wampas for sport
"There's a huge black-market price on wampa pelts, you know."

- Burrk

A certain sub-class of big game hunters existed who specialized in the "sporting" hunt of large predators like the wampa. They often traveled to the remote Hoth system to hunt the wampas themselves. Wampa pelts or stuffed heads were prized trophies among hunters. Wampa "souvenirs" and even clothing made of wampa fur had been known to command high prices at galactic trading posts by the early years of the Galactic Civil War. Wampa meat was also served in some corners of the galaxy. As of 31 BBY, a serving kitchen within the space station Darkside on an asteroid in the Cularin system asteroid belt had twenty kilograms of ground lean wampa meat stored in a freezer. By 1 ABY, the sporting hunt of wampas was considered illegal by law; nevertheless, hunters were still able to sell their wares on the black market for high gain. Later, wampas were included in the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances legislation to protect endangered species from extinction.

In one well-known case, the wampas' ability to organize coordinated attacks was well demonstrated. A group of failed stormtrooper cadets established a business as guides leading these big game hunters in pursuit of Hoth's wampas. Initially, they met with great success due to their advanced weaponry. However, by the fourth expedition the wampas had learned their enemy's secrets. The hunters landed and set out in search of their quarry. Meanwhile, the wampas found and destroyed the expedition's starship. Over the course of the next several nights, the wampas circled the camp, howling madly. The frightened hunters wasted their ammunition shooting at shadows until the wampas attacked. The beasts dragged away just one hunter with each assault. Finally, the last two survivors killed one another rather than allowing themselves to fall prey to the wampas. This was one tale typically told by big game hunters; some circles doubted the validity of the tale, pointing to the loophole that if there were no survivors, no one could have lived to report what had happened.



Skywalker later re-encountered the wampa he wounded with his lightsaber nine years later during a subsequent journey to Hoth with the Jedi Knight Callista Ming. There, they discovered a group of stranded wampa poachers, including a former stormtrooper named Burrk, and two Cathar brothers. The three had set up a business taking hunters to Hoth to hunt what they termed "the biggest game in the galaxy." The group found success after two hunting rounds, collecting the pelts of several creatures and killing numerous others. But on their third trek out into the Hoth wilderness, the poachers met with disaster. They returned to their ship to find their pilot slaughtered. Trying to investigate what the cause of death was, the group was attacked by a group of wampas, killing a guide and three clients. The surviving five members found shelter in the abandoned Echo Base. When Skywalker and Ming arrived on the planet just days later, the two Jedi and five survivors were once again attacked by an army of wampas who had grouped together under the leadership of the dismembered beast, who recognized Skywalker's and Ming's lightsabers as a threat. As a coordinated group, the wampas displayed enough intelligence to ruin the flight controls of the Jedi's ship, as they had with the poachers, to prevent escape. After the wampa horde chased the group back into the confines of Echo Base, the beasts created a diversion by banging on the base's closed shield doors until they could break through the icy walls of the facility. Skywalker and Ming were able to reach their damaged ship with the stopping power of their lightsabers&mdash;Skywalker killing the one-armed beast for good in the process&mdash;and escape the planet after rigging their vessel to restart through an alternative power source, but not before the remaining poachers were killed. Skywalker later remarked that he believed the one-armed wampa recognized him personally and that they consequently possessed long-term memories.

Wampas in the galaxy
Knowledge of the wampa throughout the galaxy was limited. Of those aware of the creatures' existence, understanding typically came by way of overhearing big game hunters speak of what they considered "legendary" quarry. Hyperbole and rumors of the wampa's fearsomeness abounded. The planet Hoth was synonymous with the wampa&mdash;in the rare instances the planet was mentioned in conversation, it was common to hear the wampa mentioned in the same breath.

Many held to the theory that wampas possessed at least rudimentary intelligence. Through extensive research into the records of other creatures appearing similar to the wampa, evidence had been found suggesting mass coordinated attacks made by the creatures. In some cases, these attacks laid waste to entire outposts of colonists on other worlds. This was later substantiated by the Rebels of Echo Base.

Wampas were one of several "trophy" animals smuggled onto the planet Coruscant for the pleasure of its citizenry. As with their smuggled counterparts, these wampas were quickly discovered to be too dangerous to handle and were either released into the environment or escaped on their own, labeled from that point as "fugitive animals." These renegade wampas instinctively migrated to Coruscant's cooler polar regions to eke out an existence.

As of 28 BBY, the transportation of wampas throughout the galaxy was, in some degree, deemed illegal by the Galactic Republic. The Jedi Master Tholme and his Padawan Quinlan Vos were assigned to track a felonious dealer of interdicted beasts to the planet Ryloth, where they suspected their target was connected to the Twi'lek Clan Secura. Unbeknownst to the Jedi, a Hutt presiding over the slave trade on Ryloth held a captive wampa&mdash;one of the interdicted beasts&mdash;in the name of personal security, sold to it by Pol Secura. The wampa managed to break free of its restraints during the Jedi's search, killing the Hutt and several others nearby. The young slave girl, Aayla Secura, was able to reach out telepathically through the Force with Vos to call for help. He soon arrived at her side, but found himself overmatched by the large beast after first naively trying to reason with it. On the brink of death within the wampa's grasp, Vos, with the assistance of the young Secura, was able to call his lightsaber to his hand and put an end to the wampa's rampage. Secura's sensitivity to the Force was realized, and she was taken to Coruscant to be trained as a Jedi.



During the early years of the Clone Wars, the Chevin slaver Phylus Mon kept a single male wampa named Ku-Kak as a personal bodyguard in addition to several other retainers. Mon discovered the wampa on a distant ice-covered world and selected the beast into his employ due to its unique ability to wield the Force. Ku-Kak's training under Mon included understanding and being able to respond to his master's commands in the Chevin language and also to identify and attack Jedi, for whom Mon held a strong dislike. The wampa identified Jedi by the fact that they carried lightsabers, and also because he differentiated them from Mischa Vorfren, a male Anzati solider also in Mon's employ who carried a lightsaber that Ku-Kak had collected as a trophy and given to him, and whom Ku-Kak considered an ally. To combat Jedi, Mon provided Ku-Kak with a Sith sword that he had picked up during his travels; the wampa proved very adept at wielding the sword, which augmented his powers in the dark side of the Force. Additionally, Ku-Kak, like the other slaves under Mon's command, was outfitted with an explosive device in his heart programmed to detonate in the instance that Mon died and the Chevin's own heart stopped beating. Although this provided Mon's lieutenants with the motivation to fight for him, the wampa lacked full awareness of what had been implanted inside of him.

Mon traveled with an entourage of enslaved creatures wherever he went&mdash;his so-called "zoo"&mdash;to which the wampa belonged. The wampa accompanied Mon during his attack of the Sith fortress on the planet Cularin, where the Chevin stole the darkstaff, a powerful Sith artifact, and during which multiple Jedi were killed. A team of Cularin heroes attempting to end the threat that Mon posed encountered Ku-Kak after infiltrating the throne room of Mon's starship, the Animiasma, within the Cularin system asteroid belt.

Wampas were occasionally found participating in illegal gladiatorial games on a number of Outer Rim worlds. During the Clone Wars, Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress faced a wampa, among other opponents, in The Cauldron, an infamous gladiatorial arena on the rocky planet of Rattatak. She hoped to persuade Count Dooku to accept her as his Sith apprentice by displaying her combat abilities. In similar fashion, the Jedi Master Luminara Unduli faced off against a wampa in gladiatorial style combat while in the Arena of Doom, a gladiator stadium owned by Mondo-Mod the Hutt. The Hutt had his wampa contestant shipped in directly from Hoth. Without using her lightsaber or her Force abilities, Unduli defeated the beast by jumping, grabbing its horns, and flipping it. She attributed her victory to simple physics. For her victory over the wampa and subsequent opponents, Mondo-Mod revealed to her the location of a Separatist Droid Army factory on the planet Diorda.

Six months after the Battle of Yavin, the Shi'ido Senior Anthropologist Mammon Hoole shape-shifted into a wampa while he and his nephews, Zak Arranda and Tash Arranda, were attacked by a horde of zombies in the Crypt of the Ancients on the planet Necropolis. Hoole was able to manhandle the zombies in his transformed physicality. In 1 ABY, Darth Vader and a stormtrooper detail arrived at the Jedi Enclave on the planet Dantooine where Vader discovered a clone of himself. While the two engaged in a Force duel, a similar clone of Hoole in the transformed shape of a wampa neutralized one of the stormtroopers.

While in pursuit of the bounty hunter Boba Fett late in 3 ABY, Dash Rendar encountered the Imperial bioengineered cliff wampa in Smuggler's Canyon near the Imperial Enclave on the moon of Gall. Mara Jade encountered the swamp wampas of Dromund Kaas on a mission to that planet in 10 ABY.

The Imperial TIE/ln starfighter pilot DS-61-11 went by the nickname "Wampa" during the Galactic Civil War for his icy precision in battle. The forces of the space pirate Gir Kybo Ren-Cha flew stolen TIE fighters emblazoned with their trademark red wampa skull signet in the years prior to the Battle of Yavin. By 1 BBY, Holgurn, a Gamorrean messenger in the employment of Jabba the Hutt, was familiar enough with the creatures to compare the inexperienced Rodian bounty hunter Greedo to the inconspicuousness of a wampa, while Rogue Squadron Colonel Gavin Darklighter designated an enemy target as "Wampa" during a space battle of the Yuuzhan Vong War. A Jedi Initiate training clan of the New Jedi Order&mdash;the Wampa Clan&mdash;was named after the Hoth creatures. The martial arts form Teräs Käsi consisted of two combat techniques named after the wampa&mdash;the Charging Wampa and the Slashing Wampa.

Wampas also existed on the Outer Rim ice world of Rhen Var, as well as the planet Bakura.

Behind the scenes
"We knew, for instance, of the scene where a wampa actually broke through into Echo Base and mauled a tauntaun&hellip;The wampa filmed in this shot looked absolutely hilarious with a big fluffy face and metallic round eyeballs. We saw the picture in a Kodak shoebox Photo CD Lucasfilm Ltd. provided us with some time ago."

- Jon Knoles, discussing Lucasfilm Ltd.'s contributions to creating Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for Nintendo 64

From concept to creation
The wampa ice creature was created for George Lucas's Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and first appeared in Donald F. Glut's novelization of the film, just prior to its theatrical debut.

The creature may have been based on the cryptozoological phenomenon of the "Yeti," or the "Abominable Snowman," a humanoid beast believed to live in the Himalayas. Notes from early concept meetings suggest that the wampa, like the Yeti, may have supernatural powers as well. In early story discussions, the wampa was described as a fishlike beast capable of swimming through the snow.

In the winter of 1977, Mark Hamill was in a serious car accident which left him in need of reconstructive facial surgery. Many believe that the wampa attack on Skywalker was included in the film to explain Hamill's residual scarring and slightly altered facial features.

Production struggles
Originally the wampa was to be portrayed by actor Des Webb wearing a giant suit on location in Norway, where the Hoth scenes were shot. The costume, which required the actor to stand on stilts, proved too unwieldy. It was too heavy and hot, causing Webb to suffer heat exhaustion. All of the shots of the life-size wampa were eventually cut from the film. Creature designer Phil Tippett later built a small wampa hand puppet, visible in a quick close-up as the creature attacks Luke Skywalker.

For the Special Edition release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1997, George Lucas decided to expand the wampa scenes. In order to do so, Industrial Light & Magic artist Howie Weed constructed a more mobile version of the costume, without the stilts, which he wore in the film. The new shots were filmed within a scaled-down replica of a cave to create the illusion that the wampa was much larger than a normal Human.

Additional scenes
Wampas originally played a much more prominent role in early versions of The Empire Strikes Back. In the treatment and the first draft, wampas storm Echo Base shortly before the arrival of the Empire. In the original shooting script, a tauntaun was killed when a wampa stormed into Echo Base. Shots of a wampa breaking through one of the walls of the complex and attacking Rebel soldiers were filmed but ultimately dropped from the final version of the movie. In addition, the wall did not crumble properly and the shot was never successfully achieved. Final versions of the script depicted a mass-coordinated wampa attack on Echo Base. There were several scenes shot for the film that showed this incident, as well as a sequence involving C-3PO tearing a warning sign off the door of a wampa pen, followed by a group of snowtroopers entering the pen only to be attacked by the wampas inside. However, these scenes were later deleted and did not make the final version of the film.

Notable appearances
The creature's on-screen ferocity made its appearance in The Empire Strikes Back a popular candidate for recreation in several video games, including The Empire Strikes Back for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force for Game Boy Advance, and LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy.

Other releases have sought to expound upon the wampas' attack on Echo Base, depicting their captivity by the Rebels. The Nintendo 64 release of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was the first visual representation outside of actual filmed footage to show the wampa pens. The game's designers were specially provided with images of deleted scenes of the wampa by Lucasfilm Ltd. The subsequent Star Wars Trilogy Arcade recreated the escape from Echo Base, in which the player must defeat wampas in an attempt to reach the Millennium Falcon.

The Marvel Star Wars comic adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars 40: The Empire Strikes Back: Battleground: Hoth, released in October 1980, was one of the first Star Wars sources to discuss the deleted wampa scenes in an in-universe context, in which references are made to the fact that wampas are being held captive at Echo Base.

Video games and other appearances
The wampa has also made appearances in several other video games. They include Star Wars: Battlefront II, in which a group of wampas battles a variant force of Rebel infantry outside of Echo Base on the planet Hoth and also on Rhen Var. The wampa is one of many wild creatures that cannot be built or harvested for food, and who will attack any unit it comes near in the computer game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Wampas can be encountered on Hoth in Star Wars: Empire at War and the expansion Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption. LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy features an ice skating wampa, one of several humorous elements interjected into the game. It is possible to play as a wampa and a cliff wampa in the "Escape from Echo Base" and "Gall Spaceport" levels, respectively, in the video game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.

The Star Wars Cookbook: Wookiee Cookies and Other Galactic Recipes provides a recipe for "Wampa Snow Cones."

Inconsistencies
There remains a discrepancy between the nature of the shielded pens that held captive several wampas inside Echo Base, as well as the number of wampas caged. The West End Games' sourcebook Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back infers multiple such pens holding several wampas. The video game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire confirms multiple pens and depicts the wampas as being held behind reinforced cages inside of the pens. However, the reference book Star Wars: Complete Locations, which offers an extensively detailed cross-section of the base, includes only one such wampa pen without interior cages. In this small illustration the wampas are seemingly left to roam free within the small pen, while in the close confines of one another.

Non-canon
The wampa makes several non-canononical appearances.

The Great Golden C-3PO Hunt tells of the search for the rogue C-3PO following the First Battle of Tatooine. During the hunt a group of four stormtroopers are eventually led to Hoth where an Imperial Army pilot in the cockpit of an All Terrain Scout Transport informs them he has seen a wampa, among other things, but no golden droid.

The wampa makes three non-canonical appearances in the Star Wars Tales comic series. In the short story Hunger Pains, it is revealed that the wampa that attacked Skywalker did so because her children were hungry, while Chewbacca retrieves the bracelet of a dead girl from a wampa cave in Ghosts of Hoth. In The Secret Tales of Luke's Hand!, Luke Skywalker's hand, severed in the duel with Darth Vader on Cloud City, returns to Hoth to discover the similarly severed arm of the wampa that was maimed by Skywalker. Just as Skywalker had done years before, his hand uses the Force to grab a nearby lightsaber and finishes off the wampa appendage.

The comic Star Wars Infinities: The Empire Strikes Back retells of Skywalker's wampa attack and subsequent escape from the creature's cave; however, he dies on the Hoth wastes before he can be rescued by Han Solo. The Marvel Star Wars comic Star Wars 78: Hoth Stuff describes how pilots Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson survived the Battle of Hoth, but were unable to escape and found themselves stranded on the ice planet for months. There, they fended off numerous wampa attacks.

In the young reader novel Choose Your Own Star Wars Adventure: The Empire Strikes Back, the reader can opt to let Skywalker die at the hands of the wampa and instead choose to return to Echo Base.

Skywalker encounters wampas as generic enemies on the ice planets of Thaldo, Neshtab, Etorasp, Lokondo, and a fifth unidentified world in the game Star Wars: Yoda Stories.

Non-canon appearances

 * LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
 * LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
 * The Great Golden C-3PO Hunt
 * Hunger Pains
 * Ghosts of Hoth
 * Star Wars Infinities: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Choose Your Own Star Wars Adventure: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Star Wars: Yoda Stories
 * Star Wars 78: Hoth Stuff
 * The Return of Tag & Bink: Special Edition
 * The Secret Tales of Luke's Hand