Tocoyan

Tocoyans were indigenous to the desert world of Tocoya, in the Ktilac Regions. Neb Dulo was a Tocoyan.

Biology and appearance
Tocoyans were humanoid from at least the waist up, with a torso, two arms, a neck, and a head. The hairless cranium itself was roughly dome-shaped, narrowing to a spiky protrusion at the apex and toward the front. From the back, the head displayed three prominent sections. The right- and leftmost portions were convex and rounded, while the middle portion was recessed; this central portion was roughly triangle-shaped, beginning at a point toward the top of the skull and widening until it met the neck.

The front of the neck was a mass of wrinkles and flaps, with a wattle-like protrusion hanging down from the center. Above this, a beak-like snout dominated the Tocoyan face. This muzzle was shaped like a half-cylinder, with the top rounded and the bottom flat. At both sides of the maw, strips of flesh flanked the snout, extending down to fingerlike projections that curved forward and down. The mouth itself was small and circular, with two prominent, flat, white teeth visible from both the upper and lower mandibles. The inside of the mouth was a reddish pink. A pair of small, pink or white eyes flanked the snout. These were half-circles with flat tops and rounded bottoms, ringed by eyelashes. The forehead, which began between these orbs, displayed a prominent recession where the two halves of the skull came together. Two large, triangular ears swept back from the top of the head to about the midpoint of the neck.

Tocoyans had wrinkled skin, which displayed diverse markings. For example, one individual had blue-gray skin with pink patches in areas where the flesh was recessed, such as the upper neck, the upper snout, and the back of the head. A different specimen, on the other hand, had a uniformly pale skin tone. Nevertheless, both of these Tocoyans sported pink skin on the insides of their ears.

Society and culture
The Tocoyans shared a common culture with the Ktilacs and the Murachauns, the two other sentient species of the Ktilac Regions of the Inner Rim. These three species saw themselves as living in symbiosis with one another, each reliant upon and giving aid to the other two. The Tocoyans and their Ktilac and Murachaun comrades considered the Ktilac Regions to be a holy space, and those members of the culture who wandered from its bounds to be heretics, no longer welcome in the area. At least one Tocoyan had a strong natural inclination to guard and protect others.

The Tocoyans ruled over sixty-three star systems within the Ktilac Regions, the same number as their Ktilac and Murachaun partners ruled. These three domains were united as a confederation, its borders closed to non-members. However, the three species maintained three worlds that admitted offworld visitors under certain circumstances: Daedalon, Tun Wala, and Vob.

History
The Tocoyans originated on the desert planet Tocoya. The species came into contact with their galactic neighbors, the Ktilacs and the Murachaun, and the three species established a common government, eventually spreading to occupy sixty-six star systems apiece. Over time, a common culture evolved among the three groups as well.

Visitors from the greater galaxy first breached Tocoyan space sometime between 25,000 and 5,000 BBY. It became part of the Inner Rim, located on or near the Perlemian Trade Route as part of the Slice. The Tocoyans' coexistence with their Ktilac and Murachaun neighbors persisted through several eras of galactic history. The region remained unaligned or contested during the New Sith Wars of 1,004 to 1,000 BBY. Nearly 1,000 years later, the area remained within Galactic Republic space during the Clone Wars. The Tocoyans were still in league with the other species of the Ktilac Regions through the reigns of the Galactic Empire, the New Republic, and the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances. By 137 ABY, the region had fallen within territory considered part of Darth Krayt's Galactic Empire.

Tocoyans in the galaxy
According to Tocoyan religious belief, any member of the species who left the borders of the Ktilac Regions was an apostate, forever banished from the area to live among other species. Nevertheless, some Tocoyans did spread to worlds beyond their home region. One of these was Neb Dulo, a Tocoyan who left Tocoya and joined the court of Jabba the Hutt at the crime lord's palace on Tatooine. Dulo followed a religion known as Davrilat, which revered harmonics. Another Tocoyan was living on Hurd's Moon in 4 ABY. When he and a gang of other street toughs encountered the Human replica droid Guri, they tried to force her to pay to pass them. However, the droid made short work of the Tocoyan and his fellows.

Behind the scenes
The Tocoyan species was created by the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) creature shop during the production of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi for possible inclusion in the Jabba's Palace sequences of the 1983 film. ILM's design reached the maquette stage, but the alien was never translated into a costume for use by one of the film's extras.

However, with the release of Shadows of the Empire: Evolution 1 in February, 1998, penciller Ron Randall and colorist David Nestelle introduced a character based on ILM's abandoned alien design, bringing the species into Star Wars canon. In November of the same year, the Special Edition Limited expansion of Decipher's Star Wars Customizable Card Game included a photo of ILM's maquette superimposed onto a background from Jabba's Palace; the new character was dubbed Neb Dulo, and his homeworld named Tocoya. Dulo's card reflects his "strong protective instincts"; the character increases the defensive values of any aliens present at the same site as him, and he prevents certain special characters from being attacked by an opponent's weapons. With the release of The Essential Atlas in 2008 authors Jason Fry and Daniel Wallace officially named the species and placed their home planet in the Ktilac Regions.

The Essential Atlas suggests that the Tocoyans shared their culture with two other species, the Murachaun and the Ktilacs. According to Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, a book published by Wizards of the Coast in 2004, the Murachaun were honest, order-loving, and congenial beings with a strong work ethic. The book further explains that Murachaun disliked both injustice and meat-eating. The species suffered enslavement at the hands of the Galactic Empire, driving many of its members to secretly support the Rebel Alliance. Based on cultural homogeneity described in The Essential Atlas, these aspects of Murachaun culture and temperament may have applied to the Tocoyans as well.

Appearances

 * Shadows of the Empire: Evolution 1

Notes and references
Токояне