Quockran

"Why certainly, sir, I'd be glad to help, but I must tell you that I really don't know very much about this place. You see, we're all droids here."

- A Quockran droid hides their existence

The Quockrans were a sentient species of slugs native to the planet Quockra-4. The species had a large, fat body that tapered to a tail. Their torso also had two arms, ending in stubby digits. The black-skinned Quockrans had no differentiated internal organs. During their evolution, their homeworld was a moist planet. However, the climate changed, becoming dry and hot. This drove the Quockrans society underground, apart from short forays to the surface. The Quockrans were a xenophobic species, desiring isolation from the all other species. When the Minos Cluster was colonized late in the administration of the Galactic Republic, offworlders reached their homeworld. The Quockrans responded to this violation of their isolation by manufacturing an entire society of droids to act as intermediaries with the offworlders. These droids traded with offworlders, largely keeping the existence of the Quockrans a secret.

Biology and appearance
The Quockrans were a sentient species of giant slugs. Their bodies had a large, fat torso, that tapered to a tail marked with large rolls of fat. Quockrans averaged between 1.4 and 1.7 meters in length, although some could grow as long as 2 meters. The Quockrans had a significant paunch and large drooping breasts. They had two arms, that ended in four stubby fingers. The slug-like creatures had black skin, with splotches and other growths running down their midline and tail, as well as down the top of their arms. They had no differentiated internal organs, which limited the injury a single wound could do to their bodies.

Quockran heads appeared knobbly. Each Quockran had a nose high on its forehead, with its eyes below this, one each side of its heads. Below its nose, was a large mouth, filled with sharp teeth. Quockran chins were large and drooping.

Society and culture
The Quockrans were a xenophobic species, avoiding contact with other species if at all possible. While they despised offworlders, this rarely manifested as violence towards them. They were indifferent to galactic affairs and refused to get involved in political causes such as the Rebellion. If a Quockran was forced to interact with other species, they were surly and uncooperative, preferring, simply, to be left alone.

To facilitate their isolation, the Quockran manufactured an entire society of droids to interact with offworlders in their homeworld's sole city. Composed of thousands of different droid designs, both Imperial models and other more exotic styles, and numbering over ten million individual units, the droids appeared to manage all the affairs of Quockra-4. The droids followed a hierarchy: three-armed yellow repair droids were at the top, giving out the most orders in their machine language; red worker droids were in the middle; Imperial droids were at the bottom, functioning as translators for the yellow droids. With this system in place, the Quockrans were able to live far below ground, only emerging on the surface at night to loll about in the cooling desert sands.

History
The Quockrans evolved on Quockra-4, the fourth planet in the Quockra system, a star system in the remote Minos Cluster of the southern Outer Rim Territories. The planet was originally moist, and the Quockrans lived on the surface. However, the climate changed, becoming a homogeneous desert, with several large salt flats. The climate reached extremes of temperature, with soaring highs during the day and frigid temperatures at night. This drove the Quockrans deep underground, although they still occasionally emerged at night to enjoy the cooler, damper air.

When the Minos Cluster was colonized, late in the administration of the Galactic Republic, the Quockrans created a droid society to interact with the newly arrived offworlders. The Quockrans used these droids as intermediaries for trading, and most inhabitants of the Minos Cluster were unaware they existed. Any who did, and who tried to interfere with Quockran affairs quickly found themselves in trouble.

Shortly after the Battle of Yavin in 1 ABY, a researcher from the Core Worlds tried to discover the "real natives of Quockra-4". To facilitate his research, he offered a reward of up to undefined3,000 to traders for information on the architects of the exotic droids on Quockra-4. This led to some adventurers exploring tunnels below the planet's surface, encountering numerous groups of droids along the way&mdash;which progressively ignored them, ordered them to leave, and finally attacked them&mdash;before discovering Quockrans. These Quockrans refused to communicate with the adventurers.

Behind the scenes
"You: fast moving, multi-appendaged, literate. Age not important, chins a must. I like scrapping asteroids, quiet plows on the beach, laser-lit feeding cycles, film. Hobbies include basket puncturing, lip moisturizing, magnetic burglaries. I want more out of existence than wind harassment and empty teeth locks. If you wake up at night wanting someone to cuddle you, send me a signal."

- The Ytha's personal advertisement in Monsters and Aliens from George Lucas

The Quockrans were created by Mark Rein-Hagen and Stewart Wieck for Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters, a roleplaying game sourcebook published by West End Games in 1990. This book, and its second edition, included an adventure seed in which players tried to discover the Quockran species, although no canonical ending for this encounter was specified. This information was republished, albeit slightly condensed, in Alien Encounters in 1998. Alien Encounters changed their height from the 2 meters established in Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters to 1.4–1.7 meters.

Alien Encounters also included an illustration of a Quockran. The image used was a reworking of early concept art by Ralph McQuarrie of the character Jabba Desilijic Tiure, who appeared in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi in 1983, and was identified as a member of the Hutt species. The concept art was published in The Art of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi later that same year. A similar image by McQuarrie was included in Monsters and Aliens from George Lucas, a non-canonical work published in 1993 that collected together concept designs created in various George Lucas projects. This book accompanied the image with a small blurb in the form of a personal advertisement. This identified the species as a "Ytha" and requested a "hard-shelled creature for friendship / possible relationship."

In the West End Games roleplaying game, Quockran are given statistics for players to use them as their own characters. Compared with the average Human, their perception attribute is slightly higher, while their technical skills are significantly higher. Their knowledge and dexterity scores are slightly lower than Humans, while their mechanical and strength based attributes are significantly lower. An exception is made to this low strength score when resisting damage, for which their score is significantly higher than the average Human.