Mud yak

"That was a load of mud-yak swill! Isn't there anyone on this rock who knows how to tell a story?"

―Ibess the Qua — 20?cb=20250116042720

Mud yaks,^[3] also spelled mud-yak,^[2] were a type of hairy, horned mammal that lived in swamps and marshes. They were herbivores native to the planet Ossus that grazed in marshes and traveled in herds. Mud yaks grew to be three meters (9 feet, 11 inches) in length with brown hair and short tusks. Although they were timid they would defend themselves with the long horns that sloped downward from the tops of their skulls.^[1]

The phrase "load of mud-yak swill" was used^[2] by 3 ABY^[4] to mean something was not good or not believable. Ibess the Qua, a member of the Rokana Raiders, invoked the phrase in^[2] 3 ABY,^[4] when he was disappointed in the caliber of stories his fellow raiders were telling at the tavern in their base in the Sayma Nebula.^[2] In 9 ABY,^[5] the Jedi Luke Skywalker briefly stepped on one of the creature's backs while training with the youngling Grogu at Skywalker's Jedi Temple on Ossus.^[6]

Behind the scenes[]

Mud yaks first appeared in "Chapter 6: From the Desert Comes a Stranger," the sixth episode of the live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett,^[6] which was released on February 2, 2022.^[7] The audio descriptions of the episode described them as a "yak-like animal"^[8] but they were first identified as mud yaks in the 2023 junior novelization of the series written by Joe Schreiber.^[3] The alternate spelling of "mud-yak" was introduced in the "A Pirate's Fortune" expansion for Massive Entertainment video game Star Wars Outlaws,^[2] which released on May 15, 2025.^[9]