Throughout the galaxy, Twi'leks are known primarily for their beauty and grace. Their colorful skin tones (including the rare blue-skinned Rutians and red-skinned Lethans) provide a rainbow of exotic diversity. Their agility and dexterity gives them a specific type of grace in their actions and motivations. However, a tragic past covers them with a dark cloud that they have struggled to escape. Twi'leks have been watched by the galaxy with curiosity and lust. Cantina patrons may not realize that watching a Twi'lek's lekku-head tails twirl during an exotic dance is the result of a troubled history rife with slavery and exploitation.
Legend says that the Twi'lek home world of Ryloth maintained an unusual "tide-locked orbit that kept one half of the planet facing the Ryloth system's sun at all times, while the other half remained in a constant state of freezing night." Ryloth acts as a metaphorical representation of the current state of Twi'leks' culture. Like the two opposite stories of Ryloth, the Twi'leks who tell them have a similarly contradictory culture.
At an average height of two meters, Twi'leks walk the dust covered streets of Kala'uun, one of the planet's two capital cities. Their long, slender fingers are tipped with sharp nails that match the pointed teeth of the males. Children rush by on their way to a small gathering to welcome a group of visitors with a traditional dance. It is during these dances that the prominent feature of the Twi'leks stands out. Their colorful head-tails - or lekku - move about in hypnotic waves, hiding their more practical uses.
These lekku, or tchun-tchin as they are called by Twi'leks, are actually used in communication as part of the Twi'lek native language, Ryl. Using spoken words mixed with subtle body and lekku movements, Twi'leks have developed a form of communication that is extremely difficult for other species to master. These subtle movements in the tchun-tchin developed into a full language, entitled Lekku, that the Twi'leks can use to communicate in complete silence.
When Ryloth was first discovered by Republic explorers approximately 6,000 years before the Jedi Civil War (3,959 BBY), the Twi'lek species was rather primitive by galactic standards. They had developed technology to the point of using windmills and turbines to convert the planet's winds to power. The Twi'leks never developed space travel on their own, but some traded with the Republic for passage off world.
It is possible this is what led to some Twi'leks supporting the slavery of their people. Some historians believe that the Twi'leks actually saw the slave trade as a benefit to their species as a whole, and there is evidence that parents sold their children into slavery as a way to save their offspring from the harsh life on Ryloth. It quickly became apparent there was a market for the beauty demonstrated by the Twi'lek females and many of their own kind sought to profit by selling orphaned, and in some cases kidnapped, children.
841 years before the Jedi Civil War, miners discovered ample amounts of Ryll beneath Ryloth's surface. The strong spice was originally mined for medicinal use, but quickly found its way to the underground where it became a favorite recreational drug with highly addictive properties. Still relatively new to the Republic and without their own means to distribute the substance off world, the Twi'leks could not find a suitable way to trade the spice on their own.
By the time Revan and Malak started the Jedi Civil War, the Hutts had taken over Ryloth's mining operations, enslaved the Twi'leks and forced them into the mines. Presently, gangsters control the Ryll spice trade by using smugglers to transport the spice for a quick profit. Some Twi'leks have joined the smuggling front, using their physical beauty and highly resourceful intellect to sneak their illicit cargo past interplanetary customs.
Twi'leks dance and laugh despite the harsh environment into which they were born; it is a shame that most of their off-world relatives do not share in this unity. Ryloth's early acceptance of slavery as well as its heavy economical reliance on spice trafficking commonly gives the Twi'lek a negative connotation. It is uncertain if the other species in Star Wars: The Old Republic view them as members of a beautiful, resilient culture or simply dismiss them as criminals and courtesans.
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Posted 10/19/2010 11:49:10 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 10/16/2010 1:01:44 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 10/18/2010 2:48:17 PMAs a side note, it is not known which continuity TOR will follow if Ryloth is mentioned in-game. Established canon shows a tide-locked planet with a small habitable ring between the two extreme habitats, but the Clone Wars cartoon has shown Ryloth to have a regular rotation. This article attempts to walk the line of trying to figure out how both could exist.
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Posted 10/14/2010 11:05:20 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 10/14/2010 10:21:05 AMYou're half there though.
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Posted 10/14/2010 1:07:35 PMIn addition to Ryl, Twi'leks were also fluent in Lekku language, a silent form of communication using gestures made purely with the lekku.
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Posted 10/14/2010 6:23:53 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 10/14/2010 4:03:57 AM