This Is One Of The Most Horrifying Creatures In 'Star Wars' Lore
With the Halloween season upon us, our minds turn to the spooky and the macabre as pumpkins become Jack-o-lanterns and children don all manner of costumes to roam the neighborhood in pursuit of a sugar high. The realm of goblins, ghouls, ghosts and gore certainly isn't limited to our planet. We've recently seen what the Marvel universe would look like after being ravaged by a zombie virus from the Quantum Realm and Star Wars got into the holiday spirit with LEGO Star Wars: Terrifying Tales.
The LEGO special, a tour through Vader's castle on Mustafar, gave us just a taste of the spooky side of Star Wars. From Clone Wars episode, Witches of the Mist, to the popular Star Wars horror novel, Red Harvest, the galaxy far, far, away is the setting for a plethora of horror stories and the home of many strange and terrifying monsters. One of the scariest and most bizarre of these creatures is known as the starweird.
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Much like the puurgil of Star Wars: Rebels or the space slug from Empire, starweirds were space-faring creatures; drifting through the void of space in search of prey. Unlike these other void dwellers, the space weird is humanoid in appearance. Tall, gaunt, and nightmarish, bone-thin to the point of emaciation, with long, witchy white hair and black talons, they make for a truly terrifying visage. Beyond their appearance, the starweird struck fear into their victims with a terrifying telepathic scream, disorienting and often disabling their intended target. Able to wield the Force in their search for prey, starweirds held a deep-seated hatred for Force-sensitives, often attacking Jedi and Sith alike. Perhaps most chilling of all, the few survivors of starweird attacks stated that the ghostly being's facial features mirrored their own.
Spacers, much like sailors here on Earth, have a wide variety of colloquial legends, myths, and tall tales. Many people, upon hearing the physical and behavioral description of the starweird, discounted it as a ghost story, told by a spacer who had been on the hyperspace lanes too long, or else got into their own spice supply. It's hard to blame those that discounted the tales. The thought of one of these skeletal, ghostly beings, drifting through the void toward a disabled ship floating dead in space is ghoulish at best. Coupled with tales of starweirds materializing onboard a ship traveling through hyperspace and attacking with Force-lightning and razor claws, of course most beings would be in staunch denial of the existence of such a nightmare.
The Star Wars universe is home to many bizarre creatures, not all of them as well known as the tauntaun or rancor. Starweirds are a rather niche member of Legends content, created for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game by Wizards of the Coast. Beyond their description in the gameplay manual, Ultimate Adversaries, starweirds are also briefly mentioned in Star Wars: The Old Republic, the 2011 MMORPG, in an Easter Egg that can be found on Hoth.
With Star Wars continuing to reference obscure, yet fan-favorite, Legends content, starweirds could eventually make the crossover into canon. Especially given Dave Filoni's vast knowledge of the universe and his willingness to push Star Wars into the strangest of stories (a singing AP-5 comes to mind). If starweirds are eventually allowed to haunt canon stories, there is no doubt that the spectral human form, appearing onboard your ship in the middle of hyperspace, floating toward you and screaming into your mind, would be a horrifying sight and on-screen experience on par with the spookiest of Star Wars.
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Sources: CBR, Wookieepedia
