Yarkora

Saelt-Marae, the whiskered, broad-snouted alien lurking in the corners of Jabba the Hutt's palace in Return of the Jedi, is the only Yarkora most of the galaxy has ever knowingly met, and even his name was probably a lie. The fans who spotted that camel-faced figure in the background dubbed him "Yak Face"; the denizens of Jabba's court knew him as a friendly merchant who liked to listen. He was neither. Saelt-Marae was a centuries-old confidence trickster and information broker, planted in the palace to befriend Jabba's people, learn their secrets, and report every plot back to the Hutt. That single hidden operator tells you almost everything about his species: Yarkoras trade in trust they never return.

Physically, Yarkoras are tall bipedal mammals descended from hoofed ungulates, standing around two meters with smooth beige fur, immense three-fingered hands tipped in heavy black nails, and a long, flexible snout framed by coarse tufts of whiskered hair. Their long limbs give them a slow, deliberate, almost contemplative walk. The strange part is on the inside: most Yarkoras carry two stomachs (one to digest, one to store food, since they tend to eat all day long) along with four kidneys, three livers, and a host of other redundant organs. That biological redundancy is why they are so famously hard to kill and why a Yarkora can live for centuries, shrugging off wounds and ailments that would finish off a human.

Where any of this evolved, nobody can say. The Yarkora homeworld has never been recorded, and that is not an accident of poor cartography. The species simply refuses to disclose where they come from, deflecting every question with the same unhurried evasiveness they bring to everything else. (In Legends, they are placed somewhere in the galaxy's Outer Rim, but the actual world remains deliberately unidentified.) Outsiders are left with a species that travels everywhere and admits to no point of origin.

The secrecy runs all the way down to how they love. Yarkoras are private to a degree that unnerves other species, and their culture treats intimacy as something to be earned slowly and in writing. Courtship is conducted by correspondence, long exchanges of letters analyzed line by line, that can stretch across decades before two Yarkoras reach genuine understanding. Saelt-Marae reportedly spent two hundred years courting his chosen mate; she eventually bore him a child, and he then walked away to return to his life of crime, a pattern said to be ordinary among his people, who often keep their own counsel and live apart even when bonded. Sentientologists have noted that some Yarkoras seem to possess a low-level telepathic or empathetic projection (Saelt-Marae was said to use it to deepen the wordless bond with his wife), and a few have wondered whether this is latent Force sensitivity, though the Yarkora, predictably, decline to explain.

Saelt-Marae's story is also where the species touches the larger galaxy. He joined Jabba Desilijic Tiure's entourage on Tatooine roughly a year after the Battle of Yavin, worked the palace as Jabba's quiet informant, and was aboard the sail barge Khetanna at the Great Pit of Carkoon when Luke Skywalker's rescue turned into a massacre. Sources disagree on whether the explosion of the barge killed him or whether, true to Yarkora form, he slipped away and survived. The ambiguity is fitting for a being whose entire trade was never being pinned down.

In SWURPG, a Yarkora is the consummate operator, the player who would rather win a conversation than a firefight. The species is built around the social long game: the Charisma and Wisdom bumps (+2 each) make you a Silver-Tongued Drifter who reads a room before speaking, and the Information Broker and Loner Mindset traits reward working the angles solo and trading in what you overhear, backed by trained Perception. The flip side is the body. With penalties to Strength and Constitution (-2 each) and a Fragile Frame, a Yarkora is a poor brawler who needs to talk, scout, or vanish rather than trade blows. Play one as a con artist, courier, scout, or spy who gathers every secret in the room and gives away nothing in return.

Yarkora are tall, camel-like humanoids with smooth beige fur, long snouts with wide nostrils, and three-fingered hands tipped with large black nails. Tufts of coarse hair frame their snouts, and their long limbs give them a slow, deliberate, almost contemplative gait. Their internal physiology includes redundant organs and two specialized stomachs, providing exceptional longevity and resilience to internal harm. Their senses—particularly sight and hearing—are extraordinarily keen, often surpassing mechanical sensors.

Yarkora are manipulative, perceptive, and endlessly private. They excel at extracting information without revealing anything of themselves. Most prefer to travel alone or operate from the shadows of the galactic underworld as con artists, thieves, negotiators, and information brokers. Their culture is deeply secretive, with traditions—including multi-year written courtship rituals—kept hidden from outsiders. Even married pairs often choose to live separately. Relationships, alliances, and friendships with other species tend to be temporary and utilitarian rather than emotional. Despite this, Yarkora can be charming and refined when it serves their goals, projecting an air of quiet sophistication.