Post by Red on Feb 4, 2007 15:33:27 GMT -5
The Aqualish were tusked bipeds from the planet Ando whose appearance combined aspects of arachnids and aquatic mammals. Aqualish had a reputation for being nasty, crude and aggressive, and generally pursued off-world careers as mercenaries, bounty hunters and pirates. One of the most infamous such Aqualish was the smuggler Ponda Baba.
The three types of Aqualish, the Aquala, the Ualaq, and the Quara, were distinguished by their hands and eyes. Aquala had finned hands, while the Ualaq and Quara had clawed, fingered hands. The fingered Aqualish also varied in the number of eyes—while the Quara, like the Aquala, had two eyes, the less-common Ualaq had four; the Quara had five-fingered hands like those of Humans, while the Ualaq had three-fingered hands with very thick digits. Though Ualaq and Quara only made up about ten per cent of the Aqualish population, their fingered hands made them more comfortable with technology. Thus, they were the species more commonly found off-world. Quara often claimed they were the genetically superior race. Each of the subspecies had their own dialect, but they could understand each other without difficulty. The Quara and Aquala were constantly warring with each other. The Aqualish Civil War was initiatially started by the Aquala, who blamed the Quara for the declining harvests of fish. The Ualaq did not participate in the wars.
When Aqualish discovered sublight space travel capability from an exploratory craft that they destroyed, they began a series of bloody conflicts with their sister world. They embarked on a campaign of unified conquest, sparking the Aqualish-Republic War. After this failed—mainly because of the inferior Aqualish weaponry—their armies were carefully dismantled. As Ando joined the Galactic Republic, the violence became a black mark on the species's reputation, and the Republic initiated several attempts to demilitarize the Aqualish, each ending in conflicts like the Battle of Raquish and the Horos Spine Incident.
By 95 BBY, the Aqualish had colonized fifteen Mid Rim worlds that later formed the Andoan Free Colonies. During the Clone Wars, the Andoan Senator Po Nudo seceded from the Republic, aligning much of the Aqualish species and their homeworld with Count Dooku's Confederacy of Independent Systems. However, the Andoan Free Colonies, represented by Senator Gorothin Vagger, remained loyal to the Republic.
Under Palpatine's Galactic Empire, the Empire took over Ando and turned it into a police state to control the violent Aqualish. Several Imperial and corporate interests were also permitted to ravage Ando's natural resources. Though the Aqualish resented the Empire, they showed no interest in joining the Rebel Alliance.