Barabel

Description
The Barabel are a vicious reptilian species from Barab I with a hunting culture. On average, they stand 2 meters tall and weigh 130 kilograms. Jagged, overlapping, black keratin scales cover their bodies, and the Barabel are said to be able to shed their tails when necessary. They tend to be nocturnal, although they also engage in some daytime activity in their cave homes.

Barabel are famously mean-spirited. This normally manifests itself in direct physical confrontation, but Barabel have no qualms with property destruction, traps, indirect fire, or even crueler tactics. Outsiders sometimes confuse Barabel viciousness with stupidity. Though technologically primitive, Barabel are socially and economically adaptable. A Barabel trader will attempt to harm business rivals with rough negotiations in the conference room as zealously as she would rake with her claws in a fistfight.

Barabel live in cave complexes that honeycomb the planet's mantle. Their homes are not complex, or even all that comfortable to non-Barabel. They live in rock homes decorated with skins, bones, shells, and various artifacts from a lifetime of hunts. They organize themselves by clans, and several clans form communities that occupy entire cave complexes. Leadership is generally determined by combat, but clan elders can mitigate a leader's influence, both formally and informally.

The largest communities have as many as 10,000 people, but most number in the hundreds. Individuals rarely travel farther than a hundred kilometers from their home in their lives. However, nearly every community has or knows of a Barabel who has left the planet to work as a mercenary or bounty hunter.

Communities remain in contact by hunting in overlapping regions and compete with each other by bringing back kills after each night's hunt. A community gives its biggest kill to the leader of another community who shares the hunting ground. The rival community might suffer the indignity of having to accept a greater kill, tacitly admitting the first community's greater power and prowess.

These nightly exchanges form a loose worldwide community in which prestige is gained through giving away the largest, most dangerous creatures found on any given night. No overt planetary government exists, but the largest clans have representatives in Alater-ka who have learned to negotiate with barbed rhetoric rather than pure combat.

Despite their reputation, the Barabel have learned from visiting Jedi and display impressive unity for such a vicious species. Hatchmates are closer than most Human families, and entire clans will declare war for a slight against one member. Of course, murderous fights still break out between individuals and whole clans, but the Barabel have generally learned to save their savagery for hunts or off-worlders.

Even years later, outsiders are still distrusted. Within Barabel memory, off-worlders have either hunted them or competed for good hunting. Non-Barabel are generally safe in Alater-ka, but traveling to another community or taking part in a hunt is an excellent way to get "accidentally" assaulted. Jedi who prove their station are treated deferentially, however, and can smooth over problems with a calm word and the flash of a lightsaber.

Abilities
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Society
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Naming Scheme
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Terms
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