Letaki

The Letaki were a species of sentient beings distinguished by eight tentacles, an egg-shaped head, four eyes, and a sharp beak. Two sets of gills allowed them to breathe in both air and water. They were able to focus their eyes on more than one object at a time, and to use their limbs to manipulate several items independently. As carnivores, Letaki gutted their dinners. The Letaki vocal range was higher than that of most species. The musician Evar Orbus, leader of Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-Wailers, was a Letaki.
==Biology and appearance==
With eight tentacles and at least two feet, the Letaki were a non-humanoid sentient species. They were able to use several tentacles in tandem, which allowed a Letaki musician to play a number of instruments simultaneously. The sheer multiplicity of their appendages made it difficult for non-Letaki to keep all the manipulators apart, a weakness that the Letaki Evar Orbus exploited by wearing a prosthetic arm in which he hid a weapon. At least some Letaki sported pink skin mottled with a darker shade.
An ovoid head sat atop the Letaki neck and torso. The egg-shaped cranium featured four shiny, black eyes; a sharp, stubby, yellow beak; and two pointed ears. A Letaki was able to focus each of the four visual organs independently, an ability that allowed members of the species to monitor several directions at once. Their sense of hearing was comparatively less developed, falling below the aural capabilities of the Bith species. The Letaki tongue was dark pink in color. Six short, fleshy appendages with ventral suction cups formed a line across the brow. Letaki had two sets of gills, which enabled them to breathe both in an atmosphere and underwater. The air gills resembled flaps of skin, located behind the eyes.Star Wars Encyclopedia
Letaki had male and female genders. They were carnivores who gutted their dinner before eating it. When he encountered a group of Letaki around 2 ABY, the Human smuggler Han Solo assumed the Letaki beak would make drinking difficult; nevertheless, the Human found the tentacled beings' behavior erratic and assumed they were intoxicated. Letaki blood was colored green. The species was capable of prodigious vocal abilities; the voice of Evar Orbus, for instance, ranged across eleven sectaves.
==Society and culture==
Letaki used their tentacles to gesture and point during communication. They expressed emotions through their sense organs, which fluttered to convey feelings. Conversely, Han Solo assumed that Letaki likely would not to be able to read the subtleties of Human facial expressions. At least some Letaki were comfortable in arid environments like that of the planet Tatooine. Members of the species were known to wear clothing.
==Letaki in the galaxy==
One Letaki who gained a level of prominence in the galaxy was Evar Orbus, a musician native to the planet Letaki,Star Wars Trilogy Sourcebook, Special Edition who founded a band known as Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-Wailers. When Orbus and his group made their way to Tatooine under a contract to play at the Wookiee Chalmun's cantina, Orbus felt he had hit the big time. However, the cantina's current band, Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, resented the competition; under the pretense of sending an airbus to transport Orbus and his group to their new performance venue, they attacked the Letaki and his crew. Although Orbus was able to defend himself with a weapon hidden in a fake tentacle, he was fatally wounded in the skirmish. The other members of his group, under the nominal leadership of the Ortolan Max Rebo, renamed themselves the Max Rebo Band and found work for Jabba the Hutt.
Around 2 ABY, a group of Letaki was present within a played-out asteroid mine. The Letaki were approached by the Human pirate Alia Terae, whom they told about the slave trade that passed through the asteroid and the path through the mine's tunnels to reach the slave holding pens. Terae then led her companions, Han Solo and the Human pilot Sian Tesar, per the Letaki's instructions.Razor's Edge
==Behind the scenes==
Author John Gregory Betancourt created the Letaki Evar Orbus for his short story "And the Band Played On: The Band's Tale," which was included in the 1996 Bantam Spectra collection Tales from Jabba's Palace. In 2002, the forty-sixth issue of The Official Star Wars Fact File magazine misspelled the species's name as "Lataki." The species was first visually depicted when Orbus was drawn by artist Justine Mara Andersen for the article "Who's Who in the Max Rebo Band," published in the April 15, 2003 sixty-seventh issue of the Star Wars Insider magazine, but the portrait lacks the additional pair of eyes and visible gills which The Official Star Wars Fact File 46 describes Orbus as having, characteristic of his species.
==Appearances==
*Star Wars (1998) 12 
*Razor's Edge 
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==Sources==
*The Essential Guide to Characters
*Star Wars Encyclopedia
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*The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
*The Essential Reader's Companion
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==Notes and references==
 
Category:Sentient species