Salacious B. Crumb/Legends

Salacious B. Crumb was a Kowakian monkey-lizard employed as a court jester for Hutt crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure. Known for his shrill laugh and sadistic sense of humor, Crumb started out as little more than vermin on Kwenn Space Station during the days of the Galactic Republic, eventually escaping onto a ship belonging to Jabba the Hutt.
When Jabba found Crumb eating from his food bowl, he attempted to digest him, though the Kowakian monkey-lizard escaped, covering Jabba's two henchmen with goo in the process. Jabba found this extremely amusing, and offered Crumb a role as his court jester; if Salacious managed to amuse Jabba at least once a day, he would be allowed to eat and drink as much as he wished. However, if he failed to do so, he would be killed. For over a dozen years he lived in Jabba's Palace, playing many tricks and practical jokes on some of the palace's regulars, and becoming one of the most disliked members of Jabba's court.
He died in 4 ABY, when Jabba's sail barge exploded over the Great Pit of Carkoon.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Salacious Crumb was born on the planet Kowak, and was the cousin of Gibberous Crumb.. He somehow managed to wind up on Kwenn Space Station, located on the border of the Mid Rim and Outer Rim. There, Crumb was treated as lowly vermin, though in truth he was very intelligent. He was, however, a nuisance to those who maintained the station, and eventually they could no longer put up with this parasite, and employed Mantilorrian rat-catchers to hunt him down. Crumb managed to evade them for a time, though eventually, with the pursuers hot on his tail, Crumb was forced to take refuge in a vessel which had stopped at Kwenn station.The Essential Guide to CharactersGalaxy Guide 5: Return of the Jedi
Although Crumb was unaware at the time, the ship belonged to Jabba Desilijic Tiure, an extremely wealthy and powerful Hutt crime lord who operated out of Tatooine. Jabba was on one of his rare excursions offworld, accompanied by his two most prominent henchmen, Bidlo Kwerve and Bib Fortuna; he had to settle an important debt on Kwenn space station. While Jabba was absent attending to business, Crumb sneaked aboard his ship, hiding in the Hutt's lavish chambers. Crumb helped himself to some of Jabba's delicacies, though it was not long before the Hutt crimelord returned, furious to find another being sitting playfully in his feeding bowl. Enraged, the Hutt attempted to swallow Salacious whole, though the little monkey-lizard was far too quick for him, and swiftly evaded his every move. With the bowl sitting precariously on his head, Crumb darted and lunged from rafter to rafter, until Jabba's two henchmen, Bidlo Kwerve and Bib Fortuna, entered the room, arguing about something, as was the norm.
The two majordomos were preoccupied with their argument to notice that Crumb was perched just above them; the mischievous monkey-lizard dropped the bowl, filled with a green, goo-like substance, directly onto the two's heads. Covered in the green goo, Kwerve attempted to fire his sidearm at Crumb, though the goo had interfered with the weapon's internal workings, and all it did was fire more goo onto Fortuna. While his henchmen were livid, Jabba had taken a liking to the spindly creature which had stolen onto his ship, and was almost delirious with laughter at the events which Crumb had caused. Jabba managed to stop his men from killing each other, and beckoned for Crumb to come down and speak with him. The Kowakian was offered a job and a future working effectively as Jabba's court jester in his magnificent palace on Tatooine. There were, however, strings attached: Crumb had to make Jabba laugh at least once a day—failure to do so would result in him being eaten by Jabba. Confident he would be able to entertain Jabba daily, Crumb obliged, and traveled with the Hutt and his men back to his palace on Tatooine.
===Court jester===
Crumb became something of a fixture in Jabba's court, teasing, mocking and cackling at practically anyone and everyone who visited the palace. He sat at the base of Jabba's dias, sleeping and eating when there was nothing to be made fun of. Jabba was very fond of the little monkey-lizard, though most others were not; Bubo longed to digest him, while two of Jabba's most senior subordinates—Ephant Mon and Bib Fortuna—sought to end his life. Crumb, however, had survived any attempts to end his life, and by 0 BBY, he had retained his position as court jester. He was alongside Jabba when Greedo, a young Rodian bounty hunter, came to the desert citadel hoping to gain exclusive bounty rights to Han Solo, a smuggler who owed Jabba a large sum of money. It was one of the rare occasions that Crumb did not attempt to ridicule a guest, though he watched on with interest from Jabba's dais. Although Crumb spent the majority of his time lounging alongside Jabba, he sometimes wandered from there, playing tricks on any guests of Jabba's. He also spent time with Jabba's band, perched behind the Ortolan musician named Max Rebo; Salacious liked to dance to the music produced by the band. When Jabba had unwanted or unwelcome guests, Crumb served to intimidate them by malevolently repeating any of Jabba's threats.Shadows of the Empire (comics) This also made him very unpopular among outsiders.
===Melvosh Bloor===
Sometime during his stay in Jabba's Palace, Crumb greeted Melvosh Bloor, a Kalkal professor, who was visiting Jabba's Palace in order to get an audience with the Hutt crimelord, with plans to write a report on Jabba. Bloor was to rendezvous with Darian Gli, a spy of Lady Valarian—Jabba's largest on-world rival and competitor—who had promised to get him an interview with Jabba. In truth, Gli had been killed, though Bloor was unaware of this; Crumb took advantage of the professor's ignorance.
Salacious played on Bloor's assumption that he was indeed Valarian's contact, laughing at him and attempting to frighten him, to the extent that the Kalkal had almost fired at him when he first emerged from the shadows of one of the palace's corridors. However, he did not shoot the monkey-lizard, who led him to a dark chamber off the corridor, where Bloor hoped to speak in private with who he erroneously thought was his contact. Though he was initially repulsed by the creature, Bloor began to build trust in Crumb, who was listening to the man's every words, occasionally offering a repetition of the Kalkal's words. Bloor misconstrued this as a sign of Crumb's agreement with his statements, further indicating that the Kowakian was trustworthy.
When Crumb learned that the visitor's true contact had guaranteed a meeting with Jabba, he offered to Bloor to do so, knowing that the results would most likely be spectacularly entertaining. However, Crumb's increasingly common explosions of laughter and screams were beginning to trouble Melvish, and his previous sense of trust was quickly diminishing. When his supposed guide told him that a creature named Salacious Crumb had ended the life of another professor—Bloor's superior, P'tan—Melvish Bloor attempted to back out of the deal, though the prospect of authoring a report of the Hutt crimelord was too inviting for him to turn down, so he continued following the little monkey-lizard. When they reached Jabba's Palace, Bloor naïvely announced his name and title, and what he wished to conduct with Jabba. As Crumb had expected, Jabba refused, citing that if he told the professor his secrets, any of his rivals could freely examine them.
Furious at yet another academic having entered his court, Jabba scorned Crumb, calling him by name. Bloor instantly realized he had been tricked, and that his fate would likely mirror that of P'tan. With Bloor surrounded by Gamorrean guards, Crumb began to laugh at him, telling him that it was he who had assumed Crumb was Darian Gli, and telling Jabba that the professor had insulted him. Bloor still had his blaster hidden away, however, and grabbed a hold of Salacious, sticking the barrel of the weapon forcefully into the creature's nose. Suddenly, however, Jabba had a change of mind, and agreed to answer Bloor's questions. Crumb watched, perplexed, as the professor's datapad filled to the brink; with the interview over, Bloor thanked Jabba and prepared to depart.
The Hutt, however, had grown tired of Crumb's antics, and this was the second occasion that he had brought academics into the palace in an attempt to amuse the Hutt. Jabba asked but one thing of Melvish Bloor: to make him laugh. A gleeful Crumb watched Bloor struggle to think of a joke that would amuse Jabba, and when he did, the Hutt announced that he had heard it before. Bloor was killed by Jabba's fearsome rancor below his court, though Crumb had yet to earn his pay by making Jabba laugh for that day. He did so by joking on a phrase the late professor had mentioned earlier, "publish or perish." Jabba was amused, and allowed Salacious to continue to act as court jester.
====The Rescue of Han Solo/Jabba's Demolition Games====
Salacious was lounging with Jabba and his slave Oola when two droids were escorted to the throne room by Bib Fortuna, claiming they had a message for Jabba. The droids, C-3PO and R2-D2, played a holographic message from Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, who requested an audience with Jabba to bargain for the life of the newly captured Han Solo, and that the droids were to serve as goodwill tokens. Jabba disregarded the message, claiming that he had no intention of parting with his "favorite decoration," to which Crumb and the court cackled uproariously. Jabba then had the droids sent to maintanence to prepare for their service to him.
Later that day Crumb was listening to a rendition of Jedi Rocks performed by the Max Rebo Band when Jabba commanded Oola to come to him. Oola vehemently refused and Jabba then dropped her into the Rancor pit where she was eaten alive. Crumb joined the audience in jeering as she was executed. Suddenly, a blaster was fired and the bounty hunter Boushh appeared with the Solo's Wookiee companion Chewbacca in tow. Crumb watched Jabba haggle with the bounty hunter over the final price of the bounty on Chewbacca and hid in fear when the Ubese pulled out and activated a thermal detonator in an attempt to force Jabba to pay 50,000 credits. Jabba was impressed and offered 35,000, to which Boushh agreed. After the deal had been struck, Salacious returned to the reveling of the palace along with the rest of the court.
During Jabba's Demolition Games, Crumb remained by his master's side throughout his dealings with the contestants of his new enterprise. During the celebration honoring Boba Fett's many victories, Crumb gleefully partook in the festivities with a bottle of unidentified alcohol. Crumb also partook in the public humiliation of Jabba's beastmaster Malakili for an unknown failure, sitting on his head and laughing mockingly at the human, which Jabba found incredibly entertaining and even joined Salacious in his laughter. In addition, Salacious was delighted at the presence of the rebel pilots Tia and Ghia on Jabba's throne after the hutt had them enslaved, glad for the presence of new targets near at hand for heckling. The monkey-lizard took every opportunity to mock them during their duties until they managed to escape from the palace with the assitance of the Ubese bounty hunter Boussh, who was actually Princess Leia Organa who had fallen in love with the Corellian smuggler Han Solo and had infiltrated the palace to free him from Jabba.Star Wars: Demolition
Later that night, Organa unfroze Han Solo from the carbonite block in the throne room. Unbeknownst to Organa, Jabba and his court had been lying in wait and captured the Rebels almost immediately. Solo attempted to bargain with Jabba, but the Hutt refused to listen to his offer and sent him to the dungeons, which Salacious found amusing. The Hutt then commanded his guards to bring the Organa to him, to which the Princess responded by threatening Jabba that he would regret this course of action. Jabba sarcastically brushed off Organa's threat before licking her face, causing Crumb to laugh uproariously at her disgust.
After a late-night celebration a few days later, Crumb was sitting between Jabba and a now-enslaved Organa as they slept on the dais. Skywalker arrived to rescue his friends and mind-tricked Fortuna into giving him an audience with Jabba. Once Jabba awoke, Crumb watched as Skywalker tried to bargain with the Hutt, only to be dropped into the rancor pit. Crumb cheered with the rest of the court as Skywalker battled the creature, only to be stunned when the Jedi killed it. Enraged, Jabba sentenced Skywalker, Solo, and Chewbacca to be taken to the Great Pit of Carkoon and fed to the sarlaac. As the prisoners were taken away, Crumb laughed at their impending doom.
===Death===
Salacious Crumb accompanied Jabba to Carkoon onboard his sail barge, the Khetanna. When they reached the pit, Skywalker started attacking the guards with his lightsaber, while Organa strangled Jabba to death. During the chaos, Crumb attacked C-3P0 and started ripping out the droid's photoreceptors. He was then shocked away by R2-D2, causing him to lunge into the rafters. When Skywalker and Organa fired the deck cannon at the barge, Crumb died in the following explosion.
==Behind the scenes==
As seen in the 1985 documentary From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga, Crumb's puppeteer Tim Rose actually gave Crumb a voice (other than Crumb's laughing as seen in Return of the Jedi), which he frequently used in conjunction with the puppet to joke around on set. The voice heard in the film is that of Mark Dodson.
Bib Fortuna actor, Michael Carter via an interview on TheForce.net, has alluded to several cut scenes from Return of the Jedi that involved Jess and Salacious B. Crumb. Some of these scenes appear in "Lapti Nek": The Music Video from Jabba's Palace.
==Appearances==
===Non-canon appearances===
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* Star Wars Infinities: Return of the Jedi
*The Return of Tag & Bink: Special Edition
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
===Ambiguously-canon appearances===
*"Lapti Nek": The Music Video from Jabba's Palace
Category:Criminals
Category:Desilijic servants
Category:Individuals with he/him pronouns
Category:Kowakian monkey-lizards
Category:Males
Category:Tatooinians