Mimphs were small, semi-sentient creatures native to the Forest Moon of Endor. Although not fully sentient, mimphs were intelligent, and they were able to comprehend and use language to communicate with fully sentient beings like Ewoks. They were also able to manipulate tools and build villages, and teams of mimphs could even capture much larger prey.
In 3 ABY, a group of mimphs from a community near Bright Tree Village captured the Ewok Wicket Wystri Warrick and put him on display in their village. When a monstrous hanadak rampaged through the village, Warrick defeated the beast and saved the village residents. Later, when Endor was covered in snow and ice by the Snow King, the village was buried, and the mimphs had to use shovels to remove the massive amounts of snow until the Snow King was defeated.
Mimphs were tiny, semi-sentient creatures which, as adults, stood about ankle-high to an Ewok. A mimph walked on two legs and had two three-fingered hands; two long, forked ears; a flat, heart-shaped tail; and a mouth full of white teeth. Mostly covered in pink fur, the lower half of a mimph's face was white, as was the inside of its ears. Their two eyes were mostly white, with black pupils and pink lids, and were situated below two eyebrows, which could be white or black. Two whiskers protruded from both sides of the small, red nose. While their limbs were quite thin compared to their bodies, their heads were large—about the size of the torso. Some mimphs were known to grow white facial hair. To Ewoks, mimphs seemed to have high-pitched voices.
A mimph village
Mimphs lived in villages, which contained houses constructed from firm plant material around blades of tall, thick grass, to which the material was tied at the top and bottom. Many mimph homes were brown with green roofs and balconies; a single round hole allowed access to the interior. Larger structures with similar color schemes and layouts were often constructed atop tree trunks. Like their homes, mimph clothing was often similar; a standard design consisted of a tan body suit with feet, decorated by a horizontal yellow stripe across the chest. Some also had a red diamond centered on the stomach. However, mimphs had several different types of headgear; variants included a horned helmet worn by Masher.
Despite their small stature in comparison to many other species, mimphs were fierce hunters, frequently banding together in parties to capture larger prey. Their limited mental capacity did not inhibit their ability to outwit sentient opponents, with whom they could communicate if they spoke a mutual language, and they mastered the art of hunting by using lengths of rope and large, wheeled vehicles to more easily transport their prizes. Mimph children were cared for by their mothers, and many mimphs were known to own and use snow shovels, which they used to clean their villages in the winter. Fascinated by larger creatures, mimphs were known to put those that they captured on display for the general public's entertainment.
The diminutive mimphs evolved on the Forest Moon of Endor, a moon with a wide variety of terrains, where they constructed villages and hunted for larger prey. By 3 ABY, one such village had been founded near a river not far from the Ewoks of Bright Tree Village.
The mimphs put Wicket on display.
In that year, the village was the home of the mimphs Smasher, Thrasher, and Masher. These three mimphs, as well as one other, found the young Ewok Wicket Wystri Warrick unconscious on the banks of the nearby river. Warrick, who had been battling a fearsome, gargantuan beast called a hanadak in an attempt to acquire a fang for his Belt of Honor, awoke to the four mimphs standing on top of him. Tied to a wheeled vehicle with the mimphs' rope, Warrick was unable to escape, and the mimphs declared that they would take him back to their village. There, the mimphs found Warrick a giant in comparison to themselves. The immense Ewok was dangerous too; a simple sneeze by the outsider was enough to destroy several of the village's tiny buildings. The mimph leaders kept the Ewok tied up behind a curtain that overlooked the settlement. As the residents cheered and shouted to see the Ewok, Masher introduced Warrick as "the monstrous; the fearsome: Wicket!" The curtain was drawn back, and the entire village stared at the giant Ewok in horror. As the crowd gazed, mimph mothers shielded their children's eyes, and Masher asked Warrick to put on a show by roaring. The Ewok, however, refused, and instead mumbled the expletive "kvark" to himself. As the mimphs cheered on, repeating the word, the hanadak heard the commotion and entered the village. The beast tore through the area and destroyed buildings with its feet and hands. The four mimphs who had captured Warrick leaped onto the hanadak's leg in a futile attempt to slow the beast down. Warrick, concerned for the mimphs' safety, tore free of his bonds.
The hanadak continued its rampage, swatting the four mimphs into the air, but they were caught by Warrick, who set them down gently and grabbed the curtain that the mimphs had used to hide him. After climbing a tall tree, Warrick leaped onto the hanadak's shoulders and, using the curtain as a blindfold, led the hanadak toward the river where the mimphs had kidnapped him. Warrick leaped to safety as the hanadak fell in to the water and was dropped over a waterfall. The Ewok then expressed to the mimphs his disappointment in having failed to acquire a hanadak fang for his Belt of Honor. The four mimphs, grateful for the Ewok's help in defeating the creature, considered the matter and granted the Ewok a tooth from Thrasher, who had lost it in a fight.
The mimph village, covered in snow
Later in 3 ABY, the weather on Endor turned unusually cold and snowy in the middle of the summer season, and the mimph village was buried in snow. The mimphs were forced to use shovels to remove the powder, which reached a depth equal to a mimph's stature in some places. As the Ewok Teebo, who had recently cast a weather-altering spell, believed he was to blame for the snow, he and his friends Warrick, Latara, and the Princess Kneesaa a Jari Kintaka journeyed to the Sun King's palace, home of the powerful being known as the Sun King, to explain the situation. On their way to the palace, the Ewoks witnessed the mimphs clearing their village of the snow, a spectacle that added to Teebo's feelings of guilt. When the Ewoks learned that the magical artifact known as the season scepter had been stolen by the Sun King's brother, the Snow King, the Ewoks journeyed to to the Snow Palace, where they defeated the Snow King and convinced him to return Endor to its summer season. The harsh and unnatural winter ended, and all of Endor, including the mimph village, was returned to the summer.
On another occasion that year, a group of mimphs came under attack by a hairy, bipedal creature. Just as the beast threatened to hurl two houses-ful of mimphs into a yawning maw, the Ewoks Wicket W. Warrick and Kneesaa a Jari Kintaka swooped down on a skin glider and swiped the mimphs from the predator's grasp.
Two houses of mimphs come under attack by a creature during the opening credits of the second season of Ewoks.
The mimphs first appeared during the second season of the Ewoks television series as a part of the show's opening credits animation sequence. They received their first starring role in the story of "Gone With the Mimphs," the ninth episode of the season. The episode was written by Linda Woolverton and first aired on October 18, 1986. Mimphs appeared briefly in the season's thirteenth episode, "The Season Scepter," which was written by Bob Carrau and aired on November 1, 1986. Both episodes picture mimphs as having a dark-red covering on their heads, and also depict some as having a pair of horns. While neither episode makes it clear whether these coverings and horns are a form of headgear or part of the mimphs' natural anatomy, this article assumes the former. No source has clarified when the events of the opening credits take place; this article assumes they must occur after Wicket W. Warrick meets the mimphs in "Gone With the Mimphs," but the placement of the beast attack on the mimphs is otherwise arbitrary.
The article "A Star Wars CELibration," which was published in the 1995 magazine Star Wars Insider 27 and which provides plot summaries for all Star Wars: Ewoks and Star Wars: Droids episodes, capitalizes the M in "Mimph." However, the 2008 reference book The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, which establishes that the creatures are semi-sentient and native to Endor, does not. This article assumes that the more recent Encyclopedia is correct.
- "A Star Wars CELibration" — Star Wars Insider 27
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia