Purrgil

Purrgil were a species of whales that lived in space. While regular purrgil were only the size of a small starship, another type of purrgil, known as Purrgil Ultra, was significantly larger, reaching half of the length of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer. On average, they reached a height of 5.5 meters, or 18 feet, and a length of 30 meters, or 98 feet. Purrgil had streamlined, torpedo-shaped bodies and bulbous heads. Two blue, cloudy eyes were placed on opposite sides of the head. They had four large hind tentacles, a single dorsal fin, two side fins, a ventral fin, and an anal fin all of which allowed them to move gracefully across the vacuum of space. The skin of purrgil was smooth-looking, with a bluish-purple color and gray and yellow patches, or white. Their large mouths were sometimes filled with egg-shaped teeth that were irregularly spaced and varied in size. Others had full mouths of baleen instead of teeth. Some specimens had slender, whisker-like organs underneath their mouth. Purrgil Ultra had a larger amount of these whisker-like organs and more distinctive protrusions on top of their head. Purrgil also had a brain.

In order to breathe, purrgil needed to inhale stores of a green gas, Clouzon-36. When they were not provided with enough of the gas, their skin turned to a gray to brownish color. Once sufficiently provided with the Clouzon-36, they metabolized it into hypermatter fuel, enabling them to jump into hyperspace, an alternate dimension that allowed traveling at lightspeed, by creating simu-tunnels. When they were about to jump into hyperspace, their tentacles started glowing.

Purrgil lived in groups called flocks, pods, or swarms that could count up to dozens of individuals. Such groups were led by a bigger specimen. As a semi-sentient species, they showed a certain degree of intelligence but could unintentionally cause harm by crashing into starships, killing their occupants in the process. When wounded, purrgil staggered to their side. When feeling threatened, purrgil made a sound which the Jedi Ezra Bridger described as "kind of sad".

According to the Mark IV architect droid Huyang, purrgil were capable of traveling across different galaxies using intergalactic hyperspace lanes. One of those migration routes ended on the extragalactic planet Peridea, where according to former Jedi Knight Baylan Skoll, the whales went to die and subsequently turned the planet into a graveyard as their bones formed a planetary ring.

According to Nightsister Morgan Elsbeth, "in the days before time was counted" the Dathomirians, a subspecies of the Zabrak, were the first to harness and ride purrgil, which they referred to as the "travelers". Several millennia before the Cold War between the New Republic and the First Order that started in 29 ABY, the purrgil's ability to travel through hyperspace inspired sentients to find their own way of entering that alternate dimension. After studying purrgil, sentient beings invented the hyperdrive. According to Peko-Peko Munzati, who was rumored to have studied the species for months on Bar'leth, a Core Worlds planet, the first hyperspace scouts used to follow purrgil. Their knowledge about purrgil and the gas Clouzon-36 helped scientists find out that coaxium fuel could form at places subject to intense interstellar energy and therefore helped them locate natural reservoirs of the expensive starship fuel, such as those on the Outer Rim planet Kessel or in the Mid Rim's Redhurne system. Studies of purrgil brains and carcasses also inspired both the Jedi and the Sith to create wayfinders, ancient devices used to navigate challenging stretches of space.

According to Huyang, the intergalactic hyperspace lanes of purrgil were known to the Jedi Order, which preserved information about them inside the Jedi Archives in the Jedi Temple on the planet Coruscant. The whales also appeared in a three-part tale called History of the Galaxy, Parts One, Two and Three that the Jedi droid told younglings at the Jedi Temple. Although few people actually witnessed their special ability to attain lightspeed, the purrgil became legendary for smugglers and pilots across the galaxy. However, due to their habit of unwittingly crashing into starships, the legendary whales came to be regarded as threatening creatures, being called "a big, lumbering menace" by the Twi'lek Hera Syndulla. Many purrgil were thus killed, with spacers puncturing them with hook-lashes to get rid of the potential threat. After they had bled to death, they were brought up on deck.

In 382 BBY, the EX droid EX-8C was drifting past a school of purrgil flying through crashing moons. Some of the first commercial vessels to offer hyperdrive travel, the MPO-1400 Purgill-class star cruisers manufactured by the Corellian Engineering Corporation, were not only inspired by the whales but also named after them. Passengers of one of the star cruisers, the Halcyon, which was operated by Chandrila Star Line, reported sightings of purrgil from aboard the ship. The Purrgil's Dream, a starship owned by the San Tekka clan member Precoria San Tekka, shared its name with the creature. In 229 BBY, the Vurk Jedi Master Harli Cogra wrote the book Chronicles of the Jedi, which documented the Jedi of the High Republic Era. In the book, Cogra included a mention of the purrgil, stating that prospectors, people dedicated to exploring the vastness of space, faced pods of purrgil while they traveled through hyperspace.

In 90 BBY, Jedi youngling Dooku and his sister Jenza attended a celebration on the planet Serenno, where Jenza won a stuffed purrgil toy. During the Clone Wars, which lasted from 22 BBY until 19 BBY, clone commando Tech of Clone Force 99, an experimental squad, acquired a recording of purrgil as part of his collection of various creature sounds. At one point, the Sakavian fisherman Skoova Stev served as first mate as part of a fishing crew aboard the ship Grapnel under the Besalisk Captain Wan'yek Whett. They encountered a purrgil passing by the Inner Rim ocean planet Manaan, and accidentally collided with it, causing them to crash. Shortly thereafter, the fisherman was marooned in an escape pod, but the same purrgil accidentally saved him by colliding with his escape pod sometime later, sending him flying through space and ultimately crash-landing on a planet.

After Han Solo, a smuggler from the Core Worlds planet Corellia had successfully flown the Kessel Run, a dangerous hyperspace route, in just a little bit more than twelve parsecs in 10 BBY, Peko-Peko Munzati claimed in the journal of the Corellian human bartender Tivoche Bilure that the route Solo took was inspired by an ancient purrgil migration trail. In 9 BBY, while talking to his adopted daughter Leia on a balcony, Alderaanian Senator Bail Organa said that when he was her age, he wished to chase purrgil.

In 3 BBY, the Mining Guild was running a gas refinery where they refined Clouzon-36 fuel. The refinery's operations prevented a group of purrgil from accessing the gas they needed to breathe, leading to conflicts between them and the Guild in which the Guild fired on the creatures. At one point, the Mining Guild pilot Ahhav encountered a group of purrgil in a TIE/mg Mining Guild starfighter and fired upon them in vengeance after having survived a previous encounter. That same year, the Spectres, a rebel cell led by Hera Syndulla which crewed the modified VCX-100 light freighter Ghost, encountered a purrgil swarm led by the Purrgil King on a mission to steal fuel from the Mining Guild. At first, only Ezra Bridger was able to hear the purrgil's sounds which he described as "kind of sad." The rest of the crew did not believe him, but when they saw the creatures for themselves, both Syndulla and Jedi Kanan Jarrus recognized them.

At first, Syndulla wanted to fire on the purrgil, but Bridger and Jarrus stopped her from doing so, ultimately convincing her to follow the purrgil, causing the creatures to calm down and cease producing the noise Bridger was hearing. Looking into the eye of the Purrgil King and building a connection through the Force, Bridger noticed that it was upset by something. Shortly after that, Jarrus noticed two Mining Guild TIE fighters, which the crew eliminated. Following the creatures, soon the Spectres arrived at the Mining Guild's gas refinery, where the Guild had set up guns to fire on the purrgil and drive them off.

As the crew leaped down from the Ghost onto the asteroid, a purrgil accompanied Bridger. They fought their way through some of the Mining Guild's guards, when Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian member of the Spectres, was about to use explosives to ignite the volatile Clouzon-36 gas and create a diversion. However, she was stopped by Bridger when he realized that they could not detonate the gas without injuring the purrgil. That forced the crew to alter their plan, Bridger was now supposed to use a blaster cannon to cover Jarrus and Wren while they secured the landing zone. After the guards of the gas refinery had discovered them, the refinery boss Yushyn ordered his guards to defend the fuel. Distracted by his realization that the purrgil needed the Clouzon-36 to breathe, Bridger was knocked off his gun emplacement by a laser blast from the guards and fell into the gas-covered crater.

However, Bridger was saved by the Purrgil King and saw a vision in the Purrgil's eye. The Purrgil King also saved the Jedi from asphyxiation by finding his helmet, which he had lost during the fall. Staring into the creature's eye, Bridger was able to further strengthen his bond with the king through the Force. Meanwhile, Yushyn had ordered his guards to launch two of the Mining Guild's TIE fighters, but Bridger's connection with the purrgil enabled him to team up with the whales in the Spectres' fight against the Mining Guild. The purrgil helped the rebels by destroying one of the TIE fighters which were threatening to destroy the Ghost and dragging Yushyn into a crater, ultimately enabling them to steal the needed fuel. After the mission, Bridger told Jarrus that he was able to see what the whales were thinking, and the Spectres subsequently witnessed the purrgil's ability to jump through hyperspace firsthand, following their newly gained allies through hyperspace. By 2 BBY, Sabine Wren had a painting of a purrgil on the wall of her cabin aboard the Ghost.

In 1 BBY, during the liberation of the Outer Rim planet Lothal from the Galactic Empire's control, the rebel pilot Mart Mattin, the former Clone Commander Wolffe, and the Devaronian crime lord Cikatro Vizago sent a signal on Frequency Zero from the Ghost to call upon a group of purrgil and Purrgil Ultra. Upon their arrival, the creatures were led by the Ghost and completely wiped out Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn's 7th Fleet blockade of Lothal. The Purrgil Ultra also damaged the three Star Destroyers hovering in the planet's lower atmosphere above Capital City, including the Chimaera, Thrawn's flagship. Bridger then used the Force to control three Purrgil Ultra, which then wrapped their tentacles around the Chimaera, trapping Thrawn in a cold embrace, and jumped to hyperspace, ultimately removing the Imperial threat from Lothal.

Around 9 ABY, a pod of purrgil was observed by the Mandalorian foundling Grogu aboard an N-1 starfighter as he traveled through hyperspace with the Mandalorian warrior Din Djarin while en route to Nevarro, an Outer Rim planet.

By around the same year, Wren had a purrgil painted on a shoulder plate of her Mandalorian armor. By the same time, the former magistrate Morgan Elsbeth and her associates had been developing the Eye of Sion, a huge hyperspace ring, over the planet Seatos, home to a purrgil migratory route, to recover Grand Admiral Thrawn from a neighboring galaxy. When Sabine Wren joined former Jedi Ahsoka Tano and Huyang on their T-6 shuttle to prevent Thrawn's return and—Wren hoped, to find Bridger—they stumbled upon a pod of Purrgil Ultra in Seatos' atmosphere while evading Elsbeth's starfighters, led by the Force users Shin Hati and Marrok. After eluding them by flying the shuttle through various purrgil and landing in a forest below, Wren remarked that it was her first reunion with the creatures since the Battle of Lothal.

Attempting to prevent Elsbeth from reaching the galaxy where Thrawn's supposed location was, Tano and Wren rushed to the reflex point on Seatos, where an ancient map was being used to calculate the hyperspace coordinates needed to jump to the neighboring galaxy. After killing Marrok, Tano encountered Baylan Skoll who was now working as a mercenary for Elsbeth at the reflex point. After a brief conversation followed by a lightsaber duel, Tano was able to get a hold of the map, but was then thrown down a cliff by Skoll. Wren, who had just managed to escape Hati, picked up the map but Skoll convinced her to hand it over as it would be the only way to reunite with Bridger. Once the Eye of Sion had received the necessary hyperspace coordinates, Skoll destroyed the map and the ship jumped to hyperspace with Wren aboard despite New Republic General Hera Syndulla and her son Jacen Syndulla in the Ghost as well as several X-wing starfighters trying to get in their way.

Once Tano had returned from the World Between Worlds and was rescued by the Ghost, she used her psychometry abilities to figure out where Wren had gone. Without the map, she had no way of following Elsebeth with traditional methods. However, the former Jedi developed a new plan. She and Huyang re-entered the atmosphere of Seatos in their T-6 shuttle where they encountered the pod of Purrgil Ultra one more time. Knowing that the way to the different galaxy was found by studying purrgil migration routes, Tano left the shuttle, created a connection to one of the whales and the two soon entered the mouth of the Purrgil Ultra aboard their ship. Subsequently, the purrgil made a jump into hyperspace, bringing Tano and Huyang along.

During their journey, Tano reminisced how Huyang told her and other younglings stories about the purrgil in the Jedi Temple. The droid responded that he still had those tales in his archive and started telling History of the Galaxy, Parts One, Two and Three. As the Eye of Sion left hyperspace and arrived at Peridea, Skoll mentioned that the Jedi Archived spoke about this planet and its connection to the purrgil. On the planet's surface, Elsbeth and her associates met up with three Nightsisters known as the Great Mothers and Thrawn. The Mothers found out that Tano had followed Elsbeth, and after telling Thrawn, the Chiss ordered Elsbeth to destroy any purrgil approaching Peridea. When the whales left hyperspace near Peridea, they quickly found themselves inside an Imperial minefield. Having briefly acted as cover for the T-6 shuttle of Tano and Huyang, the Purrgil Ultra jumped back into hyperspace to evade the mines. Tano and Huyang—who were now also being chased by Elsbeth's fighters—decided to hide in the planetary ring consisting of purrgil bones.

Purrgil were often mentioned in journals or referenced by pilots, for example by Alphabet Squadron pilot Nath Tensent or Resistance gunner Paige Tico, who had written a journal by 34 ABY. An entry on purrgil was included in "Species From A to Z," a survival compendium sent out by Carson Teva during the New Republic Era. At some point, an artist encountered a group of purrgil. He later drew one of them in his journal and commented that he was surprised by their sudden appearance around his ship. Sometime after 34 ABY, the document with the artist's drawing and comment was restored and published by the Graf Archive, a vast depository of documents and other materials of public or historical importance.

Purrgil were first depicted in the mid-season trailer for the second season of the animated television series Star Wars Rebels, posted on the official Star Wars YouTube channel on January 15, 2016. They later made their first appearance, and were identified in "The Call," the fifteenth episode of the second season, on February 10 of the same year. In the script of the episode, the leader of the involved group of purrgil was referred to as the "Purrgil King". Purrgil concept art for the episode was drawn by JP Balmet, a concept designer and illustrator working in Los Angeles. The correct plural form of purrgil is "purrgil", despite the fact that Syndulla says "purrgils" in the episode. In the Rebels Recon, a series of behind-the-scenes YouTube videos, episode of The Call, Dave Filoni, an animation producer involved in various Star Wars projects, said that he came up with the idea of purrgil when thinking about the concept that the first hyperspace travel was not technological but instead made by creatures. In the same video, Pablo Hidalgo, a creative executive and author currently working for Lucasfilm within the Lucasfilm Story Group, also stated that purrgil added a degree of extra ancient mythology to Star Wars.

In an interview with StarWars.com, Hidalgo as well compared vessels hunting purrgil with ancient seafaring whaling days in the real world. The concept art book The Art of Star Wars Rebels (2020) described purrgil as biological splices of whales and squids that could swim lazily through the vacuum of space that had the ability to jump into hyperspace and cross lightyears in a moment. The book also states that purrgil had gone through some remarkable evolutionary adaptions. In the third episode of the seventh and final season of the animated series The Clone Wars, "On the Wings of Keeradaks," released on March 6, 2020, purrgil are misspelled as "purgill" on clone commando Tech's visor. Purrgil can also be seen flying next to the Black One, a T-70 X-wing starfighter belonging to Resistance pilot Poe Dameron, in the side mission "Poe to the Rescue" of the non-canon video game LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2016). They also get mentioned in the non-canon video game LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2022), where you can encounter an NPC calling himself "Wandering Purrgil" who claims to be "on the Purrgil wavelength". Purrgil made their live-action debut on March 1, 2023 in "Chapter 17: The Apostate," the debut episode of the third season of The Mandalorian.

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• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga