The Rozzum were a species of sentient aliens who came from another dimension than that of the known universe. They had ties to the Order of the Terrible Glare, a group of dissident Jedi Knights formed during the Pius Dea Crusades. In ancient times, several Rozzum were stranded on PL-40112-CE-021105, a planet of the Wild Space. Some time later, during the Empire's reign, Imperial surveyors encountered that group of Rozzum after having inadvertently awakened them. The Imperials allied with the local people to fight the monsters off, which left only two survivors. During the Galactic Civil War, the young Luke Skywalker encountered Rozzum on Garn, where he had been lured by Rur, the last High Shaman of the Terrible Glare.
The Rozzum were a sentient species the members of which could take a wide array of forms. Some had bat-like wings, others looked like multi-eyed octopuses. Still others resembled reptiles or giant insects. They moved by skittering and fluttering around on the floor. They had the uncanny ability to invade another being's mind through the mouth, with the consequence of instilling a fearful nausea into them.
While they appeared as monstrous beasts, the Rozzum did possess a language of their own, a trait associated with the ability to reason and understand abstract concepts. Non-Rozzum have been able to speak that language fluently, as easily as any of the more common tongues such as Galactic Basic Standard or Huttese.
The Rozzum evolved in a dimension separate from the galaxy's own.
At some point in history, they became connected with the Order of the Terrible Glare, a splinter group of the Jedi Order formed when the Jedi High Council withdrew to Ossus during the Pius Dea Crusades of the Galactic Republic.
In ancient times, one group of Rozzum crash-landed on the planet of PL-40112-CE-021105 in the Salfrem system within the Wastes region of Wild Space. Many a century later, under the reign of Palpatine, surveyors from the Galactic Empire set foot on PL-40112-CE-021105, where they inadvertently awakened the long-lost Rozzum from their slumber. Both the near-Humans living on the planet and the Imperials were forced to work together to drive them off, an action that only left two survivors: the Human-Sephi hybrid Bertroff Hissa and Imperial Commander Quarsh Panaka.
During the Galactic Civil War, the Jedi trainee Luke Skywalker was lured to the planet Garn by Rur, High Shaman of the Terrible Glare and last member of his order. When Skywalker entered Rur's lair, he was assaulted by a group of Rozzum who squirmed out of the dark. The Rozzum induced unspeakable horror in Skywalker's mind, but they ended up leaving him alone so he could meet Rur.
Typically, the Jedi Shadows, who devoted themselves to destroying everything connected with the Sith, were taught to speak the Rozzum language among their many unusual skills.
The Rozzum were created by Abel G. Peña, who first mentioned them through their language in the 2008 sourcebook Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide. In 2013, Peña first described the Rozzum as inter-dimensional monsters in part 1 of Barely Tolerable: Alien Henchmen of the Empire, a series of reference articles on the StarWars.com blogs. He explicitly pointed out the connection between the two sources on the Jedi Council Forums. In the same post, Peña hinted that the Rozzum may be related to Waru and the Charon, other inter-dimensional beings who appeared in the earlier Expanded Universe. He also implied that Cult Encounters of the Star Wars Universe, an unpublished article written by Joseph Bongiorno and Rich Handley, would address the aforementioned aliens. Later, Peña revealed that the Rozzum were in fact the monsters Luke Skywalker encountered in Blind Fury!, a 1982 Star Wars comic story written by Alan Moore.
- Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide
- The Official Star Wars Fact FilePart 34