One male member of King Gorneesh's tribe of Duloks on the Forest Moon of Endor was distinguished from his green-furred brethren by a yellow X that adorned his belly and chest, as well as by a white cloth that he often tied around his head. As a scout, warrior, and hunter for his tribe, the Dulok undertook several missions for Gorneesh in 3 ABY, a period of war with the Ewoks of Bright Tree Village, a settlement located not far from the Dulok Swamp. During these expeditions, the X-marked Dulok was often accompanied by counterparts with their own distinctive body decorations, such as one with a diamond shape and another with arrow shapes. Most frequently, however, he was paired with a Dulok who had an O on his torso.
The X-marked Dulok was a typical member of his species: conscious of personal status, disdainful of perceived inferiors, and callous toward Ewoks and wildlife. However, he respected King Gorneesh—most of the time—and conducted several missions for the Dulok ruler. During one outing, the Dulok accompanied his O-marked partner and the Dulok shaman, Umwak, to gather ingredients for a magic potion, an endeavor that allowed them to spy on Ewoks and hatch a plot to steal their soap. On another occasion, the X-marked Dulok helped care for Nahkee, an infant Phlog entrusted to the Duloks by Morag, the Tulgah witch. Later, he and his O-emblazoned counterpart kidnapped the Ewok Latara to babysit Gorneesh's children. The Dulok accompanied his tribe aboard the Ewok battle wagon in an attack on the Ewoks' Soul Trees, and he participated in two winter hunting expeditions during which he was haunted by an entity known to the Duloks as the Red Ghost.
One of many Duloks to inhabit the Dulok Swamp on the Forest Moon of Endor, a male differentiated himself from the other members of his tribe by emblazoning his belly and chest fur with a yellow X and wrapping a white cloth around his head. During a time in which the Duloks launched a succession of battles and schemes against the Ewoks of Bright Tree Village, a settlement nearby, the X-marked tribesman was charged with various tasks by his King, the eyepatch-wearing Dulok Gorneesh. Several such assignments took place in 3 ABY.
On one mission during the summer of that year, the X-marked Dulok accompanied an O-marked counterpart and the Dulok shaman, Umwak, into the forest to obtain ingredients for one of the medicine man's magic potions. After being plagued by insect pests, the trio spotted several Ewoks swimming in a nearby river, including Wicket Wystri Warrick, Kneesaa a Jari Kintaka, Nippet, and Wiley. Umwak recognized the Ewoks using a variety of Ewok soap designed to keep bugs at bay. The X-marked Dulok and his fellow guard made a grab for the item, but their movement startled the creature upon which they unwittingly had been standing. The beast shook them into the water, prompting the trio to flee back to their home in the swamp. Nevertheless, their discovery compelled King Gorneesh to send Umwak and another Dulok into the Ewoks' Bright Tree Village to steal the soap, beginning a series of raids and counter-raids that ceased only with the Ewoks substituting a third, bug-attracting soap for a bar that the Duloks stole.
Gorneesh's two Dulok scouts grabbed the Ewok Latara to babysit the royal brood.
On another assignment, Gorneesh assigned the Dulok to help feed Nahkee, a baby Phlog whom the Tulgah witch Morag had entrusted to the Duloks' care; by keeping the child's whereabouts secret, she hoped to blame the Ewoks of Bright Tree Village for his disappearance and thus stir the Phlog elders to attack the settlement. The X-painted Dulok aided the Dulok Queen, Urgah, as she attempted to feed the massive infant: while Urgah cooked a stew known as glock for the child, the X-adorned Dulok carried the thick substance by the bowlful and spooned the semisolid into the Phlog's massive maw. Nevertheless, when Gorneesh asked the Duloks to change Nahkee's diaper, the X-painted underling fled the scene along with his peers. A group of Ewoks—Kintaka, Latara, Malani, Teebo, and Warrick—were later brought to the Dulok village to care for the Phlog, but Latara and Kintaka put the entire village to sleep with a song and fled with the infant.
Gorneesh paired the X-marked Dulok with his O-marked counterpart, assigning them to guard duty outside his personal hut. Exasperated with his three unruly children, the Dulok King sent the pair to Bright Tree Village to kidnap an Ewok to babysit the cubs. On the outskirts of the Ewok settlement, the X-painted Dulok and his partner espied a young female Ewok caring for two toddlers—Latara and the woklings Nippet and Wiley. The Duloks attempted to sneak up on her, but before the scouts could seize the Ewok caretaker, the ground began to shake as a herd of giant creatures called awors appeared and frightened the pair into the hollow of a nearby tree. There they encountered a toothsome, green-eyed creature. The pair came under attack and fled.
The next day, the X- and O-marked Duloks hid in the bushes surrounding Bright Tree Village and spied their Ewok quarry stowing away with a group of itinerate entertainers known as the Travelling Jindas—whose thundering beasts of burden had frightened the Duloks away the previous day. The Dulok with the X on his fur suggested that the pair had merely to follow the caravan to capture their target. The pair did so, sticking to the treetops and eventually dropping onto the awor upon which was perched the tent of Bondo, the Jindas' leader, who was speaking with Latara. Again the Duloks suffered a setback: as Bondo's awor crossed a suspension bridge, the beast's rocking caused the Duloks to lose their balance and plummet into the river below.
Nevertheless, the X-marked Dulok and his companion made another attempt on their quarry that night when the Jindas stopped to perform for a group of arboreal blasé tree goats. The Dulok with the bandage on his head revealed the plan: the duo would impersonate tree goats by wearing horns on their heads. So disguised, they climbed a tree and hung upside down like the animals they were emulating as they awaited the opportunity to strike. Yet again the plan was for naught: as Latara was raised into the rafters of the Jindas' stage as part of a magic act with the Jinda performer Trebla, they crept along a branch to grab her. Nevertheless, the weight of the Dulok duo caused the branch to sag and brought them to Latara's notice. When a goat ate the vine that kept the Ewok aloft, she grabbed hold of the Duloks' branch to keep from falling. The added weight brought the branch down gently to ground level—but then the Ewok let go. The branch became a catapult, launching the Duloks into an animal tent replete with its own ornery, purple-skinned beast.
Still, Gorneesh's scouts did not give up. The next day, they overheard their would-be babysitter alone in the forest, crying from homesickness. They sneaked up behind her, seized her, and bound her with a vine, confident that they would be rewarded by their king. Back at the Dulok Swamp, the X-marked Dulok and his partner turned Latara over to Gorneesh and Urgah, who put her to work caring for their cubs. However, the Travelling Jindas soon arrived to perform for the Duloks. Their show allowed Latara's friends—the Ewoks Kintaka, Paploo, Teebo, and Warrick—to free their friend from Dulok captivity.
The X-marked Dulok attempted to prevent the Ewok Malani from freeing her tribe mate, Wicket W. Warrick.
Later that year, the Dulok with the X on his chest joined Gorneesh, Umwak, Urgah, the Dulok oracle Murgoob, and several Dulok warriors aboard the Ewok battle wagon, a siege engine that had been reconstructed by the Ewok Wicket W. Warrick but which the Duloks had stolen in a raid. The Duloks rolled the contraption toward the Ewoks' sacred Soul Trees in a bid to crush the trees and, along with them, the Ewoks' will to live. The X-painted Dulok rode aboard on the wagon's main deck, which housed its battering ram and a caged prisoner, Warrick himself, who had been sleeping in the wagon when it was stolen. The wagon's first victims were a group of woklings on a picnic; upon Warrick's urging, though, they fled to warn Bright Tree Village of the impending assault. Upon arrival at a copse of Soul Trees, Gorneesh ignored the Ewoks' defenses and commanded the X-marked Dulok and his comrades to ram the holy trees. However, when the wokling Malani climbed aboard the war wagon with the aid of the bordok Baga, the X-painted Dulok noticed her attempt to free Warrick from his cage. The Dulok swung his club at the girl, but Warrick pushed her out of danger; instead of connecting with Ewok flesh, the Dulok's attack bashed open the cage's lock and allowed Warrick to escape. The stumble knocked the X-painted Dulok off balance, and Malani pushed him into the cage and off the wagon. Warrick and Malani ended the assault completely when Warrick pulled the wagon's main support peg, collapsing the machine into a pile of wood.
The Dulok led a hunting expedition to capture maramu for their horns.
That winter, the Dulok with the X on his belly led his O- and diamond-marked counterparts, as well as a Dulok with a tufted chest, on a hunt for maramu, a species of hopping, bipedal animals that King Gorneesh valued as trophies for their horns. The quartet chased a maramu up a steep slope, and at the edge of the precipice the expedition leader snatched the maramu in a net. However, a savage howl sounded from the trees nearby, and the O-marked Dulok was lassoed and strung up from a tree, then dropped onto the other members of the party. The hunters fled in terror, unaware that their tormenter was a wild, female Ewok named Asha.
During a later expedition, the X-marked Dulok joined his original hunting group, plus a Dulok with arrows painted on his chest; King Gorneesh; and the shaman, Umwak; in the snowy forest. They captured several small creatures in cages and snagged a maramu with ropes; the X-marked Dulok helped hold the enraged beast with rope. When a maramu calf approached, the X-marked Dulok kicked it away. The action enraged the ensnared maramu, the calf's mother, who yanked the rope and flung the Dulok into a nearby tree.
After recovering from the pratfall, the Dulok watched as a being known to the Duloks as the Red Ghost—actually Asha, the same Ewok who had broken up the previous hunt—calmly strode amidst the Duloks and freed the captured animals. When Gorneesh ordered his underlings to attack, the X-marked Dulok and his compatriots captured her with their lassos. However, the Red Ghost grabbed the ropes and spun the three Duloks in circles, releasing them into the snowdrifts. Gorneesh ordered another attack, but the Ewok sidestepped the X-marked Dulok and his comrades, who collided with one another. The Ewok climbed a tree, grabbed a vine, and swung into the X-painted Dulok and his companions. Gorneesh himself fled at this turn of events, but Asha captured the full party with her bolas, earning an oath from Umwak that the Duloks would never hunt in the area again. The X-marked Dulok ran away with the others, mounted a hollow log, and slid down a snowy slope—off a cliff, and into the frigid water below. Years later, the Ewok Wicket W. Warrick looked back on his encounters with the X-marked Dulok on the battle wagon and in the forest with Asha as some of the fondest memories of his childhood.
The X-marked Dulok approved of King Gorneesh's plan to kidnap an Ewok babysitter.
The Dulok with the X on his chest filled duties as a guard, scout, warrior, and hunter for his tribe. He handled tasks such as guarding the hut of the Dulok King and Queen, and his adeptness at stealth and climbing earned him the task of sneaking up on and kidnapping the Ewok Latara. Nevertheless, his proficiency was tempered by clumsiness; the Dulok was prone to colliding with his fellow warriors, stumbling into dangerous encounters with wildlife, and revealing his presence while trying to be sneaky. He was able to wield weapons with equal adroitness in either his right or left hands. Arms with which he was proficient included clubs, spears, and lassos. He was particularly proficient with the last of these, able to rope a wild maramu from a moderate distance.
The X-marked Dulok shared the callous and mocking nature common among his species. While hunting, for instance, he nonchalantly kicked aside a maramu calf, telling it to return when its horns were bigger. During the same expedition, the Dulok joined his fellows in mocking the Ewok Asha after she was temporarily detained. Although he generally heeded the commands of his ruler, Gorneesh,—even guffawing with approval at the King's plans to raid the Ewoks—the Dulok guard's loyalties only went so far: he refused to accept his leader's call to change a baby Phlog's diaper, for instance, choosing instead to flee the scene. Reciprocally, Gorneesh took pleasure in his underling's misfortune, laughing, for example, when the X-marked Dulok was thrown through the air by a bucking maramu. The Dulok tribesman did not show the same deference to his people's shaman, Umwak. While helping the medicine man gather ingredients for a potion, the X-marked Dulok became annoyed at the hot sun and swarming insects, suggesting that Umwak's efforts would be better spent concocting bug repellant.
The X-marked Dulok often worked alongside another Dulok warrior with an O on his chest. The relationship was not egalitarian, however; the Dulok with the X asserted his superiority by berating, bossing, and bullying his counterpart. Such posturing led to quarrels between the partners, especially when the insults were unwarranted. For example, on one expedition the X-marked Dulok accused his fellow scout of causing the ground to quake, not realizing that the shaking was actually caused by an approaching caravan of awors.
Physically, he was a typical member of his species; he had a thin frame covered in green fur, gray skin showing through at the palms and soles, and a visage characterized by brown eyebrows, pink eyes, and jagged teeth. He stood approximately 1.35 meters tall, average for his species. However, the Dulok distinguished himself from his tribe mates by placing a yellow X on his torso. On many instances he also wore strips of white cloth around his head, although he sometimes went without.
The Dulok character features in the opening credit sequence of the Ewoks animated cartoon series, meaning that he technically appears in every episode of the show's first season, which began its television run on September 7, 1985, with "The Cries of the Trees." However, "The Haunted Village," an episode that first aired on September 14, 1985, marks the character's first appearance in the narrative proper. The episode was written by Paul Dini and directed by Raymond Jafelice. Dini and Jafelice placed the Dulok in another episode, "Rampage of the Phlogs," which first aired on September 21. Writer Bob Carrau then gave the character his most prominent role in an episode called "The Travelling Jindas," directed by Jafelice, which originally aired on October 5. The character later featured in two further Dini–Jafelice Ewoks episodes: "Wicket's Wagon" on November 11 and "Asha" on November 30.
These episodes constitute five of the eight that were patched together to form two direct-to-DVD feature films: The Haunted Village and Tales from the Endor Woods, both originally released in 2004. The Dulok is indirectly referenced in book adaptations of the episodes and supplemental sources that mention the hunting parties and war bands in which he participated.
- The Essential Guide to Characters
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- Star Wars Encyclopedia
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, Vol. I