Wampa

Standing at a height of 2.5 to 3 meters and with an average mass of 150 kilograms, the wampa was one of Hoth's top carnivorous predators, but wampas themselves had predators, such as the fire-breathing Dragon Slugs. The mammals sported a pair of small cranial horns and lived in caves. Wampas also demonstrated some advanced intelligence and cared greatly about their clans.

Creatures such as the tauntaun were prey to the wampa. However, all of the fifteen tauntaun subspecies were agile and swift, being able to run at speeds up to 90 kilometers per hour, and thus could usually outrun the wampa ice creature. Moreover, a tauntaun's horns could be used defensively against their predators. In order to close in on the creatures, wampa used their white fur as camouflage to aid in ambushing their prey before stunning or slaying it with razor-sharp fangs and claws. The predators would then drag the helpless catch with their powerful arms to a cave, within which the prey would be hung upside-down, to await being consumed in due time. Wampas also hunted rayboo and were willing to hunt humans.

The establishment of Echo Base displaced a wampa clan that lived in the caves of what would become the base. Vicious wampas would occasionally sneak into the base in the dead of night, forcing the closure of various passageways. On one occasion, the Rebel Leia Organa, the Wookiee Chewbacca, and the astromech droid R2-D2 were involved in such a situation.

Shortly before the Battle of Hoth, Rebel Alliance member Luke Skywalker was attacked by the wampa patriarch of the displaced clan while scouting the Hoth ice wastes with his tauntaun. It feasted on the tauntaun after hanging Luke from the ceiling of its cave. Luke used the Force to retrieve his lightsaber, which had fallen into the snow, and used it to free himself. The wampa noticed and tried to intervene, but Luke cut off its arm.

During the Battle of Hoth, several cold weather assault stormtroopers were slain by a wampa after opening a door to a room with a clearly marked warning sign. After several days, the wampa that lost his arm to Skywalker recovered enough to hunt again, although it was an adjustment to do so with only one arm. After growing strong enough for the venture, the wampa made its way to Echo Base, only to find it abandoned due to the still-recent Battle of Hoth. The wampa thus reclaimed the caves as his home and hoped to reunite his clan.

Throughout galactic history, Trandoshan hunters like Garnac's hunting guild often kept trophies such as wampa hide at lodges such as on Wasskah. At one point during the High Republic Era, a still-living wampa was consumed by a Drengir.

During her childhood Jyn Erso owned a doll resembling a wampa. The TIE fighter pilot who flew under the callsign Black Eleven was nicknamed "Wampa."

In his palace Grakkus the Hutt owned, among other creatures, a wampa.

By 34 ABY, a single wampa hide could be found in Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities on Batuu.

The wampa ice creature was created for George Lucas's Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and first appeared in Donald F. Glut's novelization of the film, just prior to its theatrical debut.

The creature may have been based on the cryptozoological phenomenon of the "Yeti," or the "Abominable Snowman," a humanoid beast believed to live in the Himalayas. Notes from early concept meetings suggest that the wampa, like the Yeti, may have supernatural powers as well. In early story discussions, the wampa was described as a fishlike beast capable of swimming through the snow, and the creatures were intended to be inside of the base where the Rebels were hiding, creating chaos when Vader is approaching to begin his attack on the base.

In the winter of 1977, Mark Hamill was in a serious car accident that left him in need of reconstructive facial surgery. Many believe that the wampa attack on Skywalker was included in the film to explain Hamill's residual scarring and slightly altered facial features.

Some of the earliest production drawings of Echo Base's interior from May 1978 include call-outs indicating where a "Yuzzem" is to break through the ice walls of the base, as seen in The Art of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The concept of the now non-canon Yuzzem creature was introduced into Star Wars in Alan Dean Foster's Legends novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, published on March 1, 1978, before the production drawings were created. This suggests that the creature that came to be known as the wampa was first referred to as a "Yuzzem," until Foster adapted the name for his story.

To create the wampa's roar, sound-effects artist Randy Thom recorded the noises made by an elephant in the Oakland Zoo. Sound designer Ben Burtt and the film's sound team then recorded the cries of a sea lion at Marineland of the Pacific public oceanarium and mixed that with the elephant recording to produce the final effect.

Originally the wampa was to be portrayed by actor Des Webb wearing a giant suit made of sheepskins on location in Norway, where the Hoth scenes were shot. The costume, which required the actor to stand on stilts, proved too unwieldy, and it was too heavy and hot, causing Webb to suffer heat exhaustion. All of the shots of the life-size wampa were eventually cut from the film. Creature designer Phil Tippett later built a small wampa hand puppet, visible in a quick close-up as the creature attacks Luke Skywalker.

For the Special Edition release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1997, George Lucas decided to expand the wampa scenes. In order to do so, Industrial Light & Magic artist Howie Weed constructed a more mobile version of the costume, without the stilts, which he wore in the film. The new shots were filmed within a scaled-down replica of a cave to create the illusion that the wampa was much larger than a normal Human.

Wampas originally played a much more prominent role in early versions of The Empire Strikes Back. In the treatment and the first draft, wampas storm Echo Base shortly before the arrival of the Empire. In the original shooting script, a tauntaun was killed when a wampa stormed into Echo Base. Shots of a wampa breaking through one of the walls of the complex and attacking Rebel soldiers were filmed but ultimately dropped from the final version of the movie. In addition, the wall did not crumble properly and the shot was never successfully achieved. Final versions of the script depicted a mass-coordinated wampa attack on Echo Base. Several scenes were shot for the film that showed this incident, as well as a sequence involving C-3PO tearing a warning sign off the door of a wampa pen, followed by a group of snowtroopers entering the pen only to be attacked by the wampas inside. However, these scenes were later deleted and did not make the final version of the film.

The 2015 reference book Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know somewhat brought back the deleted scenes involving the wampa attack on Echo Base, stating that various wampas would attack Echo Base at night, and that several Imperial cold weather assault stormtroopers foolishly entered a room with wampas only to be slain, despite a clearly marked warning sign.

The animated short, "Beasts of Echo Base" from the animated micro-series Star Wars Forces of Destiny later expounded on the reason for why the wampas were found within the room in Echo Base, showing Leia, R2-D2, and Chewbacca working together to lock the wampa in the room, thus setting the stage for the scene. The short's events was later referenced in the reference book Star Wars: On the Front Lines and the in-universe book Star Wars: The Rebel Files the latter of which saw Leia reference the events explicitly.

The story Tales of Villainy: Invasion of Echo Base from the comic Star Wars Adventures (2020) 1 brought into canon other elements of the deleted scenes. These included the sign being torn off from the door shortly before the Troopers reach it as they're tailing C-3PO as well as Vader's prompt arrival immediately after one of the Troopers is snatched by the Wampa inside the door.

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