Chubbit

Chubbits, being a race of diminutive reptiles, specifically lizards, were sentient. An average adult Chubbit only reached about waist-height on a typical Human. The physical structure of the Chubbit generally followed a humanoid pattern, featuring a head, torso, two arms, and two legs. Each hand had either four or five digits, including a thumb that could be opposed, while their feet provided a digitigrade stance with broad, spread-out toes. Some Chubbits were stoutly built, while others had a more slender physique. Their skin coloration varied, ranging from a pale green to yellow, and the top of their heads often displayed mottled patterns in different colors, such as red or black.

Each Chubbit possessed a wide, flat head that narrowed to a rounded snout at the front. Two nostrils were located on the upper surface of their snouts, and a large mouth bisected the front of their face. This toothless opening contained a pointed, green tongue and pink gums. The two eyes of a Chubbit were positioned far apart on either side of its head. The color of their eyes could be white, green, or red, and their pupils could appear as either small circles or vertical slits. In some Chubbits, a red tympanic membrane was visible just behind each eye. While many Chubbits were bald, some had a tuft of hair growing at the back of their head, with colors ranging from black and red to blond and white.

The nervous system of the Chubbit was particularly vulnerable to strong technological emissions, such as those produced by the Iron Tower, a structure erected by the Galactic Empire on the Chubbits' homeworld of Aridus. Exposure to these invisible energies disrupted the Chubbit neurological functions, often leading to fatal consequences for many individuals.

The Chubbits were inhabitants of the deserts found on the planet Aridus, a distant world considered insignificant by the wider galaxy. Members of this species traversed the sandy landscapes on domesticated, long-necked lizards known as droffi steeds, which were controlled by riders using saddles, stirrups, and bridles. They also utilized wind-runners, sizable ground vehicles that moved on wheels and were powered by the wind caught in their large sails. By 0 ABY, the Chubbits were familiar with advanced weaponry, including blaster rifles and proton grenades, although these weapons had to be smuggled onto their planet.

On Aridus, Chubbits commonly wore loose-fitting attire, including cloaks, cowls, baggy trousers, headwraps, and boots. Others adopted clothing styles typical of spacefaring species, such as long-sleeved shirts, trousers, vests, and boots. Chubbits living off-world often wore similar outfits, with the addition of loose tunics, belts, short pants, and slippers. Chubbits with long hair frequently tied it into a topknot.

While Chubbits could be wary of strangers, they were extremely loyal to those who earned their trust. Their gratitude towards those who helped them often bordered on worship. The Chubbit language was called Chubbini. This language was notable for its frequent use of /S/ and /Z/ sounds.

The Chubbits originated on Aridus, a world characterized by deserts and lava flows, situated within the Flarestar system. Galactic explorers first reached the system during the Great Manifest Period; it had become integrated into the known galaxy by 15,000 BBY. Eventually, the Chubbit homeworld became part of the Narvath sector in the Expansion Region, accessible via the Gamor Run hyperlane. From 1004 to 1000 BBY, during the height of the New Sith Wars, the Chubbit home planet was located within territory controlled by the Galactic Republic. Centuries later, during the Clone Wars between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, Aridus once again allied itself with the Republic.

The fall of the Republic and its re-establishment as the Galactic Empire in 19 BBY brought Aridus into greater prominence. The Chubbits could only watch as the Empire scouted for valuable mineral resources on Aridus and then deployed miners to extract them. When the off-worlders discovered that their equipment—ranging from mole miners to comlinks—was ineffective due to the planet's ionized atmosphere, they received Imperial authorization to construct a massive structure known as the Iron Tower. The Iron Tower was intended to serve as a signal amplifier, power transformer, and power source for Imperial hovertrains, which transported the ore. Mining operations resumed, but the Chubbits soon realized that the Iron Tower's emissions had a devastating impact on their nervous systems, with the neurological effects proving fatal for many.

Rather than remain passive victims, the Chubbits established a resistance movement to combat the Empire and expel it from Aridus. They forged an alliance with the Alliance to Restore the Republic, who secretly smuggled weapons and ammunition to the Chubbit freedom fighters. Some members of the board of directors at the Aridus-based company Yutrane-Trackata secretly aided the Chubbit resistance after receiving clandestine payments from the Alliance. While the company produced mining equipment specifically for Imperial operations on Aridus, it also provided T2-B repulsor tanks and other supplies to the Chubbit freedom fighters by ignoring raids on its factories by Chubbit forces. Other outsiders also supported the Chubbit cause; for example, the Human smuggler Wrenga Jixton, who was hiding on Aridus, befriended the natives.

In 0 ABY, the Chubbit resistance inadvertently became part of a scheme by the Sith Lord Darth Vader to capture Luke Skywalker, the young Human who had destroyed the Empire's Death Star battle station during the Battle of Yavin. Vader had an actor undergo surgery to resemble Obi-Wan Kenobi, Skywalker's deceased Jedi Master. This actor then joined the Chubbit resistance and gained their trust. The Chubbits believed the fake Kenobi to be the real one, and his actions earned their admiration and respect. When Imperial stormtroopers disrupted a Rebel arms deal with the Chubbits, Vader's plan escalated; the actor intervened, seemingly to allow the Rebel gunrunner to escape. In reality, the man's escape allowed him to return to the Rebel base on the moon Yavin 4 and inform Skywalker about his encounter with "Ben Kenobi." Skywalker took the bait and journeyed to Aridus.

As a group of Chubbit resistance fighters attempted to attack an Imperial hovertrain, Skywalker and his protocol droid, C-3PO, joined them, throwing bags filled with proton charges at the target, causing it to crash. Skywalker was injured during the attack, so the Chubbits and the Kenobi impersonator tended to his wounds. The fake Kenobi placed Skywalker on a Chubbit wind-runner for his safety and then led the Chubbits in a raid on an Imperial outpost—another calculated deception to gain Skywalker's confidence.

When Skywalker and his droid rejoined the Chubbit resistance fighters, the actor insisted that it was time to target the Iron Tower—a task he and Skywalker would undertake alone. To this end, he ordered the Chubbits to return C-3PO to Skywalker's starship to prevent the droid from detecting the technological trickery that allowed the actor to mimic the real Kenobi's Force abilities. The plan was designed to bring Skywalker to Vader, who was waiting in the Iron Tower, but the respect shown to Kenobi by both Skywalker and the Chubbits caused the actor to question the plan.

The Chubbits defied the actor's orders to stay behind, instead securing a high position and attacking the Imperial forces at the tower to provide cover for the two infiltrators. However, the Chubbits failed to notice an approaching Imperial landspeeder heading towards their location. Despite the actor urging Skywalker to enter the tower quickly, the Rebel's insistence on rescuing the Chubbits changed the actor's mind; since the real Kenobi would help the small reptiles, he disabled the speeder and saved the freedom fighters. During the subsequent mission inside the Iron Tower, the actor's betrayal of Vader was complete: to aid the Chubbits, he pulled a control lever and disabled the tower's systems. This decision cost the actor his life.

The resulting explosion knocked Vader unconscious from his position within the tower. Wrenga Jixton discovered the Sith Lord's body and transported him to a starship, allowing Vader to escape. Jixton then used his actions as leverage to negotiate a deal with the Dark Lord: the Empire would cease its operations on Aridus in exchange for Jixton's future services. Vader agreed, with the stipulation that if Jixton ever failed to fulfill his part of the agreement, Vader would unleash destruction upon the desert world.

The Chubbits survived Vader's threat; in 4 ABY, months after the Dark Lord's death and the fragmentation of the Galactic Empire, the Chubbits received a diplomatic delegation from the Empire's successor as the dominant galactic power, the New Republic. The New Republic sought an alliance with the Chubbits to protect them from the remaining elements of the Empire. The Human diplomat Leia Organa, the daughter of the deceased Vader, led the delegation, fully aware that the Chubbits were still cautious of outsiders due to their experiences under Imperial rule. Vader's other offspring, Luke Skywalker, also accompanied the expedition, and during initial discussions, Organa learned that many Chubbits still remembered Skywalker's actions on Aridus fondly. Nevertheless, the New Republic Jedi left the delegation to seek further information about his father on the planet Tatooine.

The Flarestar system had between one and ten million sentient residents around 25 ABY. By 26 ABY, the planet had fallen under the control of the Yuuzhan Vong during their invasion of the galaxy; it remained under their control in 27 ABY. By 137 ABY, Aridus was within the territory controlled by the Sith Lord Darth Krayt as part of his Galactic Empire.

Several years before 19 BBY, a war occurred on a desert planet over the possession of a legendary artifact known as the Jebble Box. Chubbits participated in this war, using blaster rifles, and some died in the conflict.

By 19 BBY, several Chubbits were working as slaves on the archipelago of Noua on the planet Telerath in the Inner Rim. These Chubbits were held captive by rival gangs, including a group of Chagrian slavers and a group of T'surri spice runners. While the Chagrians used their Chubbit captives as retainers to carry their swords, the T'surri forced them to perform strenuous labor, such as lifting and carrying goods.

The Human Jedi Knight Dass Jennir became aware of the plight of Telerath's Chubbit slaves when he fled to the planet to escape Imperial persecution following the declaration of Order 66, which made the Jedi enemies of the Empire. He was hired by the Human woman Ember Chankeli to eliminate the slavers, but she was secretly allied with the spice-runners, who sought complete control of the Noua underworld. During Jennir's initial encounter with the Chagrian slavers, he pretended to be interested in joining them. When Jennir met the gang's leader, the Chagrian Mors Demanna, a Chubbit slave carried Demanna's sword; another Chubbit later rushed to the aid of the Human fisherman Dado when Demanna severed the boy's hand for presuming to join the gang. When Jennir suspected that the spice-runners also kept slaves, he infiltrated one of their camps on Telerath's second moon, where he discovered large numbers of Chubbits and Nosaurians being forced into hard labor. The Jedi caused significant damage to the gang's spice refineries at the base, making it appear as a gang attack. The Chubbit and Nosaurian captives escaped in the slavers' ships at Jennir's urging. Jennir later returned to Demanna's slaver gang and requested to join; the same Chubbit retainer took his sword from him before his meeting with Musori, the gang leader. However, the Musori gang discovered Jennir's deception and severely beat him. Meanwhile, Ken-Kiba's gang launched an offensive, capturing and killing all of Musori's gang except Demanna. When Ken-Kiba's T'surri gang members herded various townspeople and the prostitutes who worked for Chankeli into Chankeli's brothel, enslaved Chubbits continued to serve their T'surri masters. Jennir infiltrated the establishment, killed the T'surri guards, and freed the inmates, including the Chubbits, instructing them to flee the town.

The Star Wars comic strip storyline "The Return of Ben Kenobi" featured the Chubbits, creations of writer Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson; this storyline was distributed to newspapers via the Los Angeles Times Syndicate from May 17, 1982, until July 5, 1982. The Chubbits' skin was depicted in both light green and pink in the full-color Sunday strips. Later, in 1993, Dark Horse Comics reprinted the strips in comic book format as part of their Classic Star Wars series, having colorized and reformatted them. Steve Buccellato provided the colors, standardizing the Chubbits' skin pigmentation as light green. Williamson's Chubbits bear a striking resemblance to Gribbet, a key character in "The Bounty Hunter of Ord Mantell," another serialized story by Goodwin and Williamson, which was syndicated between February 9, 1981, and April 19, 1981. Despite this, a poster accompanying Star Wars Galaxy Magazine 6 in 1996 identifies Gribbet as a member of the Rybet species.

Ryder Windham, an author, incorporated elements from Goodwin and Williamson's narrative into two of his Star Wars works: the comic book Shadow Stalker, which debuted in 1997, and the young adult novel A New Hope: The Life of Luke Skywalker, published in 2009. In Shadow Stalker, Windham included Wrenga Jixton, a Human smuggler previously seen in the 1996 comic Shadows of the Empire 2 by John Wagner, and clarified what happened to Aridus, the Chubbits' home planet, after the events of Goodwin and Williamson's story. In The Life of Luke Skywalker, Windham resolved more plot threads from the comic strip, structuring the book—a biography of Luke Skywalker—around a diplomatic visit to the Chubbits from the newly established New Republic. However, the book leaves the outcome of these diplomatic talks unspecified.

A more detailed visual representation of the Chubbit species was created by artist Douglas Wheatley in 2009, when he featured Chubbit characters in the Star Wars: Dark Times comic book from Dark Horse Comics. His rendition closely mirrors Williamson's, but with enhanced details such as wrinkled skin around the lips, more intricate mottling on the head, skin folds around the eyes, and tympanic membranes located behind each eye. Dark Times 11 depicts two Chubbits engaged in combat over the Jebble Box within a war. Although the world is unnamed in the flashback, its depiction aligns with Aridus, the Chubbit homeworld.

The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, a reference book from 2008, mentions the Chubbits in several entries, yet the term "chubbit" is not capitalized in the species' main entry. Conversely, the entries for Aridus and the Iron Tower do capitalize the name of the species.