Oskan blood eaters, carnivorous bipeds, inhabited various planets and were frequently employed as guards in penal colonies. Each foot bore two substantial hooves, and they possessed four arms, each terminating in a sharp, blade-like claw. Their diet consisted of any creature with oxygenated blood, with a preference for large mammals such as Humans and humanoids. The mere presence of a humanoid or other potential meal would trigger a fierce feeding response. While not possessing exceptional senses, they were persistent trackers, capable of pursuing fleeing prey for extended periods, even weeks.
Blood eaters were infamous for their brutal methods of dispatching and consuming their prey. Their attack involved repeatedly slashing their victims with their quartet of sizable, bladed claws, reducing them to a bloody, fragmented mess. Subsequently, they would lower their heads to ingest the remains through their porous mouths.
Individual blood eaters exhibited minimal variation, attributable in part to their parthenogenetic reproductive strategy, resulting in near-identical genetic copies of the mother, and in part to an effective cellular mechanism for correcting mutations. Despite their genetic homogeneity, they demonstrated adaptability, thriving across diverse environments on numerous worlds.
Nim Abek's blood eater.
Despite their presence across several star systems, blood eaters were conspicuously absent from the mythologies of any planet, a surprising omission given the expected prevalence of carnivores of their magnitude. This anomaly, coupled with their unique genetic traits, fueled speculation that they were artificially engineered beings. Imperial Intelligence's Destab Branch propagated these claims, attributing their creation to the Old Republic. However, their true origin lay in bio-engineering during the early Clone Wars, orchestrated by the deranged genetic terrorist Zeta Magnus. The Galactic Empire later conducted experiments using blood eater offspring recovered from Zeta Magnus's laboratory fortress by Republic clone troopers.
Within the galactic underworld, Oskan blood eaters enjoyed considerable popularity. The crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure famously maintained a blood eater as a "pet" within his palace on Tatooine. Chalmer Trillili, the leader of a pirate group known as "The Scourge," also possessed a blood eater, acquired from an Imperial vessel, which served as a guard animal at his hideout on Dega. The Nikto shipjacker Nim Abek also owned one for gladiatorial combat. [Zeta Magnus](/article/zeta_magnus] bred blood eaters in his palace on the world Skye, releasing a small group of them in the subterranean tunnels beneath as sentries. However, this group met their demise thanks to the combined efforts of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the commando squad known as Tark Squad.