Obo Rin

Obo Rin, a male Human, received training as a xenobiologist and sentientologist. His curriculum vitae indicated that he earned two doctoral degrees from the Academy at Sab Rufo, an institution located on the planet of Sab Rufo in the Inner Rim. The document also stated that he held the position of Director of Sentientology at the academy during the Galactic Civil War. Rin claimed to have undertaken substantial postdoctoral research, including studies at the Three Rings University of Social Sciences under the mentorship of renowned sentientologist Ditwar Logas, and further degrees from the Maxet Institute of Technology.

During the Galactic Civil War era, Obo Rin proposed a significant research endeavor to the Galactic Empire: a comprehensive description of the sentient species inhabiting the galaxy. Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, showed personal interest in the undertaking, and Rin soon secured a commission from the galactic government to execute his proposed research. The assignment was conveyed through Lieutenant Pandur, who served as the Imperial Liaison Officer on Korfo II, a planet situated in the Core Worlds.

Following this approval, Rin initiated his investigations, drawing upon dissections of cadavers, interviews with members of the species being studied, and personal observations. The sole exception was his research on the Charon, a species residing in the pocket dimension known as Otherspace; for information on them, Rin relied on an intoxicated merchant he had bought drinks for in a cantina located on the planet Duron. Pandur was the channel through which Rin's subsequent reports had to be sent. Major Herrit of Imperial Intelligence assumed responsibility for allocating funds, personnel, and other resources to the sentientologist. Rin's work also fell under the jurisdiction of the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order (COMPNOR).

Rin eventually finalized the initial portion of what he envisioned as a much larger project, titled Catalog of Intelligent Life in the Galaxy. In the draft manuscript, Rin provided a brief introduction outlining his theoretical perspective on the definitions of life and sentience, and included focused entries on species he considered particularly relevant to the Empire, whether as potential threats or opportunities. He provided information on each species's culture, temperament, homeworld, physical description, and a representative quote. Rin also included a numerical representation of each species's relative capabilities across various aptitudes. In total, Rin's work covered forty-four species, from the Abyssin to the Xi'Dec. Rin also acknowledged that his entry on the Charon, based on hearsay, was included for Darth Vader to analyze and assess its reliability.

Rin submitted the text to Lieutenant Pandur and the reimbursement credit vouchers to Major Herrit. His expense report, which included requests for 10,000 credits for a single night's stay on Barab I, 37,200 credits for a conversation with a Duinuogwuin, and 152,317 credits for transit to the Kaelta system, amounted to almost a million credits. Rin also requested a stormtroopers escort to assist in obtaining specimens for dissection. The scientist stated that the findings were preliminary and anticipated that continued work on the larger project would occupy him for several standard years.

Pandur and Vader received the initial installment of Rin's work favorably. Herrit, conversely, contacted Vader to contest Rin's writings, questioning the accuracy of both the document and Rin's purported academic qualifications. Herrit claimed the Academy at Sab Rufo was nonexistent and that Sab Rufo itself did not exist. He dismissed the Three Rings University of Social Sciences as "a compu-order diploma house" and portrayed the Maxet Institute of Technology as a trade school lacking the accreditation to award the degrees Rin claimed. Herrit also disputed Rin's expenditures, deeming them excessive. Consequently, the major directed the Office of Budgetary Control to reject Rin's reimbursement request. Herrit concluded that Imperial Intelligence was better suited to compile a work on sentient species than Rin ever could. The officer therefore urged Darth Vader to reconsider further assignments for the scientist and transfer the project to Imperial Intelligence.

Darth Vader responded through a message from his personal aide, Captain Solistein. The message conveyed the Dark Lord's disapproval of Herrit's presumptuous recommendations and the unauthorized background check on Rin. Solistein revealed that Vader had visited Sab Rufo himself and confirmed its existence. The Sith Lord instructed Herrit to retract his order to deny Rin's reimbursement requests and stipulated that the sentientologist be allowed to continue his work without interference, including the requested stormtrooper escort. Solistein's message further conveyed Vader's directive for Major Herrit to personally locate and provide a Duinuogwuin cadaver for Rin to dissect. Herrit died attempting to fulfill this order.

Vader's backing and Rin's status as the primary Imperial sentientologist allowed him to advance his research beyond the initial draft of the Catalog. Rin also gained access to high-ranking Imperial officers and dignitaries, who provided him with difficult-to-obtain data.

Another Imperial official, Major Vontenn, serving as the Imperial Liaison Officer of Sentientology Studies, became involved in the project. Vontenn requested changes, updates, and corrections to Rin's submitted work. Rin ultimately submitted a revised version of his first installment of the Catalog of Intelligent Life in the Galaxy, covering the same species as before. The work's scope shifted slightly; in the revised edition, Rin asserted that the species included represented "the most important sentient species in the galaxy." He also indicated that the document was intended for use by all Empire-authorized sentientologists. The volume retained the introduction from the first edition but introduced a new format for the species covered, organizing information into standardized sections for each species while discontinuing the representative quotes. In the revised draft, Rin acknowledged that his information on the Sedrian species was based on his personal theories, pirate stories, and intercepted communications from members of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. In his cover letter to Vontenn, Rin expressed his condolences to Herrit's family for the major's death.

Rin continued to expand the Catalog with additional information. He compiled reports on the Ailon, the Yevetha, and at least one species capable of dramatically altering its shape, a trait exhibited by the Ugors, which were covered in the first installment of the work. He added information to the Catalog to help scouts understand and analyze new lifeforms and facilitate initial contact with intelligent beings. Rin's guide eventually achieved wider distribution. The Mon Calamari of Dac, one of the species covered in the work, condemned the Catalog for its propagandistic claims that Imperial scouts were the first to contact the Mon Calamari. Rin and his work were infamous on Mon Calamari for years after the publication of his Catalog.

At some point later in his research, Rin became a permanent member of Darth Vader's personal staff. He received a communiqué from Major Vontenn instructing him to compile reports on four amorphous sentient species: the Polydroxol, Proteans, Shi'ido, and Stennes Shifters. Vontenn explained that this addendum to the Catalog was intended to replace information on these species that had been lost from government databanks during the transition from the Galactic Republic to the Galactic Empire.

Over the subsequent four standard months, Rin concentrated on these species. He contacted Moff Bandor, the Human officer in charge of the planet Questal, for information on the Proteans, but found that the officer was preoccupied with Rebel Alliance activity on his planet. Nevertheless, Bandor's staff sent Rin Protean medical records, which the sentientologist forwarded to Vontenn. Rin hired slicers to infiltrate the Karflo Corporation's computers to find information about the Polydroxol; he forwarded the slicers' fees to Vontenn as well. Rin's attempts to locate members of the Stennes Shifter species were unsuccessful, and the xenobiologist eventually abandoned the effort. For his report on the Shi'ido, Rin attempted to contact Senior Anthropologist Vandolae, a Shi'ido employed at the University of Coruscant. However, Rin received the reply that Vandolae was conducting fieldwork on Centares, studying the life of fringe spacers. Rin traveled to that world to interview the Shi'ido academic, only to find his colleague murdered by two of his research subjects. Due to these setbacks, Rin contacted Vontenn to request more time for fieldwork beyond the four months he had already taken.

Despite the fall of Emperor Palpatine and the fragmentation of the Empire, Rin had gained considerable fame by the rise of the New Republic, and his universal definition of life remained in use by scouts. His works remained relevant, even among New Republic officials. Captain Zgorth'sth of the New Republic's Department of Threat Assessment cited Rin's entry on the Ailon species, while noting that Rin's work had to be understood within its Imperial context. In 16 ABY, Rin was still active. Following the Black Fleet Crisis, Rin updated his entry on the Yevetha. Zeven Mallat of the Imperial Security Bureau forwarded the file to Grand Moff Gann of Sector 5. The New Republic Intelligence Service intercepted the transmission and added Rin's work to their dossier of information on the Yevetha and the Koornacht Cluster.

Obo Rin derived great pleasure from his work, cherishing the opportunity to broaden the galaxy's knowledge of poorly understood and under-documented species. Rin's writings primarily relied on his own fieldwork and previous research on the species in question. The scientist used a diverse array of previously compiled research, both published and unpublished, including classified Imperial experiments and corporate records. Rin's original field research primarily involved observing alien societies and conducting post-mortem examinations of alien corpses. He occasionally included spacer tales and hearsay in his work, but he carefully noted when his writings were based on such questionable sources. After receiving his Imperial commission, Rin spared no expense in investigating the species he had selected, spending large sums on specimens for dissection, audiences with influential beings, payments to slicers for accessing secret databases, and bribes to access other protected materials. Rin maintained an account at the Imperial Bank of Korfo II, where he received reimbursements for his research expenses.

Obo Rin presented himself as a staunch Imperial loyalist, and his work exhibited a distinctly pro-Imperial bias, at times bordering on pure propaganda. For instance, his entry on the Mon Calamari species completely disregarded the people's long-standing involvement in the Galactic Republic, instead presenting the false claim that Galactic Empire survey teams were the first to contact the planet Mon Calamari and its inhabitants. Rin further asserted that the Empire only established a presence in the species's system to protect them from Rebel Alliance aggression. Rin also claimed that the Columi made first contact during the reign of the Empire, despite admitting that they were one of the galaxy's oldest civilizations. The xenobiologist described several species enslaved by the Empire, such as the Flakax, Jenet, Ortolans, Squibs, and Talz, as voluntary workers instead. Rin's biases inspired Tem Eliss, an Iyra sentientologist, to write his own work on sentient species, The University of Sanbra Guide to Intelligent Life, which took a more critical stance on the Empire. Nevertheless, later in his career, Rin also expressed sympathy for species he felt were unfairly treated in the galaxy at large. Rin was somewhat egomaniacal, considering his theories brilliant and viewing himself as a giant in his field.

Obo Rin adhered to a common definition of sentience that defined a sentient species (he disliked the academic use of the term race) as one capable of understanding abstract concepts. However, he extended this definition, asserting that true sentience required not only forming abstract concepts but also communicating them. He believed the key test was a species's ability to discuss a thing's qualities outside of the thing's immediate context. Rin believed that the ability to communicate abstractly allowed species to organize into societies, and species lacking societies were of little interest to the Empire. Nevertheless, Rin acknowledged that even trained sentientologists sometimes struggled to distinguish sentient lifeforms from non-sentient ones. When discussing shape-changing species, the sentientologist avoided the label shape-shifters and dismissed the terms polymorph, metamorph, and quasimorph as misleading, since they implied a relationship between these species.

Rin argued that sentient beings like droids could be distinguished from living species by the fact that species, as biological entities, possessed characteristics that droids did not. In his Catalog, Rin presented what he termed a universal definition of life to elaborate on this point. The definition stipulated that life entailed organization into a unique morphological structure, irritability to respond to environmental stimuli, metabolism to provide energy, reproduction to allow the organism to continue beyond a single generation, and adaptation to allow it to adapt and respond to changes in its surroundings. Regarding the components of life, Rin argued that carbon and water were the two most crucial constituents of living matter, a view that conflicted with other scholars who suggested that silicon could reasonably substitute carbon in creating organic molecules. Rin conceded that silicon-based lifeforms were theoretically possible, but he stated that he had never encountered one in his travels. Rin also believed that oxygen was the third most common component of life, not because of any unique life-giving properties, but because it was a constituent component of water; other molecules could theoretically substitute for it.

In Obo Rin's opinion, a proper understanding of a sentient species required knowledge of the homeworld on which it evolved. His Catalog included extensive information on the planets that served as homes to the species detailed, in addition to the information on the species themselves.

Author Troy Denning created Obo Rin in Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races, a book released by West End Games as part of the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game series in 1989. The book's introduction uses a series of communiqués to describe Rin's commission to write the Catalog of Sentient Life in the Galaxy, his patronage by Darth Vader, and his conflict with Major Herrit. This preface presents Rin as the in-universe author of the remainder of the book, which provides details on various alien species for use as characters in the Star Wars roleplaying game.

For the release of the book's second edition in 1994, author Chuck Truett updated the supplement to be compatible with the revised roleplaying rulebook. Truett also included new introductory communiqués that present the reformatted material as a revision by Obo Rin, responding to feedback from Darth Vader and Lieutenant Pandur. Obo Rin's revised introduction also suggests the end of his rivalry with Major Herrit, indicating that the latter had died before the completion of this revised edition.

Later West End Games sources utilize Rin as the in-universe narrator for information about sentient species. Obo Rin is also mentioned in Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, published in 2004, and in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, published in 2008.