The Orishen were a species possessing sentience, originating from the planet called Orish. Celebrated for their profound sense of honor and nobility, the Orishen found themselves enslaved by the Galactic Empire. To achieve their freedom, they resorted to poisoning their own homeworld. Recognizable by the smooth plates scattered across their bodies, along with their nose slits and divided jaws, the Orishen population dwindled to only a few thousand during the time of the New Republic. During this time, Senator Tolwar Wartol of the Orishen people represented them and was in contention with Mon Mothma for the position of chancellor of the Republic.
Featuring smooth skin, the Orishen were distinguished by unevenly spaced smooth plates, including solid plates protecting the head; these plates reflected light in a way that resembled black mirrors. Their blood was purple, and they possessed nose slits. Their bisected lower jaws gave their mouths the appearance of a blossoming flower whenever they communicated. Inside their mouths were jagged teeth flanking a slender pink tongue. The Orishen had long, clawed fingers, and their deep-set eyes contained X-shaped irises and corneas that shifted and throbbed, creating a kaleidoscopic effect.
Each Orishen pairing produced a single offspring—two children for two parents—and the parents died during the birth process, sacrificing their lives to bring new life into the world. This system, where life was exchanged for life, meant the Orishen population remained constant, despite the fact that no Orishen could explain how their species initially reached any particular number.
Before the Galactic Empire's interference, the Orishen were primarily peaceful agriculturalists residing on their fertile homeworld of Orish. They were regarded as resilient, albeit peculiar, possessing a strong sense of honor and nobility. They maintained strict adherence to protocol, and their architectural and decorative choices were considered austere, minimalist, blocky, and even off-putting. Orishen often chose anagrammatic names for themselves, such as Tolwar Wartol, Vendar Darven, and TimTam TamTim. They were known for drinking root juice.
The Orishen were subjected to enslavement by the Galactic Empire, which engaged in destructive strip-mining on Orish, depleting the planet's surface of essential nutrients and transforming their idyllic home. The Orishen were overworked and deprived of adequate [food](/article/foodstuff]. Ultimately, the enslaved people united, secretly stockpiling pesticides and fertilizers to construct an explosive device. The chemist Tolwar Wartol played a key role in the bomb's creation. While the chemical weapon successfully eliminated the Imperial occupation force, it also poisoned their planet, contaminating everything from the soil to the atmosphere. Streams became choked with corpses, and the surviving Orishen erected massive tombs to honor their dead. The Empire abandoned Orish and its inhabitants, an event Wartol later hailed as a victory. By the time of the [New Republic](/article/new_republic], only a few thousand Orishen survived, living in a network of tubes and stations above their devastated world, as well as on an asteroid archipelago. Wartol became his people's representative, serving as a senator in the Galactic Senate, and used his experiences as a survivor as a central theme in his political campaigns.