The brain in the chest
Most four-armed species in the galaxy just have four arms. The Quermian have a reason for them. A second brain sits in the chest cavity, below the first, and the lower pair of arms is wired to it — which is why a Quermian can work both pairs at once without the fumbling that usually comes with extra limbs. One brain holds the conversation. The other one is still doing something with its hands.
They're playable now, in the catalog and in the Character Builder, and they are easily the strangest body plan we've added. There is no nose anywhere on that face — scent is handled by olfactory glands set in the palms, so a Quermian checking whether a ration pack has turned raises a hand and holds it still, a gesture outsiders routinely misread as a blessing or a threat. There is also no spinal column at all, anywhere in the body, which is why the famous neck moves the way it does and why Quermians fold into shapes that look injurious to anyone built around vertebrae.
They were made, not evolved
Around 17,000 BBY an Arkanian geneticist, working on research the Senate had already outlawed, collected a population of Xexto from Troiken and moved them to the neighbouring world of Quermia. He terraformed the planet into something close to a paradise, left his altered subjects there with no predators and no further interference, and walked away.
The design brief shows in the result. Longer necks for seeing over the thick vegetation mats that covered the terraformed surface. A frame built taller than the Xexto forebears — Quermians stand around 2.4 metres, and Yarael Poof was recorded at 2.64. The kinship was only established millennia later by genetic testing, and the Xexto refused to accept it before conceding the evidence. Both species are in the catalog now, so you can read the before and the after.
What the Arkanians abandoned, the Quermians turned into a communal society organised around philosophy that kept the peace for an extraordinarily long stretch. Their own explanation is unglamorous: they are very good at reading each other. Posture, neck angle, the position of four hands, the micro-shifts a two-brained nervous system produces. Offworld xenobiologists took that for telepathy and wrote it into the reference books. The Quermians have been politely correcting the entry ever since.
The build
| Ability modifiers | INT +2, DEX +1, CON −2 |
| Size / speed | Medium, 30 ft |
| Skill | Knowledge: Galactic Lore |
| Four-Armed Dexterity | Wield two two-handed weapons at once with STR 14+; one extra free object interaction per turn |
| Ventral Brain | Once per Short Rest, reroll a failed Dexterity saving throw |
| Noseless | Disadvantage on Survival checks |
Ventral Brain is the trait worth building around, and the thing to notice is which save it rerolls. It isn't a flash of insight — it's the lower arms reacting without being told to while the upper brain is still processing. So it catches the grenade, the collapsing catwalk, the blast door closing on the wrong side of you. Once per Short Rest, you fail the Dex save and the other half of your nervous system fixes it.
Four-Armed Dexterity is the standard four-armed package every such species in SWURPG carries, and it pairs unusually well with an INT +2 chassis: the extra free object interaction means you can ready a grenade, a scanner or a second weapon without spending your turn on logistics. The CON −2 is the honest cost — Quermians carry almost no bulk, and the species reads as elongated and spare at every point. Noseless is the one that'll come up at the table more than you expect, because palm-based smell is useless the moment your hands are full, gloved, or holding a blaster.
Yarael Poof, and the one who wasn't a Jedi
The Quermian the galaxy remembers is Yarael Poof, who held a seat on the Jedi High Council from the High Republic era into the last years of the Republic, robed to conceal his lower arms and collared in Quermian fashion. He was known for two things that sit oddly together: a reputation as a diplomat and teacher, and an expert command of mind tricks and illusion. In Legends his end is specific and costly — he went into the depths of Coruscant after the Infant of Shaa, an artefact that could have torn the planet apart, took a mortal wound, and shut it down before he died.
He wasn't the only one. Murk Lundi taught history at the University of Coruscant and became the recognised authority on Sith history, which is a career that ends exactly how you'd expect. And during the New Sith Wars, the Quermian Sith Lord Ayanos Bactra ran the Bactranate in the Grumani sector — mostly sidestepping the wars his neighbours fought and selling arms to all of them instead. The bemused expression is anatomy, not a moral alignment.
Build your own
The Quermian are live in the Character Builder — four arms, the ventral brain, the palms that smell, and two centuries of lifespan to spend on a grudge. Read the full species profile for the lore and the stat breakdown, or browse the rest of the species catalog. They complete the named Jedi High Council roster in SWURPG, alongside the Lannik, Thisspiasian, Tholothian and Ongree — with Yoda's species, which canon has never named, as the permanent exception.