Dressellian

The Rebel commander who fought beside the Ewoks at Endor, the wrinkled, glowering officer fans nicknamed "Prune Face," was a Dressellian named Orrimaarko, and he was exactly what his people tend to produce: a guerrilla who took up arms against an empire and won. Dressellians are a species defined by that stubbornness. They would rather bleed for their freedom than live comfortably without it.

They are tall and lean, with hairless, deeply wrinkled skulls, leathery folded skin, and, a detail that unsettles those who see them wounded, teal-colored blood. Their creased faces read as ancient even in the young, and the effect is not softened by a temperament that runs guarded and severe. In Legends, their wrinkled hide is tough, weather-beaten stuff, bred by generations in an unforgiving climate.

Dressellians evolved in the sub-equatorial grasslands of Breehara, the main continent of their homeworld, Dressel. It is open, rough country, and it made a people who are hardy, self-reliant, and instinctively suspicious of anyone who arrives promising to help. When the Galactic Empire subjugated Dressel around a decade before the Battle of Yavin, that suspicion hardened into open resistance.

Dressellian culture prizes freedom and self-determination above nearly everything, and it is frankly xenophobic: outsiders are met with distrust until they prove otherwise, and Human authority especially so. They are also famous technophobes, wary of the sophisticated machinery of the wider galaxy and preferring crude, reliable tools. Their signature weapon is the slugthrower, a primitive projectile rifle, some built by hand and some smuggled in, that they turned to devastating effect against Imperial patrols.

The Dressellian resistance did not fight alone. Their more technologically sophisticated allies, the Bothans, supplied them with weapons and mercenary training, and together they broke the Imperial occupation of Dressel, a rare and hard-won victory by a "backward" world against the Empire. Orrimaarko carried that fight all the way to the Alliance high command, standing among the Rebel leaders on the eve of Endor. Dressellians earned their place in the Rebellion the hard way: by winning battles everyone expected them to lose.

The details of that war became legend. Orrimaarko had been the governor of Sreeharlo before the occupation, and he traded a governor's chair for a rifle without apparent regret. Dressellian marksmen turned their hand-built slugthrowers on Imperial scout troopers, and in at least one telling used a downed patrol's own vehicle to bring an AT-ST crashing to the ground, a feat few beings in the galaxy could claim. For a people the Empire dismissed as primitives, they proved remarkably difficult to hold.

As a player character, a Dressellian is a born scout, soldier, or scoundrel: tough, fearless in the face of intimidation, and deadly with a slugthrower. The catch is temperament and tools. They are gruff and off-putting to strangers, a genuine social handicap, and their distrust of high technology makes computers, droids, and advanced systems a real liability. Play a Dressellian as the party's unbreakable spine, the one who will not run, will not fold, and will not touch the fancy console if there is a simpler way. They are the character who volunteers for the ambush, the last stand, and the job nobody sane would take, not out of recklessness but out of a bone-deep certainty that some things are worth more than staying alive. Pair a Dressellian with allies who can handle the slicing and the sweet-talking, and they will gladly be the one holding the door while everyone else gets clear. Their loyalty, once earned, is close to unconditional, and their courage is never in question.

Dressellians are tall and gaunt, typically topping most humans, with elongated, hairless heads and deeply wrinkled, leathery skin that lends even young members a weathered, elder look; it is a face that seems carved from old wood. Their blood is a distinctive teal. Their hide is tough, weather-beaten stuff, bred by generations under a hard grassland sun, and their clothing tends toward the practical and hard-wearing, the gear of a people who live rough and expect to fight. They move with the economy of hunters, and are rarely without a weapon within reach.

Dressellians are proud, blunt, and slow to trust. Freedom is the value they organize their lives around, and they assume, until shown otherwise, that outsiders are there to take it. That wariness can read as hostility, and often is, especially toward Humans and anyone waving advanced technology at them. But a Dressellian who has decided you are worth their loyalty is steadfast to the point of stubbornness: they do not frighten, they do not fold under pressure, and they do not abandon a fight they believe in. They respect competence, directness, and courage, and have little patience for anything they judge to be soft or dishonest. A Dressellian will tell you exactly what they think of your plan, and then, if it is sound, follow it to the end.