Xexto

Xexto are a small, four-armed species from the forest world of Troiken in the Outer Rim, known for reflexes quick enough to outrun what hunts them, for six nimble fingers on each of four hands, and for a talent at podracing that the galaxy noticed long before it noticed anything else about them. They are slight, spindly and unfailingly busy, and a Xexto doing one thing with their hands is a Xexto who is only half occupied.

The body is unusual even by the standards of a galaxy full of strange shapes. Six limbs run off a small central torso: four arms, each ending in a six-fingered hand, and two legs with ten toes apiece. A long neck carries a small head with large eyes, usually dark purple or black, and their skin ranges from chalk white through pale yellow to purple. They are invertebrates, which is where the speed comes from and also where the fragility does — there is no skeleton in there to take a blow. Most stand between 1.1 and 1.5 meters.

They have two brains. The one in the head runs the body's basic business; the one in the chest does the thinking. Their reflexes were shaped by Troiken itself, where being quick was the difference between eating and being eaten, and the species built its villages up in the trees rather than on the forest floor where the predators were. Those villages are not primitive — they sprawl, they are well equipped, and the Xexto have built proper cities and spaceports besides. They hunted with slingshots, which four arms make considerably more practical than they sound, and the constant pressure of dangerous ground and dangerous animals left the culture admiring nerve above almost anything else. Tell a Xexto you doubt their courage and you will have a problem on your hands.

One piece of Xexto history was not their doing at all. Around 17,000 BBY, Arkanian scientists took a population of Xexto off Troiken, resettled them on the world of Quermia, and altered them. Those descendants became the Quermians — taller, longer-necked, still multi-limbed, and by now a separate species entirely. The relationship was confirmed in canon in 2016, and it means the Jedi Master Yarael Poof, who sat on the Jedi Council, belonged to a branch of the Xexto family tree.

Offworld, the Xexto are best known from the track. **Gasgano** raced the Boonta Eve Classic on Tatooine for Gardulla the Hutt in a green Ord Pedrovia, with a camera mounted behind his cockpit so he could watch anyone trying to pass him, and finished second to a nine-year-old human. He was fiercely competitive, hated losing, and went straight back to racing, becoming the favourite pilot on the podracing moon of Oovo IV. Not every Xexto in the galaxy is on a starting grid, though: **Ferpil Wallaway** ran a pawn shop on Lothal and picked pockets on the side, and taught a young Ezra Bridger a good deal of what he knew.

As a player character, a Xexto is quick hands and a head start. **DEX +2** and **Lightning Reflexes** put you at the top of the initiative order, **Quadridexterous** gives you four hands to work with and an easy way up anything climbable, and being **Small** makes you harder to hit. The bill comes in the form of **STR −2** and **Spindly Frame**: you carry less, you lose physical contests you have no business entering, and a blunt weapon hurts you more than it hurts anybody else. Pilots, slicers, thieves and scouts all fit — anything where getting there first and having a spare pair of hands beats winning a shoving match.

A Xexto has six limbs branching from a small central torso: four arms, each with a six-fingered hand, and two legs with ten toes each. The neck is long and the head small, dominated by large eyes that usually run dark purple to black. Skin colour ranges from chalk white through pale yellow to purple. They typically stand between 1.1 and 1.5 meters, and the whole frame reads as spindly — long, thin and light.

They are invertebrates. Nothing inside a Xexto is rigid, which is why they move the way they do, and why a solid impact does more to them than it would to a being with a skeleton in the way. The four arms work independently and well: a Xexto can hold, brace, climb and work with more hands than most species can bring to a problem, and they grew up in the canopy of Troiken's forests, where that mattered.

Their nervous system is built for speed. The species evolved under pressure from predators fast enough to make hesitation fatal, and the reflexes they developed to escape those predators also served for hunting their own. They also carry two brains — one in the head handling basic bodily function, one in the chest doing the higher thinking. (Assumption: sources give no standard weight range or age of majority.)

Xexto tend to be quick in every sense: quick-moving, quick-handed and quick to act. They are restless, rarely still, and inclined to be doing at least two things at once because they have the hands for it. Competitiveness runs strong enough through the species to be a stereotype offworld, and podracing did nothing to dispel it.

Their home culture is arboreal and village-scaled, built up in the trees rather than out across the ground, and traditionally they hunted with slingshots. That upbringing leaves most Xexto comfortable with heights, tight spaces and being outnumbered, and it leaves them with a practical view of danger: you do not fight the thing that is bigger than you, you are simply somewhere else by the time it arrives. What they do not do is back down quietly. Generations spent outwitting Troiken's predators built a culture that prizes risk-taking and treats a questioned nerve as an insult worth answering, which is how a species of 1.2-metre invertebrates ended up overrepresented in podracing.

Offworld, Xexto gravitate to work that rewards fast hands and fast decisions, from piloting and racing to slicing, thieving and scouting. The sources turn up a Xexto assassin working under the name Sister Six during the Galactic Civil War, and a Captain Perrili running a bulk freighter as a smuggler and a contact for the Resistance, which is about the range you should expect. They are not built for brawling and generally know it. A Xexto adventurer is usually the one who has already moved, already grabbed the thing, and is already explaining why that was the sensible option.