Chapter Text
One of the first things Fay asked Tsiri about was her father’s clan origins. No one in Pau City had a record of any “Ke” clan before Tsino Ke appeared. His facial markings didn’t match those of any known Pau’an family. There was a rumor that he had gotten tattoos to change the appearance of these patches, but Tsiri was born with his exact clan markings, which flushed just like regular facial patches, thus clearly were not tattoos. Then there was the matter of his accent- it just didn’t quite fit with the dialect of any known sinkhole. He had to come from somewhere, but where? Tsino Ke never published it in his journals, and he never told Tsiri either.
This is his story. But first, some history.
The Utapau’an windswept plains are a desolate place, but they weren’t always so. Ancient Pau’an used to dominate the planet’s surface. They moved in clans, tight knit family groups sharing a set of paternally-derived forehead markings, taking shelter during the day in domed tent structures made from animal bones and hides. At night, they came out and stalked the big game that roamed in the tall grass. They used their height as an advantage, looking out above the dense foliage, eyes with reflective retinas to pick out the shapes of moving prey in the darkness. Their hearing was superb- they could hear the low rumbling sounds of Jamel herds from miles away. Aside from the occasional predation by Utapau’an Flying Squids and Direwolves, Pau’an were the apex predators of the planet’s surface.
Then, the hyperwind storms came. Earthquakes were fairly common on the planet, and caused some of the sinkholes that would later become major cities. However, there was a massive earthquake one year that proved cataclysmic for the surface-dwelling species of the planet. The planet shifted on its axis, changing the climate drastically. Windstorms came on suddenly and killed off many of the large game animals Pau’an fed on. Their shelters were torn to shreds, and the plains left little permanent refuge for them. They were ill adapted to survive, and most of the population perished. However, a select few clans saw an opportunity to survive by invading the sinkholes inhabited by the native Utai.
The Utai made easy prey for the Pau’an, whose night vision made them formidable predators in the caves. However, the Utai were able to use their intimate knowledge of the cave systems to strike significant blows on the already depopulated Pau’an. In order to ensure their survival, the Pau’an made a truce with the Utai, and the two species learned to cooperate. After several hundreds of years, the Utai even came to revere the Pau’an for their incredibly long lifespans, measured in centuries. The Pau’an survived, but existed into the present as only 30% of Utapau’s population. Post-Empire their numbers seem to be on the rise again, though.
It was thought that all surface dwelling Pau’an had died off, but up until a couple hundred years before the Battle of Yavin, evidence of isolated groups of surface Pau’an was still being found by the Utapau Sky Force on exploratory missions far from the sinkhole cities. It was in these times that the great Tsino Ke was born.