The Ewoks are very family and community oriented. While they are primitive technologically, they are wise in their own environment. They fiercely defend their own. They adapt to fit into their environment more than expecting the environment to adapt to them.
They tend to be small, about half the height of your average human. They are furry with various natural colors and patterns. They have large eyes, rounded ears atop the head, and three fingers and toes.
Each newborn has a ‘spirit tree’ planted for it. They worship the trees, and defend them. They have a medicine man who may or may not be force sensitive, though not enough to be a Jedi, and , a chief (usually male) and a tribal council of elders. The ewoks appreciate wisdom, courage, valor, and innocence. A coming of age ceremony includes honoring the young with a hood, which babys (woklings) do not wear. They also celebrate the Festival of Love, and Hallowe’en,. There are rumors of far darker celebrations. They enjoy their celebrations, with dancing, music and feasting.
Ewoks prefer to eat plants, berries, or fish. They will eat meat when other food is scarce however. They usually live among the trees, often (but not always) in the treetops, for safety. There are those in lakeland that live on platforms on the lakes for protection from shore predators. Others live in cliffs. A few have homes on the ground. They do not tend to be wasteful and they prefer to be clean. Ewoks also keep pets, and beasts of burden such as the Bordok and Endorian pony.
In regard to defense, the Ewoks use arrows, daggers, slings and spears. But they are not beyond complicated traps. They have skin hang gliders, are capable of building battle wagons. They know how to use their environment to the best advantage. This enables them to deal with local enemies, such as the Duloks, and the giant Gorax. They also have the sunstar, an apparent magic stone that can counter the evil powers of the likes of Morag, the Tulga witch.
The small, seeming primitve beings are also clever enough to figure out some technology. Left to themselves, they have bow and arrow, spears, hangliders, and are capable of clever traps. But watching the Imperials, they were even able to figure out how to use a blaster (not well, their fingers were too thick), how to start a speeder bike (but not control it very well) or roughly start at an AT-ST.
There is some debate if Ewoks will eat sentients. They worshiped a ‘golden god’ which they mistook 3PO for and nearly ate the Rebel heroes! Whether this was due to the desperate need to worship the god (even if he didn’t want it) or being doubtful anyone sentinet could fall in a trap meant to trick an animal, is hard to say. Safe to say though, that Ewoks, are individuals. As such their are variations in beliefs.
Males who are single spend a lot of time alone in the forest, hunting and harvesting. But they build a home when they plan to take a mate. The females often leave gifts to hint at their interest. Their woklings must learn the rituals and tribal legends as they come of age, until the Festival of Hoods. This will be the moral guide throughout life.
History
The Ewoks yearly take on tasks such as the coming of age ceremonies, gathering, hunting, and most of all, renewal of the Tree of Life. Yearly, this incredibly bright tree provided light and life but started to fail. The ewoks would use a potion on it to refresh it. To do so, they had to cross a sea of floating trees.
Ewoks at one point began using the Yuzzum language.
The Ewoks are most famous for inviting the Rebel Alliance to join their tribe (after some misunderstanding) and helping the defeat the ground troops around shield generator. While on their own the Ewoks would not have succeeded (at least not permanently) in driving off the Empire, their unexpected attack gave the Rebels time to break free and continue the mission.
Relationships
Ewoks have parents, brothers and sisters and young. They make friends of many of the other people’s on their world. But they are also not unfamiliar with visitors to their moon. The Towani family for instance, crashed when Wicket W. Warrik was young, and having been rescued by the Ewoks, lived among them while repairing their ship. Noa was another they became briefly acquainted with. After a false start, they joined forces with the Rebel Alliance including Leia, Han, Luke and Chewie, making them members of the tribe.
Not all the visitors were friendly however. Some, like the Marauders and nightsister Charal, tried to enslave them. The Empire tore up the forest to build it’s generator station, leading hte Ewoks to cautiously monitor and prepare defenses. At least one ewok was imprisoned when he was found with a rebel scout. But while the Ewoks, on their own, could not have succeeded in driving off the Empire, they certainly were enough to create a diversion for those who could. The Ewoks took an impressive amount of Imperials down through sheer determination and knowledge of their environment. It doesn’t hurt that the Empire understimated them as simple savages.
It was neither common, nor unknown, for Ewoks to travel to other worlds. Of course, they did not have the technology to do so, but they were known to go with visitors on occasion to explore the galaxy.
Worship
The Ewoks worship their spirit trees, along with a few other deities. One of them apparently reputedly was gold, explaining their mistaking 3PO for the god.
Enemies
While there are various natural predators on Endor, perhaps the most common foe is the Dulok tribes. While the various tribes prefer to live in peace and friendship with others, the Dulok tribe has different values. They try and take what they want instead of trading or asking. They have tried to enslave ewoks. They’ve also tried to start wars between ewoks and others by framing them for crimes they commit.
The Tulga witch is another foe. This female wants to steal back the shadowstone sunstar from Logray, the medicine man. She steeped in evil, and has many times tried to destroy ewoks, sometimes indirectly by sending her minions to attack their food sources.
Gorax is another threat. This absolutely enormous creature is also intelligent and sends it’s pets hunting. It was when slaying one such, that they discovered evidence of what had befallen the parents of the two Towani family they found and led to the quest to save them.
Mauraders are beings who crash landed long before, from various off world species given to the pirate life. They were better at pirating then engineering or flying. They usually leave the ewoks alone but have been known to attack if the ewoks find something they want first.
Invaders who attack and destroy their forest. There are occasionally those who might try and land, and disturb their turf by mass cutting down of trees, and enslaving the locals to help. This results in the Ewoks going to war. The Empire thought they were no threat (it’s unlikely they bothered hunting them) but the ewoks were quite aware of the white shelled invaders who cut down a swath of the forest for their shield generator, and scared off the local wildlife. As per usual, they observed, made preperations based on what the forest told them worked against the invaders, and waited for the best moment to strike.
Ewoks in the Galaxy
Having no technology, it’s no surprise they are a rare sight off Endor. But rare doesn’t mean never. Ewoks occasionally catch a lift to see the galaxy with offworlders who visit to fix a ship, or do a bit of exploring. After the Battle of Endor, the rebels did take a few seriously injured to dedicated medical facilities to try and save these stalwart defenders of their moon, and allies without whom the battle would’ve been lost.
Famous Ewoks:
- Chief Chirpa
- Princess Kneesa a Jari Kintaka
- Wicket W. Warrik
- Deej Warrik
- Widdle aka Willie Warrick
- Weechee Warrik
- Teebo
- Logray (Medicine man)
- Tchukatrok
- Kank (mystic)
- Asha
- Melani
- Treek (mercenary)
- Kyoopid (festival of love sage)
- Benjamin (festival of love sage)
Sources on the Ewoks:
- Return of the Jedi
- Ewoks cartoon (Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour)
- Ewoks comic book series
- Ewoks: Shadows of Endor
- Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
- Ewoks the Battle for Endor
- Star Comics Ewoks series, combined in Droids and Ewoks Omnibus.
- Illustrated Star Wars Universe
- Star Wars the Old Republic (Treek conversationis)
- Star Wars Galaxies
References
It is the Ewoks cartoon that reveals that Ewoks don’t primarily subsist on meat, in spite of their trying to eat Return of the Jedi’s heroes. They save it for special occasions, when other foods are scarce.
Treek, a character you can acquire in SWTOR through purchasing an unlock, is an Ewok who chose to leave Endor as a mercenary. Treek does tend to eat it’s kills, sentient or no. Ironically, Treek does not think the Ewoks could ever beat the likes of the Empire.
The Ewok Festival of Love is shared by many planets in Star Wars Galaxies. There is also a flying spirit ewok you can aquire.
Festival of Love Sages: No, I do not know how they fly. These are apparently ewoks with wings they put on for the event. How do the wings work? No idea.
“Chief Chirpa Kidnapped!” — Ewoks Annual is where you can find them celebrating Hallowe’en. It was a UK issue.
There is a possiblitily that the idea 3PO was a ‘golden god’ came from the Star Wars Droids and Ewoks comic book crossover event, where the droids accidentally end up on Endor. Of course, that does lead to the question why C3PO would be given that status and R2D2 not, unless its because he just didn’t speak Ewok. It also would seem to imply 3PO somehow forgot the incident.
The Darker celebrations I mention as rumor are from the Galaxy Guide Return of the Jedi. It is suggested Logray was into these, and sacrifice. It is said he was banished from the tribe after the victory at Endor. However, while nothing contradicts this S-Canon West End Guide directly, I feel it does contradict the Logray we see in the animated ewok cartoons. So I have doubts the incident of trying to cook Han Solo was meant to be an intentional of the evil sort. I get the impression it was more ‘only an animal would spring that trap’ sort of mistake by the Ewoks.
