Player Handout 1 – Excerpt from a documentary on the Leviathans

The following is an excerpt from a documentary produced by the Alliance for the Creation of Habitable Environments about the calves and their mother, a large portion of which was a recreation of the rescue of the calves – with a great deal of dramatic license. The following is an excerpt from the documentary, hosted by the Kel Dor xenobiologist A. Rahring. Dr. Rahring is well-regarded in the field, and had begun the documentary prior to the disappearance of the calves; during their absence, he did a great deal more research, and came up with some startling insights about the creatures.

Welcome back to “A Galaxy Befuddled.” Over the last two hours, I’ve offered you glimpses into the way these wondrous sea creatures live, and brought up the strange disappearance of their mother. It must have been particularly hard for the youngsters to have to face the oceans of Dorumaa without her, and no survey craft has yet been able to find a trace of her existence. Some claim that she didn’t survive the birthing and rescue of her calves – but if this is the case, where is her corpse? Others claim that she may have been whisked away by those who would profit from her disappearance – but if this is the case, why not take a calf, which would be much easier to transport? This is one of the mysteries that lay before us.

There is a third possibility that may or may not bear further exploration. Cularin has always been a place very strong in the Force. It maintains a precarious balance, in terms both of the species present and of the political, social, and economic pressures that exist in such a small region. While the calves have not, to our knowledge, shown any hint of Force sensitivity, is it not possible that the reason their mother was able to survive, frozen, for so many centuries was that she entered some version of what the Jedi term a “Force trance?” It might be possible that she has done this again, and somehow rendered herself undetectable as a life form. Now, I’m no Jedi, only a simple xenobiologist, but I suggest that there may be something to this theory. If these creatures are actually sensitive to the Force, how much we could learn from them!

The calves present a special challenge. Thus far, Titon (the female), and Jessel (the male; these are the names my team assigned them, since if the calves actually have names, they have yet to tell anyone what they are) have done admirably in taking care of themselves. They also show a remarkable affinity for one another, but not so much that they are inseparable. In fact, they are apart nearly as much as they are together. They roam the seas of Dorumaa, sometimes separated by as much as a thousand kilometers, but we have observed, on a number of occasions, them turning simultaneously and starting toward one another. They meet precisely, and then swim off together to search the oceans more completely.

The team that was reporting in from Cularin might have been hoped to collect a great deal of data during their absence, but as it turns out, the entire system was a mass of nothingness, a moment that passed before the citizens even knew they were gone. Thus, most of the research that we accomplished during the time that Cularin was in absentia was done outside the system. Or, all of it.

Over the course of the past decade, we have sought any evidence regarding the nature of the leviathan calves. We have explored the watery depths of places like Naboo, and found nothing that seems to match the sentience and kindness of these gigantic creatures. We have examined what little genetic material we could obtain from the calves, and have deduced that the conditions on Dorumaa, and the creatures with whom they share those seas, are not such that they could have evolved in that climate. They must have been brought there at some point, far in the past. The obvious questions are, “By whom?” and “To what end?”

One of these questions is answered when we examine the body shapes of the leviathan calves – or so we believe.

A diagram fills the screen. At the top of the diagram is Titon. At the bottom is a smooth-lined starship. Titon’s image moves atop the image of the starship, and the match is almost perfect.

As you can see, the body structure of the calf is very, very close to that of this Mon Calamari-designed ship. We have yet to obtain hard data to support that these creatures exist on the Mon Calamari homeworld, but it is possible that they may, and entirely likely that if they do not now, then at one point, they did. What is puzzling about this is that the Mon Cal norm is not to travel, or to populate other planets, but instead to stay home and keep themselves away from the prying eyes of outsiders. If we are correct, and these calves are part of a species that evolved on the Mon Calamari homeworld, that still leaves us needing to understand why their progenitors were taken from their homes and brought to Cularin. This is very difficult to say, without knowing when the transportation actually occurred, but we continue to look into the issue.

It is time for another break. When we return, we will bring you recent footage of the calves, the first images of Titon and Jessel since the disappearance of Cularin…