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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

Over the weekend, I, like a lot of you, went to see 2005 Star Wars Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith on the big screen,

taking in the culmination of the Clone War, the fall of the Republic, and thevenge of the Sith on the big screen, taking in the culmination of the clone war,

the fall of the Republic, and the death of the Jedi Order.

It's a dark tale, for many younger viewers, perhaps the first tragic story arc they ever saw,

and one that still ruminates on the state of our own world.

Since the film is perhaps fresh on

many listeners' minds, I thought today might be a good day to turn our attention to the fauna

of the planet Udipau, where Obi-Wan Kenobi finally hunts down General Grevis.

Far from just another desert or forest world, Utapal is delightfully weird and fittingly morose for the darkest Star Wars film entry.

As described in Star Wars Galactic Maps, written by Emily Fortune, it's a dry, wind-swept world, quote, pockmarked with giant sinkholes into which the oceans drain and its underground cities built from millions of animal bones.

Matthew Stover in his novelization of the film describes these sinkholes as being the size of inverted mountains,

the interior walls riddled with industry and urbanization.

The planet is home to two sentient species,

the diminutive utai, serving as the planet's labor cast, and the tall, gaunt, carnivorous,

pollens. According to Star Wars Alien Archive, written by Natalie Club and Katrina Palant,

the long-lived pollens originally lived on the planet's surface

till a climate cataclysm forced them underground to live with the Utah.

But given their sensitive vision, the powens were more than happy to abandon the surface world for the pits.

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