Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina

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"Only watch your step. This place can be a little rough." —Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Hope

Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina is an anthology of short stories by various science fiction writers (and edited by Kevin J. Anderson) about everyone in Chalmun's Cantina when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker were there. Practically every member of the crowd who appeared in the cantina scene is either the focus of a story or featured prominently in one of them, and to a certain extent most of the stories connect together to create a larger narrative. If you want to know why the band was in the cantina, this book will tell you. If you're curious about who that demonic-looking guy or the wolfman who appeared for about ten seconds in A New Hope were, this is the book for you. If you want to know why they don't serve your kind in here... Well, you get the idea. Literally everybody has a story behind them, and this book aims to tell them all.

In this respect, the book is similar to Tales of the Bounty Hunters and Tales From Jabbas Palace, which do the same for the line-up of bounty hunters in The Empire Strikes Back and the Hutt's court in Return of the Jedi.

Tropes

• Brainless Beauty: M'iiyoom Onith (beautiful by her own species standards that is - and Feltipern Trevagg's - by human standards she's hideous).
• The Butcher: Labria (real name Kardue Sai'Malloc) is a war criminal (and music enthusiast) known as "the Butcher of Montellian Serat" hiding out on Tatooine from bounty hunters. He reappears in the final Tales of the Bounty Hunters story getting captured by Boba Fett, and is referred to only as "the Butcher".
• Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: The music of the Modal Nodes (the Cantina band) was conceived as an alien interpretation of the music of Benny Goodman. Unfortunately, it gets the in-universe name "jizz".
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: Feltipern Trevagg.
• Death by Sex: The H'nemthe. Apparently as a result of massive difference in gender ration (20 males: 1 female), they have evolved the custom of females using their knife-sharp tongues to eviscerate their lovers after sex. The females are otherwise vegetarians and they sincerely believe this is actually the greatest expression of love between the sexes.
• Defector From Decadence: Imperial Stormtrooper Davin Felth sees what The Empire is really like and vows to become the Reverse Mole.
• Facing the Bullets One-Liner: Owen Lars' last words.
• Fantastic Racism; Wuher despises droids at the start of his story because in his mind they're the only lower than he is and thus the only thing he can legitimately hate. He has a change of heart when he realises droids can be useful. Chalmun the Wookie, who owns the cantina, doesn't much like them either, but only because they take up space which could go to paying customers.
• Fridge Logic/Characterization Marches On: This troper would not like to be in Captain Terrik's successor's place if Vader were to learn just who the slain moisture farmers were.
• Heel Face Turn: Davin Felth.
• Humans Are Morons: A definite theme in The Devaronian's Tale.

Labria: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Wuher: Trilingual. Labria: Someone who speaks two languages? Wuher: Bilingual. Labria: Someone who speaks one language? Wuher: Monolingual? Labria: Human.

• • Which is ironic, because Bilingual Dialogue is something all people in Star Wars seem to be capable at.
  • It's a joke.
• Interspecies Romance: A fatal version between M'iiyoom Onith and Feltipern Trevagg, and a bittersweet one between Dice Ibegon and Lak Sivrak.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • Wuher brews the remains of Greedo into an especially strong drink which he hopes will gain him the favour of Jabba the Hutt.
  • The only meat that H'nemthe females eat is the flesh of their sexual partners.
  • A human thief once broke into Labria's apartment. "Turns out humans don't taste very good."
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Han Solo, Wuher.
• Karma Houdini: Navik the Red
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Think back to the cantina scene in A New Hope. They all have a story here.
• Mad Scientist/Deadly Doctor: Evazan (the "he doesn't like you" guy at the bar turns out to be a cross between Dr Frankenstein and Josef Mengele).
• One-Letter Name: M'iiyoom Onith may be this or it may be coincidence.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Het Nkik tried this. It... didn't come off.
• Too Dumb to Live: Greedo, for obvious reasons, Trevagg, for trying to court a H'nemthe female and being unaware of a rather vital aspect of their mating rituals.
• Training Accident: Part of Davin Felth's backstory. He succeeded, but in doing so pointed out a design flaw in the AT-AT walker, so the commander shunted him into the stormtrooper corps.
• The Uriah Gambit: Greedo's death
• The Wretched Hive of scum and villainy.
• You Have Failed Me: From The Ithorian's Tale:

"You know what Lord Vader would do if he were here."