The Geonosians, the insectoid architects of the
CIS Droid Army, played a huge role in the Clone Wars. They were largely responsible for making the
Confederacy such a major threat to the Republic, and it was their homeworld that served
as the first battlefield of the war. But despite this, many Star Wars fans don’t really
know all that much about the Geonosians - in particular, how terrifying they were. You
may be familiar with their weapon-making, their brain worms, and their zombie caste, but
those were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these ferocious beings. In this video,
we’re going to be taking a look at the Geonosians, and talking about why they were much
scarier than many fans give them credit for. The Geonosians were a semi-insectoid species,
notable for their chitinous exoskeletons, their warriors’ leathery wings, their strength,
and, above all, their ingenuity. Their evolution had been greatly influenced by a cataclysm
in their rocky homeworld’s distant past. Long ago, a comet had struck Geonosis’ largest
moon, shattering it and forming the planet’s distinctive ring system. The cataclysm had
pummeled Geonosis with rocks, turning most of the planet into a desert. To make matters
worse, the cataclysm weakened the protective layers of the Geonosian atmosphere, making the
planet less insulated against solar radiation. Virtually all of Geonosis’ native species were
wiped out between the asteroid showers and the radiation storms. But as fate would have it,
the cataclysm ended up being the Geonosians’ ticket to the top of their planet’s food chain.
Their exoskeletons made them resistant to the planet’s radiation storms, and because they built
the vital parts of their hives deep underground, they were largely insulated from the rock showers
as well. While their competitor species perished, the Geonosians thrived, living off funguses
they grew in the lowest tunnels of their hives. They multiplied rapidly, so that by the
time of the Clone Wars, Geonosis had a total population of 100 billion, despite their
queen-centric breeding habits and violent culture. The Geonosians were divided into biologically
distinct castes, each of which had their own roles in Geonosian society. The lowest
of these classes was the Lesser Caste, a force of worker drones that served as
laborers, servants, farmers, and builders. The worker drones were virtually enslaved;
they were only allowed to leave work to sleep, and they were routinely worked to death or
killed in mechanical accidents in the factories. When workers weren’t needed, they were often
put into suspended animation to leave more food for Geonosians of higher castes. Worker drones
were distinguished by their inability to fly, since they either were born without wings
or were born with non-functional wings. Above the Lesser Caste was the Warrior Caste.
Mostly composed of winged soldier drones, the Warrior Caste did most of the fighting in
Geonosian society, and its members began combat training from the moment they hatched. Soldier
drones were usually poorly-equipped and reliant on swarm tactics, but they were agile and cunning
nonetheless. There were two notable subgroups within the Warrior Caste - the Pilot Caste and
the Picador Caste. Members of the Pilot Caste were tasked with piloting Geonosian starships;
they were wingless, unlike other warriors. The Picador Caste, on the other hand, was composed
of soldier drones that had proven themselves in combat as skillful fighters, and were treated
better than other warriors as a result. The highest drone caste in Geonosian
society was the Aristocrat Caste. Aristocrats were much like Geonosian soldier
drones, but they enjoyed better lives, as the other Geonosian castes existed to serve
their needs. Some aristocrats served as warriors, and some were genetically and cybernetically
modified to become Geonosian Elites -- terrifying combatants with beam cannons built into
their arms. Most aristocrats, however, were content to live lives of luxury, generally
unburdened by responsibility. It is likely the aristocrats were the ones responsible
for mating with the Geonosian Queens. Each Geonosian hive had one Queen, which was
constantly birthing more Geonosians at a rate of roughly one egg every eight seconds. The Queens
were secretive and lived at the bottom of the hives, meaning that very few outsiders ever even
heard of them. Each Queen was the central link of a hive mind, which connected all the Geonosians
in a hive telepathically. These hive minds were poorly understood, but particularly great
Queens had hive minds so strong they were able to control warrior drones even after they had
died, with the help of specialized brain worms. Now, the Geonosian caste system
was pretty nasty in its own right, but the truly horrifying thing about
the Geonosians was their culture. The Geonosians weren’t just weaponsmiths -
they were bloodthirsty killers by nature, despite the fact they hadn’t evolved as predators.
Their bloodthirst was largely directed against each other, but on rare occasions when outsiders
involved themselves with Geonosian affairs, they tended to become the preferred targets
of the Geonosians’ trademark brutality. In general, the Geonosians absolutely
despised anyone they couldn’t connect with through their hive minds. This included
Geonosians of other hives and outsiders alike, though outsiders were usually hated far more than
other Geonosians. In the past, their xenophobia had led them to kill all outsiders on sight, and
though they had become much more accepting of non-Geonosians by the time of the Clone Wars,
most Geonosians still detested alien species. Very few outsiders ever truly gained respect
with Geonosians; among them was Count Dooku, who gained the respect of the Stalgasian Hive by
paying proper homage to Queen Karina the Great. Since Geonosians rarely had contact
with outsiders for non-business reasons, their violent xenophobia was largely
focused on wars between hives. There were many hives on Geonosis, with some of the most
prominent over the years being the Stalgasian, Golbah, Gehenbar, Galard, and Trippa Hives.
During the Clone Wars, the Stalgasian Hive, which was ruled by Queen Karina the
Great and Archduke Poggle the Lesser, ruled over all the others, but this hadn’t
always been the case. Over the millennia, dominant Geonosian hives rose and fell, and
some hives had been destroyed completely by war. Most wars on Geonosis were fought in the
tunnels between the hives. Even in peacetime, these catacombs were dangerous places, as they
were routinely filled with sonic mines and used by soldier drones to launch raids, sabotage
operations, or assassinations in other hives. During wartime, they became vast,
claustrophobic killzones where millions of Geonosians would die fighting
each other. To avoid tunnel collapses, the Geonosians relied on sonic weaponry
in catacomb warfare, using everything from handheld sonic pistols and rifles to larger
sonic cannons against soldiers from other hives. These sonic weapons did little to no damage to
the tunnels, but they absolutely annihilated organic beings, liquifying their insides and
occasionally pulverizing their bodies altogether. Getting shot by a Geonosian sonic weapon was
hands-down one of the worst ways to die in the entire Star Wars universe. Pikes and bladed
weapons were also favorites of the Geonosians, and they were often modified with vibration
cells to inflict as much pain as possible. When Geonosian hives fared poorly in the catacomb
wars, their enemies would often raid their hives in force. When Geonosians attacked enemy hives,
they were known to bring out more destructive weapons, as they generally cared less about
preserving infrastructure in enemy territory. Some hives were completely destroyed by proton
bombs or other heavy weapons after losing a war, while others were just badly pillaged. Full-scale
Geonosian attacks on enemy hives often involved the mass murder of workers and immature
Geonosians, sometimes on a genocidal scale. Of course, war and genocide ultimately aren’t
really productive activities for a species, and so, as the Geonosians advanced, their society
shifted away from catacomb wars and towards gladiatorial combat. According to Geonosian myth,
their gods, the gigantic Hive Overlords, became so angry over the inter-hive conflicts they fought
each other in open combat on the planet’s surface, teaching the Geonosians the art
of petranaki, or ritual combat, in the process. Ever after, the Geonosians
focused their bloodlust on ceremonial executions and arena matches, referred to in Geonosian as
the barahunde. These events were the highlight of the Geonosian year, and even the worker
drones could have a grand old time at them. The Geonosian Picadors, those who
mastered the arts of petranaki, both managed the various surface arenas
and served as gladiators in them. They fought with elaborate, highly deadly
weapons, including the picador’s spear, the petranaki scimitar, the caster’s net, the
confessor’s whip, and the beastwarden’s shield. Sometimes they used mounts, ranging
from docile orrays to vicious acklays, and on rare occasions, Petranaki Arenas were even
flooded to allow for small-scale naval battles. The kind of spectacle featured in the Petranaki
Arenas varied from event to event. In executions, prisoners would be chained to stone columns
and forced to face off against vicious animals. Usually, executions only involved one creature,
but occasionally, the aristocrats would call for multiple, which was considered an extremely
exciting occurrence by the Geonosians. On very rare occasions, prisoners would manage
to survive their encounters with arena beasts. When this happened, the Geonosians
believed they had been saved by the gods, and they were granted freedom for
their valor and skill. Other arena events involved picadors facing off against
animals or each other in gladiatorial matches. Battle in the arenas was the only way that
Geonosians were able to escape the castes they had been born into. Ambitious Geonosians learned
the arts of petranaki and volunteered for combat in the barahunde; if they proved victorious, they
would gain status and, in some cases, they would be able to ascend to higher castes. Poggle the
Lesser, the Archduke of the Stalgasian Hive, fought his way to the very top of the
Geonosian hierarchy through the arenas, hence his surname. He was born into the Lesser
Caste, battled his way up to the aristocracy, and then overthrew Archduke Hadiss the
Vaulted to claim his role in the hive. Poggle’s last battle against Hadiss was a solid
example of just how brutal the Geonosians were as a people. After successfully toppling his
rival in a rebellion backed by Darth Sidious, Poggle formally challenged Hadiss to a battle over
the position of Archduke in the Petranaki Arena. Hadiss had been known to kill his enemies by
sentencing them to fight a starved acklay, and so Poggle rode an acklay into the arena against him.
After defeating Hadiss, Poggle dismounted, tore the elder Geonosian into three pieces, and threw
his entrails to the acklay as the crowd cheered. He kept the bones from one of Hadiss’ legs
as a souvenir, turning it into a cane. But that’s not all! There was even more to
fear from the Geonosians than their brutality. Geonosians rarely ventured off Geonosis in the
years before the Clone Wars, but the Battle of Geonosis caused a bit of an exodus. Large numbers
of Geonosians left the planet to join the CIS, setting up factory-hives to churn out
battle droids on planets across the galaxy. On worlds as diverse as the frozen planet
Zaadja and the rocky wasteland Hypori, they created new fortress-hives in a matter of
months, building up the droid army in the process. At first, the Geonosians settled only on
unoccupied worlds, but as the Clone Wars went on, the Confederacy started encouraging them to make
use of existing industrial worlds. By the second half of the war, whenever the Confederacy captured
a planet that showed promise as a foundry world, they would hand over whole cities to the
Geonosians, who would turn them into hives. Former residents were usually
enslaved and treated as worker drones. Gentes, the Ugnaught homeworld, was the most
notable example of this, and the Geonosians had begun doing the same to parts of Pau
City on Utapau before the Republic invaded. So, that’s our look at the Geonosians, everyone’s
favorite insectoid species. But what do you think? Would you like us to talk about Geonosis
and its inhabitants more in the future? Feel free to post your
thoughts in the comments below.
