A member of Tatooine's scavenger species of Jawas, Het Nkik rebelled against his clan mentality, daring to challenge old ideas with new. The Jawas are intelligent, rodentlike natives who scavenge the deserts & city alleys, looking for outmoded & abandoned hardware. The meter-high creatures wear rough-woven, homespun cloaks & hoods, protecting themselves from the fierce double suns. While their glowing eyes are visible under the hoods, & the smell of a Jawa is unmistakably nasty, few sentient beings have ever seen what a Jawa looks like without its hood. The diminutive scavengers understand Basic, but prefer to speak in their own tongue. The Jawas roam Tatooine in a giant, treaded fortress-homes known as sandcrawlers. Each crawler holds a Jawa community of about three hundred members. By repairing or rewiring droids & machinery that they pick up, Jawas can often make tidy profits on the desert throwaways. Despite their appearance & smelly living conditions, Jawas are excellent at repairs & at analyzing mechanical devices. Tatooine's moisture farmers are prime targets for the Jawas' technological recycling sales. The scavengers also have a lot in Most Eisley known as Jawa Traders, run by a female Jawa named Aguilae. Traders specializes in vehicle-& starship-repair droids, making it the perfect marketplace for a spaceport full of pilots & smugglers. When he was young, Het Nkik & his best friend & clan-mate, Jek Nkik, stumbled upon a crashed fighter. Though most of it was unusable, they recovered a severely damaged E522-model assassin droid from the wreckage. Their clan leader, Wimateeka, watched the boys' progress even though they attempted to keep their work secret. When the youngsters unveiled the droid, fully repaired but without weaponry & reprogrammed for peaceful intentions, Wimateeka outwardly scolded them. Inside, though, Wimateeka admired their brashness. The two later sold the droid to the Whiphid, Lady Valarian. Generally cowards, the Jawas have been known to fight, but only in defense. Their sandcrawlers have been attacked by Tusken Raiders, & by the monstrous Krayt Dragons that roam the Jundland Wastes. Their weapons are usually cobbled together from various technologies. The same summer that the Death Star was to be destroyed by a farm boy from Tatooine, Het Nkik traveled to the annual gathering of clans. It was his third year to attend the event as an adult. He was still awed by the phalanx of sandcrawlers among the sands dunes, & by the hundreds of Jawas who set up a swap meet below, scurrying around like sand ants. Het looked forward to seeing his friend, Jek, who had been sent to another clan two years prior. As he searched for his friend, Het smelled fear & concern from his clan leader, Wimateeka, who was talking with another clan's leader. The Tusken Raiders had attacked one Jawa fortress, & it was feared that Jek's clan's sandcrawler may have met a similar fate. Het argued with the elders, asking them why the Jawas hadn't fought the Sand People rather than fleeing them. Wimateeka could only apologize for the brash young Jawa. 

As he rushed away, angry, Het was hailed by a Jawa trader from the Kkak clan. Expressing admiration for the young clansman's ideas, the Kkak Jawa produced a Blastech DL-44 rifle. The weapon was forbidden to Jawas, but Het bargained for it anyhow, coming away from the transaction with few credits left, but holding a powerful weapon in his hands. Jek's sandcrawler never showed up, nor was any word received. When the meet ended, Het persuaded the sandcrawler pilot to move along the routes that Jek's clan might have taken. They came upon the smoking, burned-out wreckage of the crawler, & all but Het hurried to scavenge usable scrap. An elderly human & two droids stood near the crawler, disposing of the Jawa bodies in a crackling funeral pyre. The man spoke to the new arrivals in Jawa tongue, expressing his sorrow for the clan loss. Het studied the tracks & blaster marks made by the attackers. Though they appeared to be bantha tracks, & there were gaffi sticks all around, he only smell the scents of plastisteel & lubricants. The smell of Stormtroopers, not of Sand People. The old man confirmed what Het told his clan leaders. He warned them that the Imperials would continue their attacks on both Jawas & Tusken Raiders, fomenting violence between the desert natives. "The Jawas are not powerless." The old human told them, "if they do not wish to be." As the old man stared at him, Het knew he had bought the blaster for a reason. He forfeited his share of the salvage from Jek's crawler in return for a small personal transport that would carry him to Mos Eisley & the Imperials. By the time he reached the spaceport, Het knew he needed a target for his anger...& his blaster. While he formulated a plan, he went into a cantina & ordered a drink. When he saw the old man & a young farm boy enter the cantina, he envisioned it as a omen of strength. Even more empowering was seeing the man's grace with the most dazzling weapon Het had ever seen--a lightsaber. Before the Jawa could leave, a Ranat named Reegesk cornered him. The short trader offered him a bantha horn, Tusken battle tailsman. Het took it as another sign, & bargained for the charm, showing the Ranat his blaster. Grasping the blaster & the tailsman, he went to make his dreams a reality. Climbing the wreckage of the crashed ship Dowager Queen, the Jawa took a bead on a contingent of eight Stromtroopers--a small contingent, but representing a larger blow for his vengeance. Het knew he would probably die soon, but he would become Tatooine's most famous Jawa...the one who fought back. With a close approximation of the Tusken war cry, Het Nkik rose from the wreckage & fired at the troopers, again & again. Unfortunately, nothing issued from the blaster--the brave young Jawa hadn't noticed the Ranat had stolen its power pack. One of the troopers aimed & fired, blasting Het back into the wreckage. The Jawa was dead before he hit the sand. The inspirational legend that Het Nkik sought for himself never came true; the Jawas remain as cowardly as ever, even after the fall of the Empire. 

All of this comes from the Essential Guide Book published in 1995. 

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