The Salt Addicts of Star Wars (Yes Literal Salt): The Fascinating Biology of the Arcona Species 

The Arcona take the term” getting salty” to a whole new level

“How addiction crippled an entire generation” Star Wars gets too real with some of the lore at times and that’s part of why I’ve always loved it

Now if someone ever asks you "what's the saltiest species in the Star Wars galaxy?" You'll know the answer

It reminds me of those Harry Turtledove books where aliens invade in the middle of WW2 and find ginger to be an addictive substance.

So was El Les just constantly getting high off of sea spray on Kamino?

considering that we had conflicts over spices here in real life, this isn't all that surprising for me.

Too much salt can actually killed humans too. But the lack of salt is also equally damaging. However, I also wondered that the Arconans will like the pink salt from the Himalaya Mountains without getting addicted or not. Also, this video is definitely one of my favorites on this channel now because it featured a Blue Giant.

"The ceiling is salt, the floor is salt, the walls are salt. And to an extent the air is salt. And you breathe that in and you constantly taste the salt"

Always amazed me how much detail and lore that is put into each different species.

Pk if I owned a restaurant I would have to guard the sachets and shakers very closely... imagine what they'd do to the Dead Sea

"Hey you wanna buy some salt?" (waves hand) "You want to go home and rethink your life"

Perhaps the Celestials Terraformed Cona to have life, in the legends it is said by an artificial intelligence Rakata that he supposedly created the Twi'leks or Zabraks.

The Arcona homeworld could have come from another system, where the planet was once an orphan world after it lost its star. Only for it to be caught in the gravity of its new star, that blue giant.

Their eyes literally turned golden yellow compared their non addicted counterparts they had green eyes.

I remember discovering this fact in swtor, this is one of the most interesting lores of star wars

Maybe their star system arrived from a parallel universe, where blue giants either live longer or life evolves with extreme speed. That universe could also lack Sodium entirely, only other salts with chlorine, so introduction to an entirely new element might mess with their biology.

There's one thing you didn't mention: Apparently, the Arkona's designers were inspired by E.T.

hide the salt shakers!

The amount drugs affecting so many will no doubt change entire species who take the drugs will be different from what they could have been, similar to how people with a lot of potential and drive could change for the worst when they consume drugs.

Very cool lore, but it baffles me how it could have taken so long to discover the effects of salt on their species. Did they just never eat food prepared by or for another species, or partake in any drinks that had salt in them? It seems extremely unlikely, to the point of impossibility, for such a wide spread and evidently curious species to have never noticed this effect until then...

I mean how we humans in the far distant past waged apocalyptic wars over salt and many more spices what is now a common in every household.😳

i'm just here for the salt

So I guess Crait is a literally death sentence.

Cona sounds like it was artificially seeded with life.

I guess Greez should never invite El-Les to diner, given how much he likes to season his food with salt and pepper.

It's kind of funny, but also makes perfect sense. Of course with all the species out there in the Star Wars galaxy, one of them would get fucked up by salt.

Almost sounds like they didn't evolve on their "home" planet.

Must have been Center Point Station that moved the Arcona home world to the blue giant, maybe out of the way of The Maw

Humans to Arcona: All these flavours and you chose to be salty

I love star wars species included the arcona species can you guys do the zygerrian species next please

When you say "table salt" is that a specific kind of salt? Like say, as opposed to sea salt. In that case, it might be the combination with iodine that's usually added to table salt that makes it dangerous to them.

Well, beats my suspect cinnamon cravings at the slightest least, the Arcona thang.

Getting arcona addicted to salt has to be one of my favorite companion quests in SWTOR. Gault is a legend for that scam.

I think I remember a different star wars species that had some weird thing going on with salt. Salt was, for them, neutralizing some badly needed nutrient. Can't remember what novel it was (it was part of a series that followed the adventures of Obi Wan in his early days of being qui gons padawan) and there was like one at the jedi temple, who covered their foods because obi wan was nearby salting his, and then, in a different scene, one who was forcefully given (by some bad guys) some salt to induce a painful lack of that nutrient for interogatation purposes.

This is the reason i was kicked out of the jedi order

Imagine if the Arcona landed on Crait!

Salt! Salt! Jumbo salt! Nobody want spice no more! Almost nobody wants deathsticks no more! It's all salt! Jumbo salt!

Salt, Don't tell them about Crait.

The Arcona are a interesting species.

the story of the Arcona's salt addiction reminds me of the Opium Wars in China.

I have yet to read a Star Wars book but I'm highly interested. Judging by these videos, their quality of writing and lore seems to exceed the prequel and sequel trilogies by orders of magnitude.

Nice covering a rather obscure species.

Nbd 6:15 slip up with the typically lol. I thought I was tripping for a second.

The Salt must flow!

*Fun facts:* Arcona is also the name of a genus of flies, as well as a headland on a German island. This headland, known in the German language as Kap Arkona, is the namesake of three warships of the Prussian and Imperial German Navies, as well as the SS _Cap Arcona,_ a German ocean liner that notably served as the set of the 1943 propaganda film _Titanic._ Many elements of subsequent films and miniseries in this genre originated here.

Imagine your entire species being salty

If one were to say that getting addicted to salt is ridiculous, I point to the European wars of salt. Perhaps not true addiction, but it had profound economic and social effects.

In a galaxy where there is sound in space humans don't have to breathe oxygen

First heard of these from the jedi apprentice books

I was like “what”

🤔 . . . To each their own. That typed, how would the Arcona react to Death Sticks? If negatively, then Death Sticks is worse than salt…

Just imagine having salty chips and getting high

Salt is the way of life

Is this a re-upload? I could’ve sworn I watched this longer than 4 weeks ago.

Well. I won't be giving aliens salt when intergalactic travel is possible

It was knowledge of the Arconan salt addiction epidemic which inspired a facet of my own homebrew Sci-Fi universe. In my galaxy's version of Federation/Republic, there are *STRICT* anti herb-trade laws. As you stated at the start of this vid, something that is a culinary flavoring for one specie can be toxic to another and an intoxicant to a third. (And this isn't even going into things like food allergies!) It's hard enough for Bios to remember who can and cannot have what seasoning. Thus, typically, most rely on Ché-Bots and AI food dispencers which rely on artificial flavorings. Sorry to prattle off topic from SW, it's been a while since I had someone to talk to about my OC.

Nice episode.

Somehow, palpatine has returned

To be fair, 100% of humans are addicted to salt as well. We need it to survive

Imagine getting high from salt something we put on our food is their drugs😂

Even I get unducted to salt on my MC Donald fries🍟 😅

Get that man space McDonald’s 🍟

Is this the space Mad Hatter? 0:40

So basically, it's the opiod crisis

So… many… salt jokes…

So, salt was to the Arcona what spice was to the rest of the Galaxy.

Iunno man, salt makes me hyper, and I can get addicted to it like most would get addicted to sugar. Which is weird I guess. bruh

Salt....salt.....

the dinosaurs extinction came about 65 ish million years ago, just to put the time scales into somewhat of a perspective for how short lived 10 million years is for a star to exist, that is *NOTHING* on interstellar timelines.

Salt

A species of League players

Maybe Cona was captured rouge planet.

this reminds me of fentanyl monkeys

I would say Death sticks were much worse compared to Salt because they impacted many different species within the Star Wars Galaxy whereas salt only affected Arconans which made up a minority of the entire galaxy.

5:35 the opposite of humans..

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so theres a world out there with cocaine oceans

Si Treemba

Comment of the week? Oh hell yeah.

Probably salt, too much salt is bad for your heart.

😊

import laws?? It's sodium chloride. They could make it in a literal bathtub out of some of the most easily obtainable compounds in the universe. Also, how the hell does sodium chloride provide hallucinations?? It doesn't matter how your body chemistry works, sodium chloride is not capable of that kind of complex interactions with any living organism. Because it's SALT. that isn't how this kind of thing works and god it's so frustrating how often star wars does this. Just makes physica and chemistry with zero effort at all. Like they could have made up a chemical, but no it had to be table salt. Something we can categorically look at and say 'no actually, this won't be able to make any species in the universe have hallucinations that isn't how salt works"

So the fact that real table salt exists in the Star wars universe also means someone who is or was a jedi can be called a ronin in the Star wars universe regardless if it makes sense in universe or not.

I know trying to apply a real world framework to an imaginary species is an exercise in futility, but honestly this makes no sense at all. Somehow this species survived with minimal air pockets on their home planet, despite there being no oxygen in the atmosphere and all from 'pockets' how did they survive as a species in order to become sentient??? They also just 'can't survive without ammonia for some reason??' And they never came into contact with salt either on their own planet or abroad? It's so insanely common that seems almost literally impossible. Honestly, starwars is fun so long as you remember it is a fantasy story with its own rules. The "science" side of starwars likes to pretend its real science, but honestly it's just space magic. This species, worse than most, was clearly designed by someone with an idea in mind, rather than someone trying to create something realistic/reasonable. This species is like what you get when you have a kid playing with action figures making up their 'stats' as they play.

The coin flip noise was annoying

Addiction is terrible.

Ukraine been a leading exporter of Salt the last two years.. y’all believe that? Russians, Rahhh.

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