The tunnel worm was a type of four-meter-long segmented worm that lived on the Inner Rim planet Tasariq. They were carnivorous, could bite, and burrowed tunnels in the earth. Tunnel worms frequently hunted around their homeworld's habitable, Type I–atmosphere craters, where the largest amounts of food were available, but their ability to store oxygen in their body also allowed to them to hunt on Tasariq's surface, where the atmosphere was Type III.[1]
The residents of the planet's inhabited craters made concerted efforts to control the number of tunnel worms in their vicinity. At some point by the time of the Galactic Civil War between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance, an attack by tunnel worms on the landspeeder of the Human miner Ansan Talam caused irreparable damage to the vehicle, which forced him to purchase an All Terrain Cruiser K-111 steam rover instead.[1]
Behind the scenes
Tunnel worms were introduced in Star Wars Adventure Journal 15.
The tunnel worm was mentioned in "Tasariq: The Crystal Planet," a West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game source article written by Tom Moldvay and Steve Miller and published in the November 1997 fifteenth issue of the Star Wars Adventure Journal magazine. In two instances, the article capitalizes the creature's name as "Tunnel Worm."[1]
"Tasariq: The Crystal Planet" also includes a roleplaying adventure idea in which the player characters travel the distance of 2,300 kilometers between the planet Tasariq's Tasariq City and the Roaring Crater mining settlement. The article suggests that, on each day of that journey across Tasariq's surface, the characters have a one-in-eighteen chance of encountering the planet's wildlife, which the gamemaster player can decide (or choose at random) to be either spidercats, sting-snakes, or tunnel worms.[1]
Sources
"Tasariq: The Crystal Planet" — Star Wars Adventure Journal 15 (First mentioned)
