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Star Wars Eclipse’s debut trailer features what some fans believe to be the Grysk, a race of mysterious warriors pulled from Star Wars novels.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances, Star Wars: Thrawn: Treason, the Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy and Star Wars: The High Republic: Out of the Shadows, on sale now.
The trailer for upcoming High Republic-era game Star Wars Eclipse has led to a great deal of about the drummers whose music forms the ominous background soundtrack. Some fans believe that the drummers may be the Grysk, a mysterious warlike culture from the Unknown Regions who Grand Admiral Thrawn viewed as one of the greatest threats to the Chiss Ascendancy and later the Empire, and Thrawn engaged in a dangerous game of divided loyalties trying to ensure that the Grysk never were able to take over the Chiss.
The drummers from the Star Wars Eclipse trailer are most likely not the Grysk, but the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely. If they are the Grysk, then Star Wars Eclipse may form another bridge between the events of the Skywalker Saga and the Star Wars: The High Republic subseries. If not, then the drummers could represent a new culture within the Star Wars galaxy with unknown motives that could be friend or foe to the Republic and the Jedi Order.
Who Are the Grysk?
The Grysk first appeared in Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars: Thrawn Alliances. Hailing from the Unknown Regions, the Grysk were described by Thrawn to be a nomadic culture shrouded in myth who attacked using overwhelming numbers. The actual facts about the Grysk are less clear, and most of the information that Thrawn found on the Grysk came from the art of the species that the Grysk take over. They are described as “wide shouldered [people] with angled brow ridges, a tapered skull and deep set eyes.” The Grysk also preferred to leave no evidence behind, and they even replaced their warrior’s teeth with moldings that contained weapons and communication devices that could be used to contact the Grysk, attack their captors, escape or commit suicide to prevent interrogation.
However, as Zhan describes in the Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy, the Grysk’s true power lay in their ability to work behind the scenes and employ client species often to do their bidding. In Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil, Jixtus explains to a prospective client species the Kilji Illuminae that the Grysk can “twist your culture, your lives, and your very souls to do our bidding.” They achieve this enslavement seemingly through psychological warfare using information obtained through interrogation, through observing their targets’ culture and through the strategic use of listening stations throughout the Unknown Regions. Thus, the Grysk do not actually need overwhelming numbers to overcome their enemies; they have client species that they can use as weapons instead.
Could the Grysk Be the Drummers in the Star Wars Eclipse Trailer?
The true possible connection between the plot of the Star Wars: The High Republic subseries and the Grysk is a plot point that many fans may have overlooked. In Zahn’s Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn and Anakin Skywalker discover that the Grysk attacked enemy ships by using gravity well generators to pull ships out of hyperdrive. In Justina Ireland’s Star Wars: The High Republic: Out of the Shadows, Chancey Yarrow, a brilliant scientist who turns to the side of the Nihil, is on the cusp of developing a stable gravity well generator of her own. If the Grysk truly are the drummers from the trailer, then they may have gotten the gravity well generators that they use in the future from Chancey’s research. However, both the Grysk and Chancey might have developed the technology on their own with no influence from each other.
Still, there are a many points against the possibility of the drummers being the Grysk. First, the drummers do not quite match the physical description of the Grysk given in Zahn’s novels. Currently, there has been no association with the Grysk and the drums of war, but that could simply be because the Grysk have kept this part of their culture shrouded away from outside observers or the drummers could be a client species. The Star Wars: The High Republic subseries already has two enemies that work by psychologically destroying their opponents—the Drengir and the Great Leveler. These two enemies use abilities bolstered by the dark side of the Force in contrast to the Grysk’s seemingly more mundane psychological warfare, but there still might be too much of an overlap in their methods. Finally, if the Grysk did serve as a threat to the galaxy during the High Republic era, there likely would be more information on the Grysk available to the Republic and later the Empire when the Grysk set their sights upon the galaxy far, far away in Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn novels.
While the Grysk cannot completely be discounted as a possibility, the drummers from the trailer are more likely a new culture that has not been spotlighted within the galaxy far, far away before. While the drummers’ presence within the trailer is certainly ominous, the game is still in development, and thus whether the drummers are enemies still remains uncertain. Still, the drummers are an intriguing mystery that set a strong tone for Star Wars Eclipse that will fuel fandom speculation as the game continues in development.
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