Hem Dazon/Legends

Hem Dazon was a salt-addicted male Arcona. As a result, his eyes became yellow,^[1] he was ill-tempered, and his addiction caused him to develop tremors in his hands.^[2] He was stuck on Tatooine due to wasting all of his credits on salt and juri juice. He was present at Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina when Luke Skywalker first met Han Solo, and he was sitting with Bom Vimdin, Pons Limbic, Arleil Schous, and Braconnor Bakiska.^[3]

Behind the scenes

Hem Dazon was played by uncredited makeup artist Laine Liska in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope.^[4] The Arcona present in The Star Wars Holiday Special was not immediately identified as Dazon until the Star Wars Blog article, The Star Wars Holiday Special Cantina: Who's Who, which stated that Dazon was also present in the special. In 1994, a screen saver from Star Wars Screen Entertainment identified this character as "Kal Nkai", and included many more details about the character's background. Though later sources retconned a number of other characters' differing names in Screen Entertainment as aliases, no source has done so for Dazon. Biographical details of a number of characters in the screen saver were contradicted by later material.

Hem Dazon's appearance in the Holiday Special.

The character received the most votes in a poll given in Star Wars Insider 48 asking fans who, among about two dozen obscure Cantina and Jabba's Palace characters, they would like to see made into an action figure. (According to Star Wars Insider 50, Hem Dazon beat out Tessek 224 votes to 205.) Both these characters were later made into action figures by Hasbro, Tessek in Power of the Jedi, and Hem in The Saga Collection.

Star Wars Screen Entertainment biography

According to the software's screen saver, Kal Nkai was an Arcona born in 16 BBY on Cona, where his people fought a war with a neighboring Grand Nest forcing his family to abandon their homestead. His father, Kal Mpon, believed fighting each other was futile, and they should focus on the hunt for scarce water on the planet. In the wilderness his father tested out an unknown plant and was killed by its odorless paralytic gas. To support his mother, Nkai began delivering packages of salt -- an illegal narcotic on Cona -- for a settlement of offworlder prospectors. He eventually became addicted to salt, and was convinced by deceitful prospectors to travel to their salt water-covered homeworld. During a stop on Tatooine, news of his mother's death drove him to the Cantina, where his ship's crew abandoned him. Nkai remained on Tatooine and became a moisture farmer. Patrons of the Cantina gave him the nickname "Goldeye."