The mind of a sentient is dark indeed...
—Back cover line
An Inquiry into the Nature of the Sentient Species is a collection of examples of historical events that reveal something about the mind of the species described. In-universe, the collection was originally compiled by the Twi'lek historian and folklorist Rohads Arling c. 755 BBY. The originals were since lost and the reprints have long fallen out of use, but they were since painstakingly reconstructed and pieced together by textual critic Susan Donnam. Though the Inquiry was far from fully reconstructed, some chapters were lost forever, the new edition of the Inquiry was the closest anyone could get to the original.
Out-of-universe, the Inquiry is a collection of horror/speculative fanon being written by Susan Donnam beginning in fall of 2008 to the present.
Table of contents[]
Subject to change
Development[]
With the Inquiry, Susan Donnam wished to write something different, much darker, than what she normally wrote, but did not desire to write a novel, especially since she began coming up with many ideas, and did not consider herself a fast writer. To resolve this, she decided just to write short stories.
The stories are influenced by several sources, but most prominently is the television series the Twilight Zone. The works are written with canon firmly in mind, and is written so as to fit into that model, taking careful consideration of research in mind. Though all the stories deal with events not mentioned in canon, the speculative nature is such that it is what might have plausibly happened in the Star Wars universe.