Clone Wars Campaign Recap Extra: The Slow Fuse

During the course of our long-running Star Wars campaign, I've often found it useful to write short pieces of "fan fiction" to provide some additional background or connective tissue to tie things together using scenes that, due to the nature of gaming, wouldn't work well "on screen" during gaming itself. Sometimes my beautiful bride contributes as well, and I edit the pieces into something that can serve as "canon." Here's the first chronological story, which takes place shortly after the events of Recap # 30.

The Slow Fuse

Nestled into the silk lining of the jewelry case, the string of extremely expensive and rare Mon Calamari seed pearls glowed with a luster that was pleasing to the eye. They were a dark blue, the most exotic and difficult to find. Stefan Cassadine regarded them with pleasure – thinking again how fine they would look against his wife’s pale white throat. He considered himself a connoisseur of priceless things, and she was the prize jewel in his collection…

His thoughts having turned to Arresta, Stefan checked the ship’s chronometer and confirmed that it was on schedule to return to Coruscant within the next standard hour. Having been absent for several days, tracking down two of the free lance bounty hunters who had expressed an interest in collecting the large prize placed on his wife’s head, he was returning to retrieve her from her sanctuary in the Jedi temple.

Had anyone else been in the room, they would have noticed his handsome face darken suddenly, as though something in his thoughts disturbed him. He had disliked leaving Arresta in the care of the Jedi, but circumstances hadn’t allowed tremendous flexibility – and the opportunity to have Arresta rid herself of that annoying Padawan had been too good to pass up…

He had known from the first moment he had met Arresta, then a beautiful but naïve student, that he had found a rare prize. At more than twenty years her senior he had certainly bedded other women in his life – but he knew that he had never met another woman more likely to match him in brains and skill. She had required polishing, but he had taken pleasure in knowing that he was crafting what he had never been able to find…a woman worthy of helping him create a proper dynasty….

In his youth, he had spent time learning to break horses – and it was always the most spirited beasts that proved the most worth the effort – and Arresta was certainly spirited. He hadn’t expected her to return to Mongui when her father called, but upon reflection, he had actually been pleased at her decision. He had known that her father was far more manipulative than she had suspected and he fondly looked forward to the day when she would return to his side, a sadder but wiser woman…

Instead, to his chagrin, she had been spirited off of her home planet by a whelp of a Jedi, a Duros with a penchant for plastic surgery, and an old man with a mysterious past. It had taken months for his contacts to track them from Mongui to Bothawui and then to the Ansion system and back to Coruscant, and by then, the Jedi had lured her into his bed…

Realizing that his fists were clenched, Stefan forced himself calm and sat back in his chair. He glanced down at the wedding holo he kept prominently placed on his desk. It reminded him that whatever her previous indiscretions, that Arresta had come to her senses and had accepted his marriage proposal. And of course, he could not begrudge the existence of the child…

It might have surprised those who did not know him well, to learn that Stefan Cassadine saw no distinction between a child of his own biological heritage and the one that his wife now carried. To Stefan’s mind, no such distinction existed. Arresta belonged to him – therefore, her child too, was his. In some ways, he was grateful for the ill-fated romance between his bride and her ex-paramour. Without the impetus of an illegitimate pregnancy, he suspected it may have been far more difficult to tempt his beloved down the aisle.

“Boss….we’re coming into Coruscant now.” Xam’s voice sounded over the comm channel and Stefan pressed the switch that would allow him to respond. “Very good. Let me know when we’re in range of the Jedi temple…I want to check in with Arresta.”

“You got it boss! It’ll be good to see Mrs. C. again….” Xam signed off and left his employer alone with his thoughts.

Stefan rose and began to pace his quarters impatiently. It seemed he had been waiting too long for this. Arresta had quite the talent for placing herself in danger, a trait he might have found endearing if she had the sense to choose the right kind of danger – and the right venue. He was quite hopeful that by the time the child was born, that he would be able to convince her to take up the mantle of the guild again, creating, as it were, a complete family business…

That was the other reason he had reluctantly insisted that Arresta remain in the Jedi temple while he was away. There had been something… unsettling… in her demeanor whenever the subject of Tarn Tamarand had come up. He had decided that providing her the opportunity to resolve the matter was prudent. Let the boy learn now once and for all that he was unwelcome and he would be a pest no more…

Or, at least you’ll learn how trustworthy your Pet really is… He pushed down the small, internal voice.

The console beeped and he found that he now had an open signal that would provide him access to local Coruscant channels. Keying in the coordinates for the Jedi Temple, he found himself on the line with a keen-eyed young Padawan, distinguished by the braid in her brown hair.

“Good afternoon. My name is Stefan Cassadine. My wife has been residing within your temple for security reasons while I have been off-planet. Perhaps you could be so good as to connect me with her room?”

The smiling Padawan quickly accessed her records, but to someone as well-trained as Stefan it was easy to see her blanch at whatever it was she saw. He quickly found himself transferred to a more Senior Jedi, a full Knight by the looks of it. The fellow took his information and placed him on hold.

After a long ten minutes, Stefan was impatiently drumming his fingers against the arm of his chair, but he had managed to maintain his state of calm. Eventually, a young woman came on the screen and introduced herself as Tyree Coramon, the Judicial in charge of the investigation that Arresta had been assigned to help with. He felt the stirrings of concern. He had thought the investigation a harmless pursuit, something to keep his wife from getting bored and getting herself into more trouble, but perhaps he should have investigated more closely…

On the screen, the woman was rambling on and on about some kind of investigation and a temple lock-down, but she was far from getting to the point.

“Ms. Coramon, perhaps you could cut to the chase? Where exactly is my wife?”

She hesitated, but then hurried on - speaking in the quick tones of one who knew her response would not be received well.

“We…uh…we don’t know.”

“You don’t know? How is that possible? I was under the impression that my wife was part of your special investigative team.”

“She was…well, she was supposed to be. But really, she didn’t seem that interested in it, although I would have thought she would be, given her connection to one of the suspects, but then, I guess we cleared him and his disappearance was really a separate, Jedi matter…anyway, she and her friends took off – we assume to go looking for him.”

Stefan felt his senses still and something of his inner rage must have shown on his face, because the Judicial looked at him strangely.

“Just before the investigation started, a Padawan went missing from the temple. He was someone your wife seemed to know, a fellow called Tarn...” Stefan reached out and snapped off the comm link.

He stood up and up-ended his desk. Opening a channel to the bridge, he commanded Xam to get in touch with all of their intelligence operatives, with orders to locate Arresta immediately.

Only then did he notice the rare seed pearls, scattered across the floor, the strands of the necklace snapped when he had flung them to the floor. Surveying the damage, Stefan felt his anger rise and he snarled one word. “Tamarand…”

Return to Clone Wars Campaign Main Page