Segue 3

"So who was this mysterious Sith?" Wex leaned back in his chair, glancing at the chrono and the window below it. The Bespin sunrise was a brilliant thing of orange and red fire illuminating the gaseous skyline, and the temperature, he suddenly noticed, had risen almost five degrees. It was nearing the six o' clock closing time for the Vapor Room, and he discovered that he wasn't quite ready for the tale to be finished.

The old man's face crinkled as he thought back, his stubbly face covered in crags. "Her origin is in the Clone Wars, but that's another tale. She was put into stasis in one of her strongholds when a deal went sour and she was badly injured, and she was patched up while in stasis. Her stronghold was a contraband cloning facility to rival those of Kamino, a first rate production facility. When the 'Jedi Betrayal' happened, Lord Vader lead his infamous 501st to her doorstep, killing her private guard, but leaving the facility intact. Perhaps he intended to use it for a future project.... Regardless, his Stormtroopers by fate or design overlooked her stasis tube as part of the arcane equipment of the facility and so she slept. Ten years later, the Empire held sway and her pod's failsafe woke her and the twenty clones in her private guard. Once she learned of the fate of the galaxy in her absence, she began scheming in her Kamino lair."

The Ughnaut barkeep ordered them out with a series of guttural noises, and so the tale would end, if not for fate. the old man, a former Colonel, found that his transport to Mandalore was delayed, and had to find lodgings until it's departure at noon of the next day. And so it was that we find him in the Vapor room at midnight on the second night, with a small crowd of followers accompanying Wex and his co-pilot, eager to hear the tale of heroes and rebels. The old man smiled, his dark skin crinkling as if unaccustomed to the expression. He grunted to the Ugnaught, Grelk, to bring him his 'usual', if you could call it that after only one night of storytelling. A devronian nudged him and asked, "So? What did the red lady have planned?" His eyes darkened with the memory, their alert brown seeming to become blacker than the void of space itself. "Betrayal, or so our heroes thought...."