Strono Tuggs

Strono Tuggs, also known as Cookie, was a deformed Artiodac male who for centuries served as the cook in the castle of the pirate Maz Kanata.

Overcoming deformity
Born on the planet Takodana,the Artiodac Strono Tuggs spent his childhood on the planet Artiod Minor.[4] His mother was a competent cook who made a Topato stew that was relished by her family. The soup was one of the first dishes she taught her son how to make, helping to incite his growing passion for food.[4] He discovered a series of ancient cooking holovids as a youth, which starred the legendary chef Gormaanda. After viewing the videos, he became obsessed with the art of food preparation and dedicated his life to cooking, traveling across the Outer Rim Territories region of the galaxy, he continually searched for new recipes and challenges his culinary skill. His progress was hampered by the fact that his face was heavily disfigured, giving him an appearance so unsettling that it overshadowed all of his work in the kitchen. His big break finally came when he met Maz Kanata, a famous smuggler and pirate who hired Tuggs to work as head chef of her castle back on his homeworld. A large storage space beneath the castle was converted into a cooking area, and during the conversion Tuggs had several old blasters mounted on the walls converted into remote controlled sentry turrets. Within the first two decades of Tuggs appointment, the Volpai Robbs Ely became the castle's sous chef, and he and Tuggs quickly became friends despite Ely's legendary temper due to their shared love of cooking.[5] The Artiodac also became friends with Kanata, and as he chose not to answer questions about his past she helped keep his secrets.

A murder in the castle
Twenty years after Kanata first employed Tuggs, he and Ely had an argument over the preparation of a serving of bantha meat. Tuggs had ordered that the meat be buttered and roasted with a set of herbs, but believing that the dish would taste terrible, Ely ignored the order and prepared it with a sauce made with sikoroot, cenwick and several other herbs. The pair yelled at each other in the castles kitchens until two of the scrubbers working there dragged Ely away and ended the argument. Later that night, Tuggs found the sous chef butchered and hung up in his deep freezer, an area of the castle only the head chef could access. Realizing that he was being framed, the Artiodac disposed of the body by feeding it to one of the creatures that Kanata kept in her dungeon, hoping that the creatures' escape would distract others from any sign of trespass that he left. He then began wandering the less traveled corridors of the castle in order to think over what had happened, eventually reaching Ely's room to search it for evidence.[5]

Tuggs found the door to Ely's quarters locked, but was able to decipher the entry code based on fingerprints left on the keypad. The fingerprints contained Ely's sauce from the bantha roast, but as Tuggs knew that the Volpai had burned off his own fingerprints, he concluded that the prints must have belonged to someone else, presumably the murder. The room itself, which was normally kept clean, was a mess when the head chef entered, and he quickly noted that the safe in which Ely had kept his prized recipe book was empty. The Artiodac also discovered a single drop of dried blood, missed by whoever had cleaned up after the murder, and several thin scrapes on the floor left by some kind of blade. Not realising that morning had arrived, Tuggs returned to his kitchens and found his staff already at work preparing for the day. Realizing that one of his own staff had likely killed Ely in order to replace him, Tuggs told everyone that everything was fine and then began concocting a scheme to catch the killer.[5]

The contest
Over the next few hours, Tuggs convinced the majordomo of the castle to allow him to host a cooking competition to find his next sous chef, offering to broadcast the event to the whole castle to keep the residents calm during an incoming storm. He then informed his staff that one of them would be replacing Ely, who he claimed had simply mysteriously left the castle. Four cooks stepped forward to apply for the position, the Devaronian Sama Macoy, the humans Relva Jace and Damor Gregon and the Mon Calamari/Quarren hybrid Jom Jarusch. He then had the kitchen converted into a contest floor filled with all the equipment and ingredients the competitors could need and drafted the BD-3000 luxury droids Carly and J'Nell as two extra judges who would sit with him in a lifter platform.[5]

Tuggs began the competition with a breakfast round, and watched as each contestant carefully prepared their dishes, noting the skill with which all of them worked. When their time was up, the judges tested each chef's dishes while Tuggs asked why some of the competitors deserved to be sous chef. Damor presented pikobi eggs and dianoga meat which Tuggs enjoyed, but was criticized by the droids for not using grulluck oil in the cooking process. Jarusch presented a satisfactory spicy fruit tart and Macoy a double toasted seallia sandwich, which Tuggs decided might be his favourite. Finally, Jace produced a shank of mousta with charred fruit, which the judges categorized as subpar due to its lack of salt, securing the human chef's place as the first to leave the competition. Tuggs also noted that Jace could not be the killer, as he would never have produced such a dish if he was using Ely's cookbook. The second round was designed by Tuggs to test the competitors abilities under pressure. He activated the remote controlled sentry turrets to constantly fire stun blasts as the three contestants cooked. Jarusch and Gregon elected to avoid the blasts by crawling around on their bellies while cooking, but Macoy elected to endure the weak blasts in order to have increased cooking time. This backfired on her when the stunning effects of the blasters caused her to mistime the whisking of her soufflé, causing it to explode. Forced to rush a second dish, she presented flash-fried zuchii with a tangy sauce, which the judges found inferior to Damor's fried sisofish with citrus salad and Jarusch's live zelrey wyrm, leading to her being the second contestant to be expelled.[5]

For the third round of cooking, Tuggs activated the zero-gravity environment within the kitchen, causing the contestants and ingredients to float into the air while he and the other judges remained strapped into their seats. As the three judges watched, Jarusch began to gain an advantage due to the fact he was use to moving around a three dimensional space thanks to his two parent species aquatic natures. While Damor attempted to gather fruit, Jarusch managed to collect a rack of baby bantha ribs and began rubbing them down awkwardly with a butter sauce he had made. Globuls of the sauce drifted through the zero-g and reached the judges, who each tried a droplet. Tuggs immediately recognized the recipe as the one Ely had used the night before, and with the true objective of the competition complete, he switched back on the gravity. Before confronting the suspect, the head chef informed Damor that he had won and got the job. When the human questioned what was happening, Tuggs ordered him out the kitchen and then approached Jarusch, purposefully standing on a knife near the floored contestant. When Tuggs grabbed Jarush and lifted him from the floor he quickly found the recipe book in his pocket, causing the chef to admit he had been the one to steal the book. Jarusch denied killing Ely however, acting surprised when Tuggs revealed his old friend's death.

The culprits revealed
Tuggs then began choking Jarusch, but realised that he could not be the murderer, as he possessed no fingerprints, and so could not have left prints on the sous chef's keypad. Both he and the other contestants had also not been present in the kitchen on the night of Ely's murder, and so would never have come into contact with the sauce to begin with. He realized too late that the only other people who would have seen the source other than himself and Ely were his fellow judges. As he let go of Jarusch, one of the droids smashed a heavy rolling pin into the back of Tuggs' head and disoriented him. While the Artiodac tried to regain his composure, the droids swiftly murdered Jarusch and then began attacking Tuggs with their blades. The head chef managed to dodge the first blows, and questioned why the droids had murdered his friend. The pair revealed that they had wanted to analyse the sous chef's recipe book so that they could update their databases, otherwise they could not identify the ingredients in his recipes to know if they were safe. Knowing that Ely would never allow them access to his secrets, the pair had seen killing him as the only way to achieve their primary function of keeping those that ate at the castle safe.[5]

As the droids spoke, J'Nell managed to stab Tuggs between the ribs, causing a wound that began to bleed heavily. He managed to then fight off Carly with a frying pan, but was stabbed again by J'Nell, this time in the shoulder. Gasping in pain, the head chef tried to pull himself up onto a table using a conduit on the ceiling, but broke it, causing noxious gas to begin spilling into the room. As the droids closed in for the kill, Tuggs grabbed the legs of the table and activated the zero-g again, sending the two droids floating away toward the ceiling. As the service droids yelled threats from the air, Tuggs concluded that their logic circuits must have become corrupted, and activated the sentry turrets. He closed his eyes and attempted to filter out the screams of the murders as they were blasted to pieces by the weaponry, activating the gravity again only after they had been reduced to burnt out husks.[5]

Following the dramatic ending to the contest, a short inquiry was held by the castle security into the various deaths involved, but Tuggs' innocence was proven by the recordings of one of the cam droids who had been recording the contest, and most were satisfied that the incident ended with the destruction of the two droids. Knowing that his friend would have wanted his recipes to live on, the head chef made copies of Ely's recipe book and handed them out to each of his staff to learned, also sending copies to the Orto Culinary Academy so that students there might study them. Once the kitchen was repaired, he and his team returned to their normal work of cooking for the castle,[5] a job that Tuggs would continue for centuries while challenging guests to bring him the most exotic ingredients they could find. When the crittermonger Bobbajo brought him a giant, tough-skinned megalliform, the chef was forced to wrestle the creature into submission before turning it into a tasty meal.[1]