The ultimate manifestation of the Empire’s overwhelming belief in strength through fear, the Death Star is everything insidious and evil about the Imperial engine in Star Wars—as well as its inevitable downfall. But while the story of stopping the Death Star is well trod at this point, the story of just how it was built in the first place is much more complicated.
It’s not just complex because the Death Star’s construction took place over the course of decades, but because of that time frame, there requires a reckoning that the Death Star was not a strictly Imperial project. Born from designs engineered by the Geonosians, approved by the a top cadre of Republic military officials, and ultimately put into place by their transformation into the Death Star, the battle station is less of a manifestation of one specific evil—although there’s a case to be made that Palpatine’s guiding hand across all theses factions as Darth Sidious makes the Death Star an extension of his own malice—and more of a broader rot.
That, in a galaxy swept in the cycle of increasing interstellar conflict, the need for further power, and further atrocities to maintain that power, would inevitably manifest in a superweapon capable of destroying worlds in the blink of an instant. The Death Star was always going to happen, in some way: it was just a question of who got there first.
The Plans
Although ideas of planetary-scaled superweapons had existed in the history of the galaxy for thousands of years, the idea for the battle station that would become the first Death Star came from the minds of the Geonosian peoples. Lead by by the weaponsmiths of the Geonosian Archduke, Poggle the Lesser, the design for the “Ultimate Weapon,” as it was simply known, was presented to Count Dooku and the nascent Separatist confederacy at the first battle of what would become the Clone War. Taken away by Dooku for safekeeping, the designs found their way to Dooku’s Sith Master, the disguised Chancellor Palpatine; the confederacy had financial powerhouses in allies to back the project, from the Techno Union to the Trade Federation, but the Geonosian’s designs were unfinalized by the time of the outbreak of the war.
Palpatine would keep the weapon plans secret for almost a year after the war began, eventually revealing the plans to a cadre of Republic advisors shortly after the second Battle of Geonosis in 21 BBY. Convincing these officials that the plans had emerged shortly after that battle—and after the Republic’s own special weapon development teams had failed to design several of their own large-scale superweapons in an attempt to find a swift and decisive end to the conflict—and were evidence of the Separatist’s own project to construct a planet-killer, Palpatine successfully petitioned that the Republic use the plans to build their own first.
Development of the battle station began in the utmost secrecy: the Jedi Order, although commanders of the Republic’s armed forces, were kept out of meetings discussing the logistical and funding hurdles necessary for a creation of its scale. In time, the Republic gathered select senators, representatives of massive shipyard worlds like Corellia and Kuat, as well as top researchers and military officers (including a young Orson Krennic, a Lieutenant Commander at the time), preparing to lay out construction in the orbit above Geonosis, now firmly under Republic occupation.
Republic Construction…
Increased funding driven by Senate support of the war effort allowed early construction of the battle station to begin hastily. As the asteroids around Geonosis were mined for raw material, droid factories occupied after the battles to secure Geonosis were put to task refining the materials needed for early phases of construction. While flotillas of ships carried materials around the Geonosian system, and limited construction was provided by sentient-operated machinery, most of the initial phase of construction was automated. Less than a year into construction, the battle station’s basic superstructure had been completed, moving on to the construction of an equator band and further support bands to lay the ground work for the construction of the station’s hull.
That next phase came with a grim realization however: in order to continue building the station at any sort of speed to outpace the Separatists’ own potential rival construction (even though one ultimately never existed), the Republic needed sentient labor. Although initial plans to petition the Kaminoans for a cloned workforce fell through, Krennic managed to surreptitiously negotiate a deal with the detained Poggle the Lesser: in exchange for safety and Republic cooperation, Lesser would task the Geonosian people with helping construct the station, knowing that hives of worker drones would tear each other apart without a project to be focused on.
Tens of thousands of Geonosian drones helped rapidly complete the next phases of manufacturing, with Krennic promoted for his initiative to oversee the creation and installation of the large dish on the station’s northern hemisphere, made to house the eventual superweapon that was still being researched and developed. But Geonosian productivity was not to last. A mixture of mistreatment by Poggle’s demands and delays leading to drones going idle—leading to mass executions when the Geonosian genetic predisposition for drones to fly away to their hives without work kicked in—bred resentment among the working castes until large scale riots broke out in 19 BBY, destroying months of work while also providing a cover for Poggle the Lesser to escape the Republic and flee back to the confederacy.
His freedom would be short lived, however: the Clone Wars were soon drawing to an end, and Poggle was just one of the several remaining members of the Separatist hierarchy that would be assassinated on Mustafar by Palpatine’s agent, and new apprentice, the fallen Anakin Skywalker. And although the Clone Wars ended without a Separatist planet-killer ever emerging, the nascent Galactic Empire was not going to let the Republic’s work go to waste.
… And Imperial Continuation
Almost immediately after the proclamation of Palpatine’s New Order, the battle station was christened with its ultimate name: Death Star. Although secrecy around the project initially remained as tight as it had in the Republic era, completion of the Death Star project was formally handed over to the Imperial Navy, spearheaded by the command of Wilhuff Tarkin and Orson Krennic.
With the hull and interior work on the Death Star well and truly underway, focus turned onto developing the station’s eventual superweapon. Krennic headed up Project Celestial Power, ostensibly an Imperial scientific thinktank meant to leverage research in the energy-conduction capacity of kyber crystals as a way to aid worlds ravaged by the damage of the Clone Wars by providing cheap, sustainably efficient power systems. Enticing his longtime pacifist friend and noted kyber researcher Galen Erso to Celestial Power, Krennic simultaneously oversaw the weaponization of Celestial Power’s research for the Death Star superlaser while also surreptitiously harvesting Republic-protected “legacy worlds” across the galaxy for further resources to fuel the Death Star’s construction.
But just as early a continued shadow lingering over the Death Star’s long construction emerged, as Tarkin and Krennic alike tussled for superiority within the Imperial regime. Tarkin kept a distance from the Death Star initially, scapegoating Krennic for any delays on the project in the hopes he could swoop in near the climax of its completion to take command and credit. Krennic, meanwhile, also secretly arranged for military distractions to keep Tarkin occupied and away from direct responsibilities.
But it was Krennic who would suffer for one of the Death Star’s first major setbacks. Although Galen Erso’s research had allowed for great advancements to be made in developing the battle station’s superlaser weapon, the scientist eventually realized that his kyber research—fueled by the recovery and acquisition of the crystalline material from various worlds and fallen Jedi in the wake of Order 66—was being used for military purposes in the wake of the disastrous first test-firing of the superlaser on the planet Malpaz. The incident destroyed both the secondary Celestial Power facility testing the weaponry and the planet’s nearby capital, killing over 10,000 civilians in the aftermath, and although further tests would begin to refine the superlaser’s safety, revealing to Erso Krennic’s true goals for his research.
Recruiting the rebel operative Saw Gerrera, Erso arranged for he and his family to be rescued from Project Celestial Power’s primary facility on Coruscant, escaping to the planet Lah’mu, where they would stay in secrecy away from Krennic’s searching eyes for several years. Krennic was demoted for the loss of his top scientist, and Tarkin officially took oversight of the Death Star’s construction.
Betrayals and Delays
Even aside from the initial loss of Galen Erso—who would be retrieved four years later by Krennic and forced into continued research on the Death Star—part of the reason for the Death Star’s lengthy construction period was due to almost constant setbacks and security issues, even as the Imperial Security Bureau sought to stamp out any rumors pertaining to the project’s existence, both among the Imperial populace and all but the highest echelons of military command.
The Empire pressed slaves of multiple species, including Wookiees imprisoned during the occupation of Kashyyyk, as well as commandeered manufacturing facilities all over the galaxy, to build manufacture myriad components for the Death Star. But it also needed to develop a vast security network to obfuscate the transport of materiel to Geonosis’ orbit for the Death Star’s construction, spread out across three primary outposts: Desolation Station, primarily responsible for research as well as development of crucial station systems like its hyperdrive engines; Rampart Station, a logistics hub responsible for maintaining the supply lanes to and from construction; and Sentinel Base, the military and security garrison tasked with defending the construction project in secret.
Tarkin would eventually take over management of Sentinel Base for several years, while Krennic would oversee direct construction on the Death Star, but the sheer bureaucratic and logistical complexity, wrapped up in layers of paranoid secrecy, mired the Death Star project in a litany of setbacks. The sheer scope of the project required people and resources from all over the galaxy working in tandem, while also paradoxically not being allowed to know what exactly they were working on outside of their limited contributions. As much as the ISB could contain leaks, inevitable rumors about supply chains and the project would lead to years of insurgent activity undermining the already delicate logistical network supporting construction—and beyond that, increasing internal dissatisfaction from long-time former Republic talent tasked with developing the station from its earliest days increasingly abandoned the seemingly doomed project, leading to a brain-drain that stymied further development.
One of the most prominent setbacks to the Death Star’s construction almost inadvertently exposed its existence to the galaxy. In around 14 BBY, an insurgent cell lead by the former Republic Intelligence officer Berch Teller managed to stage a successful raid on Sentinel Base as an act of vengeance against Tarkin for his role in a violent crackdown against Republic-backed partisans on the moon Antar 4 after the Clone Wars, beginning a brief campaign of public resistance backed in secret by one of Tarkin’s fellow admirals, Dodd Rancit, who Tarkin had replaced as commander of Sentinel Base.
A failed raid on a supply convoy destined for Geonosian orbit put an end to Teller’s cell and Rancit’s complicity—and saw Tarkin’s elevation to the rank of Grand Moff, putting him in broad command of the Outer Rim as well as his duties with the Death Star project—but the public cover-up to obfuscate the military failure in the admiral’s betrayal exposed a broader secret: the Empire was building something above Geonosis, but no one could discover what.
Completion and Revelation
As the reign of the Empire continued, the Death Star slowly continued to slowly coalesce. Five years after its near exposure by the Teller insurgency, enough construction of the Death Star’s engine and hypedrive systems—as well as another near-discovery by Saw Gerrera’s partisan activities—prompted the Empire to relocate the Death Star from Geonosis’ orbit to the planet Scarif, exterminating the Geonosian race to maintain its secrecy.
By 5 BBY, the implementation of the Public Order Resentencing Directive in response to a rebel heist of Imperial payroll on the planet Aldhani pressed legions of imprisoned peoples across the galaxy into construction of Death Star materials and components. Meanwhile, while continued research into the final details of the Death Star’s energy and weaponry systems—continued under the public and internal message as being for Emperor Palpatine’s continued energy projects—eventually saw Krennic and the ISB launch a years-long propaganda and occupation campaign on the planet Ghorman, attempting to oust the native populace and strip-mine the world for supplies of the mineral Kalkite, necessary to the final completion of the reactors that would power the Death Star’s superlaser.
By 1 BBY, the Death Star was all but completed under Krennic’s supervision; he had re-risen through the ranks to become director of the Advanced Weapons Research division. But leaks of the Death Star’s existence—inadvertently through the appropriation of years of hoarded intelligence files by the ISB supervisor Dedra Meero, betrayed by the ISB mole Lonni Jung—to the rebel operative known to the ISB as “Axis,” Luthen Rael, sparked a chain reaction that would lead to the formal beginning of the Galactic Civil War.
Completed just days before Rebel Alliance intelligence forces managed to confirm the existence of the superweapon, the Death Star was first officially tested with the firing of its superlaser at the planet Jedha, wiping out its capital city as well as devastating most of the planet, and then at Scarif itself, when Tarkin commandeered the station in an attempt to stop Alliance forces assaulting the facilities on the world from obtaining the Death Star’s schematics. Now fully operational, the time for secrecy was over: the dissolution of the Imperial Senate with the debut of the Emperor’s grand new deterrent showed the regime’s confidence in the Death Star’s capacity to put an end to the burgeoning Rebel Alliance almost as soon as the war had begun.
But we know how that went, don’t we?
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