Esvelde

Esvelde was the Banshee-class heavy cruiser flagship in the Emerald Fleet, under Admiral Klaxon.

Design
Esvelde was a Banshee-class heavy cruiser, the only one of her kind known to exist. Banshee-class cruisers consist of two large, flat parallelograms with one corner cut off at an angle. These are set perpendicular, one against the side of the other along the middle, the short end of the cut off corner set against the long end of the other parallelogram, so that the longer point on the cut off corner of the one set against the middle of the other extends beyond the rest of the ship. This shape rests horizontal when the ship is upright. On the upper side of this, there is the command bridge, beginning where the two shapes meet, and going around the corner all the way back to the next corner on the outside of the ship. At the very tip of the ship, just before the brdige extends to its furthest, is a single heavy quadlaser. This has heavy firepower at a medium rate of fire, and long range. It is flanked along the outside by twin medium proton cannons, that fire powerful rounds that can punch through shields at the expense of firing rate. Flanking the aft-most of these cannons is ashort-ranged, high-intensity ion cannon. On the inside of the foremost medium proton cannon is a heavy proton cannon, with slower firing rate and more powerful rounds, alongside four light defense turrets. Behind the heavy proton cannon and the ion cannon is a battery of four medium quadlaser turrets (all guns except the proton cannons, and the soon-to-be-mention ion rotor and mass driver cannon, are set on turrets), mostly used for broadside firing. Behind these four cannons are two light ion cannons, and a heavy quadlaser. On the underside of the craft, four forward proton cannons, and one long-range, extremely slow, highly powerful (can destroy a vengeance-class star destroyer in a single shot) mass driver cannon, all of which are specialized for orbital bombardment. On the outside of the upright parallelogram are two forward heavy ion cannons, flanking one medium proton cannons. These are flanked by an ion rotor, which takes up most of the side. It is flanked by two light defense turrets. Aft of the ion rotor are two batteries of four light defense turrets. On the inside of this shape are three forward light defense turrets, underside of the main body of the craft, and one aft light quadlaser. The ship also contains a cloaking device, though weapons cannot be fired while cloaked. Banshee-class cruisers are also renowned subspacecraft, able to enter subspace, quietly observe realspace via sensors, exit subspace, attack, and disappear again, in the blink of an eye. These subspace engines draw deeply upon the four large Koros Spaceworks JJ-93 Hypermatter Reactors, limiting their use. Esvelde also had a Class 1 hyperdrive.

History
Esvelde saw precious little action, as the mere sight of this terrible ship at the head of a fleet was enough to scare most enemy admirals off. One notable exception was the Chiss admiral Mit'thrawn'udo, AKA Thrawn. Thrawn's fleet was decimated, however, and his flagship barely managed to escape in flames, courtesy of the firepower of Esvelde combined with Interdictor-class star destroyers to detain the Chimera, Thrawn's flagship.