The Lady Ex
The Super Star Destroyer Executor, or "Lady Ex," as she was known by her crew and commander, was the personal flagship of the Lord Darth Vader, the premier command ship of the Imperial Navy, and the first of the Executor-class Star Dreadnought line. Designed by Firmus Piett and starship engineer Lira Wessex as a successor to the original Imperial-class Star Destroyer, the Executor, at a monumental 19,000 meters in length, represented the largest traditional warship the galaxy had ever seen by the time of her completion.
She was Piett's' brainchild, he got the first ideas for her his first year in the Coruscant Naval Intelligence Academy and doodled the first rough blueprints in a journal. Wessex got her hands on the journal in Firmus' last year of school without him knowing about it and turned the rough sketches into full scale blueprints.
Construction Begins[]
The Executor under construction at the Kuat drive yards
The Executor under construction
Construction on the Executor began under complete secrecy at the Kuat Drive Yards in the secluded Scarl system, where Vader raised and trained Galen Marek, his secret dark side apprentice, in a failed plan to overthrow Darth Sidious as galactic ruler. By 0 ABY, the Executor was transferred to the Starship Yards of Fondor for the final stages of construction, under the overall direction of Admiral Amise Griff.
The Lady Ex bristled with more than 5,000 weapon emplacements, enough firepower to blast any planetary surface to slag in hours, and a military complement capable of annihilating any ground installation. The Executor's presence alone, however, was enough to frighten an entire star system into submission.
At Fondor, the Executor became the failed target of internal sabotage by a group of traitorous Imperial admirals, who hoped to destroy Vader's project to prevent their own decline in power. Once completed, the Executor made for Yavin 4, site of the Rebel Alliance base. Vader hoped to crush the Rebellion once and for all with his new weapon, but the Executor failed to stop the Rebel evacuation from Yavin, and Griff died in the process.
For three years after Yavin, under the command of Admiral Kendal Ozzel, the Executor led Vader's Star Destroyer fleet, the Imperial Death Squadron, in the Empire's hunt for the Rebellion's secret headquarters as part of Vader's personal mission to locate his son, Luke Skywalker. In 3 ABY, the Executor led the Imperial victory at the Battle of Hoth, but due to the tactical blundering of Ozzel, Skywalker and the Rebellion leadership escaped, and Vader executed Ozzel for his failure. The Executor's admiralty immediately passed to Captain Piett, under whom the Executor chased the Millennium Falcon from Hoth to Bespin's Cloud City in continued pursuit of Skywalker. The Executor again failed to capture Skywalker at Bespin, however, and so Vader's search for his son continued.
Executor II[]
Piett had secretly had a second identical destroyer built, to make it appear as though the Lady had a speed four times that of other Destroyers. When the first Executor rammed into the Death Star and sank, he survived thanks to a tiny escape pod.