Theft of the Imperialis

During the reign of the Galactic Empire, Papa Toren, a crime boss operating on the Colonies planet Castell, hired gambler Lando Calrissian and his team to steal the Imperialis from Orbital Shipyard CC-24.
==Prelude==
Following the Battle of Yavin, the gambler and criminal Lando Calrissian became indebted to the crime boss Papa Toren, who operated out off the planet Castell. Calrissian managed to obtain a trinket from Moff Ssaria in an effort to pay off his debt. However, Papa Toren only deducted ten percent of the debt in order to coerce Calrissian into stealing an Imperial luxury pleasure craft being serviced at Sienar Fleet Systems' Orbital Shipyard CC-24. This pleasure ship turned out to be the Galactic Emperor Palpatine's personal yacht Imperialis.
Due to the sensitive nature of the mission, Calrissian enlisted the help of his cyborg companion Lobot, the alien twins Aleksin and Pavol, and the former Ugnaught sava Korin Pers, an antiquities scholar who had fallen on hard times. Calrissian managed to entice the twins and Korin Pers by pointing out the wealth and treasure aboard the yacht. Calrissian and his companions were however unaware that the ship belonged to Emperor Palpatine, a secret Sith Lord who stored dangerous Sith artifacts aboard his ship. In addition, the Imperialis stored information about the Emperor's secret protege Gallius Rax,Aftermath: Life Debt a high-ranking Imperial Navy officer who was tasked with executing the Contingency plan in the event of the Emperor's death.Aftermath: Empire's End
==The theft==
===Imperial entanglements===
While the Imperialis was docking at Orbital Shipyard CC-24, Calrissian and his team spacewalked to the shipyard in stealth suits, sliced into an airlock, and knocked a pair of stormtrooper sentries unconscious. They then raced through the wheel-section of the shipyard, boarded the Imperialis, and blasted away from the shipyard. A horrified Commander Pasqual saw the Emperor's pleasure craft fleeing into space and quickly contacted the Grand Vizier Mas Amedda, who subsequently dispatched three Imperial-class Star Destroyers to the Castell system recapture the Emperor's vessel.
The Star Destroyers were commanded by Captains Shan and Conro, and Commodore Idel. To punish Commander Pasqual for his failure to protect the Emperor's property, Commodore Idel ordered the Star Destroyers to destroy the shipyard with their turbolasers. The shipyard exploded and was totally annihilated, killing all those aboard, including Pasqual.Jordan D. White, the editor of Star Wars comics at Marvel Comics, confirmed that Pasqual is dead on this webpage.
Idel's Star Destroyer then deployed a pair of gravity mines, which were designed to latch to a ship's hull and prevent it from jumping into hyperspace. The Imperialis, however, quickly destroyed both mines with its advanced automatic weaponry. Therefore, Idel, seeing the Imperialis was better equipped than he had previously thought, offered a one-million credit reward to whoever recovered the yacht and brought it to him. The Imperialis then blasted past the warships in its bid to escape.
In their attempt to collect the reward, Captains Conro and Shan tried to trap the Imperialis with their Star Destroyer's tractor beams. However, Calrissian, who piloted the Imperialis, used a maneuver that resulted in Conro's Star Destroyer locking on to Shan's Star Destroyer, causing the Star Destroyers to collide with each other. This distraction allowed the Imperialis to escape into deep space. Having failed the Emperor, Idel told his lieutenant to enlist in the Rebel Alliance before shooting himself in the head.
===Chanath's special job===
Following the failure of his military forces, Emperor Palpatine contacted the bounty hunter Chanath Cha and tasked her with destroying the Imperialis. Chanath had been hunting the alien crime lord Big String and had destroyed his oceanic fortress. The Emperor promised to provide Cha with a starship that was capable of locating the Imperialis. He told her that he would reward her greatly for her success. However, if the yacht could not be recovered, Palpatine instructed Chanath to destroy the Imperialis to prevent the items that it contained from falling into the hands of others.
Chanath headed to the classified Imperial Facility 729-D in the Inner Rim where she was assigned the modified Star Courier Scimitar, which had once been Darth Maul's personal transport. The droid O-66 began to brief her about the Scimitar capabilities. However, the impatient Chanath blasted his head off. As they departed the facility, O-66 explained that Scimitar was capable of tracking a starship's trail through hyperspace. Chanath then took the ship into lightspeed.Lando 3
===Entering a death trap===
After fleeing into deep space, Lando and his companions began to explore the Imperiales. Amazed at the ship's wealth and treasures, Lando toyed with sharing the proceeds among his companions and giving the ship to Papa Toren. Lobot used his AJ^6 cyborg construct to access the ship's central chamber. Before he could enter the chamber, he was impaled through the gut by the Force pike. Lando and his companions found themselves facing two of the Emperor's Royal Guards. While Lando and Korin Pers evacuated the wounded Lobot to the ship's medbay, Aleksin and Pavol took on the Royal Guards with blades.
While Lobot recuperated inside a bacta tank, Korin deduced that the yacht they had stolen belonged to the Emperor due to the presence of the Royal Guards. Korin panicked but Lando replied that they would go and help the twins. Lando and Korin found a well-stocked armory and helped themselves to blasters. They then re-entered the central chamber only to discover that Aleksin and Pavol had killed the Royal Guards. After Korin examined the guards' faces, she discovered that the guards had been corrupted by the dark side of the Force. They discovered that several Sith artifacts including a helmet were the source of the dark side presence.
===Pull of the dark side===
Meanwhile, Chanath and O-66 reached the Imperialis. While O-66 stayed aboard to transmit the access codes, Chanath donned a pair of jet boots and accessed the yacht's docking rig. Elsewhere, Lando and Korin talked about how much they could sell the Sith artifacts aboard the Imperialis on the black market. Suddenly, Aleksin grabbed a double-bladed lightsaber and sliced off the right hand of his twin Pavol. While the twins fought, Lando and Korin escaped and shut the doors. While Lando thought that Aleksin had double-crossed them, Korin recalled that her research into Jedi lore indicated that Sith artifacts were capable of corrupting lifeforms.Lando 4
While Calrissian wanted to figure out a way to get back into the central chamber to help Pavol, Korin decided to leave the ship. Meanwhile, Chanath made her way into the Imperialis and requested that O-66 send her the control codes for the ship's operational system. When O-66 pointed out that the Emperor had given no such orders, Chanath threatened to blow him up with a small pulse bomb. O-66 obliged and reiterated his question. Chanath responded that she had received orders from Palpatine to make sure that the thieves did not leave the ship.
Meanwhile, Calrissian and Korin argued. Calrissian refused to leave Pavol but Korin recognized the danger of the Sith objects. Before the two could move Lobot into an escape pod, they received an announcement from the ship's intercom that the escape pods were non-operational. Back in the central chamber, Pavol tried to reason with his lover Aleksin. Aleksin claimed not to have noticed anything and retorted that Pavol had lost something. Pavol responded that this was going to be their last job since they had saved enough money to affaord a clone, their own child. Aleksin however retorted that no child would have a one-armed parent and claimed that he did not want a child anymore. Giving into anger, Pavol grabbed a scimitar.
Meanwhile, Calrissian tried to talk Korin out of going to the bridge to reactivate the escape pod. The two of them were then cornered at gunpoint by Chanath, who was an old friend of Lando. Lando was surprised to see a familiar face and the two embraced. Chanath then warned Lando that the yacht belonged to Palpatine, who had sent her to kill the ship's thieves. If she couldn't do that, he had instructed her to destroy the ship. Chanath warned Lando and Korin that the ship's only cargo was death. Meanwhile, the corrupted Aleksin and Pavol cut their way out of the central chamber with red-bladed Sith lightsabers.
===Destroying the Imperialis===
Unable to kill her friend Lando, Chanath proceeded with her Plan B to destroy the Imperialis. Korin objected due to the historic treasures aboard the ship. Lando proposed a Plan C but Canath warned that plans could get people killed. He also proposed that Korin help them to take down Aleksin and then let him and his remaining companions escape in escape pods with some treasures. However, Chanath was unwilling to take chances and told them that she would give them a ride on the Scimitar. Though Lando was concerned that taking Lobot out would cause the implants to take over his mind, Chanath told Lando to fetch Lobot from his bacta tank in order to save his life.
Lando, Chanath, and Korin were then confronted by the corrupted Aleksin and Pavol, who demanded that they leave their starship. Aleksin then appealed to Korin, claiming that the she was a seeker who had been manipulated by Calrissian. He presented her the Sith mask of Darth Momin, which corrupted her. Before Korin could join them, Aleksin killed her with his double-bladed lightsaber. Lando and Chanath managed to escape the murderous twins by shooting a door shut.
While Chanath set the self-destruct mechanism, she told Lando to fetch Lobot and meet her at the airlock so that they could leave on the Scimitar. Lando managed to retrieve Lobot but found his path blocked by Aleksin. Meanwhile, Chanath ordered O-66 to dock the Scimitar with the Imperialis. However, the droid responded that his primary directive was to protect the Scimitar. When Chanath threatened to ignited the pulse bomb, O-66 taunted back that he had already removed the bomb. O-66 then took the Scimitar into hyperspace.
Chanath was then attacked by a lightsaber-wielding Pavol. After failing to reason with the corrupted Pavol, Chanath fought him in a knife fight and killed him. Meanwhile, Lando used his smooth talking to convince Aleksin to lower his lightsaber. Lando then shot him in the chest with his blaster. As Lobot and Lando made their way to the airlock, Lobot struggled to prevent the implants from taking over his mind. Despite the disappearance of the Scimitar, Lobot was able to use his cyborg implant to connect with the interface. He managed to reactivate the escape pods. Lando and Lobot escaped in one while Chanath escape in another before the Imperialis exploded.
==Aftermath==
Following the destruction of the Imperialis, the wrecked ship ended up on Quantxi, the Junk Moon of Ord Mantell. The ship was stored alongside several droids which contained information about Gallius Rax. In the chaotic aftermath of the Battle of Endor, Amedda informed Grand Admiral Rae Sloane about the Imperialis location. She dispatched the bounty hunter Mercurial Swift to investigate. Swift found information that Rax had originated on the planet Jakku while examining the droids on Quantxi. Despite the ship's destruction, a replica of the Imperialis was stored at the Jakku Observatory. Following the Battle of Jakku, Sloane along with Brendol Hux, Armitage Hux, and several child soldiers would use the replica to flee into the Unknown Regions.
Meanwhile, Lando heeded Lobot's words to find something to believe in and to use his charm for good. After serving a stint as Baron Administrator of Cloud City, Lando became a General in the Rebel Alliance. In 5 ABY, Lando and Lobot took part in the New Republic's war effort against Governor Ubrik Adelhard's Imperial remnant and liberated Cloud City from the Imperial occupation.
==Behind the scenes==
The theft of the Imperialis served as the main plot for the 2015 Marvel Comics arc Star Wars: Lando. The comic was written by Charles Soule, drawn by Alex Maleev, and colored by Paul Mounts.
==Appearances==
*Lando 1 
*Lando 2
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*Lando 3
*Lando 4
*Lando 5
*Star Wars (2020) 10 
*Star Wars (2020) 37 
*Star Wars (2020) 44 
*Aftermath: Life Debt 
*Aftermath: Empire's End 
==Sources==
*Star Wars Character Encyclopedia: Updated and Expanded
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*Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, New Edition
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*Star Wars: Timelines
*Star Wars: Dawn of Rebellion: The Visual Guide 
*Star Wars Encyclopedia: The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy
==Notes and references==
Category:Battles of Castell
Category:Battles of the Imperial Era
Category:Heists and robberies