Executor

The Executor was an Executor-class dreadnought in service with the Imperial Navy during the Galactic Civil War. It is notable as being the lead ship of its class in addition to being the personal flagship of Imperial Supreme Commander Darth Vader. The Executor would take part in several key battles of the Galactic Civil War before being destroyed by the Alliance to Restore the Republic during the Battle of Endor in 1004 ARR.
== Service record ==
=== Construction ===
The Executor first began construction at a classified shipyard facility in the Scarl system, located seven parsecs from Fondor on the restricted Gandeal-Fondor Hyperlane. To maintain the project's secrecy, the shipyard's labor force consisted entirely of droids. By 997 ARR, construction had proceeded such that the ship's superstructure was largely completed and the command tower erected almost in full, with shield generators, sensor systems, and engines operational. Substantial sections of the hull, including the defined voluminous center, nevertheless remained incomplete, leaving portions of the Executor's interior exposed.
As the Death Star project neared completion in 1000 ARR, construction on the Executor had stalled in turn. The planet-destroying battlestation had become the new symbol of Imperial power, and the Death Star was draining much needed resources from the Executor and other projects.
Following the Death Star's sudden destruction at the Battle of Yavin, the Executor became the Empire's top priority. The nearly-completed dreadnought was hastily towed from the secrecy of the Scarl system to the Starship Yards of Fondor and a living construction crew, who redoubled their efforts to speed up the Executor's stalled progress. Although the Empire had nationalized the Fondor yards shortly before the Battle of Yavin, it still left the Fondor Guild of Starshipwrights, the planet's ancient rulers, in power to oversee the Executor project.
=== Sabotage plot ===
Following the sudden emergence of the Rebellion in the wake of the Battle of Yavin, work slowdowns and sabotage reached critical levels at Fondor's shipyards. Fearing punishment from the Emperor if the Executor was not completed according to schedule, the Fondor system's governor loosened security restrictions on the shipyard's workers and extended more generous benefit packages to non-human laborers. Although the governor's measures quelled the unrest, the lighter security only left the Executor project vulnerable to external saboteurs.
After Vader's return to Coruscant following the Imperial disaster at Yavin, the Emperor ordered him to Fondor to personally oversee the final stages of construction of the Executor. Before reaching Fondor, Vader rendezvoused with the group of Imperial Admirals, including Amise Griff, to dictate his decided war policy against the Rebellion. Vader planned to use the Executor to single-handedly destroy the Alliance, thus taking absolute control of the Imperial war effort, much to the disgust of the Admirals, who viewed the Executor's construction as little more than grandstanding. They loathed the favor Vader courted from the Emperor, and feared that with the completion of the Executor, they would suffer a great loss of influence and stature. Whereas the Death Star had previously eclipsed the Imperial Navy as the Emperor's preferred weapon of terror, the battlestation's destruction at Yavin returned the admirals to their original position of prominence. The Executor, however, threatened to once again steal that dominance away and place it solely in Vader's command.
Griff anonymously contacted the Alliance High Command on Yavin IV, leaking to them the existence of Vader's secret project at Fondor aimed at the Rebellion's destruction. He explained that he and his fellow Imperial admirals wished to halt Vader's rise in power and therefore had used their influence to keep open a position in the droid maintenance section of the project, which the Alliance could in turn use to their advantage by inserting a spy into that position. Luke Skywalker volunteered for the mission, having droid maintenance experience, and, along with the droids C-3PO and R2-D2, he journeyed to the Fondor Shipyards to collect any information he could on Vader's project. In addition to Skywalker, the Alliance also dispatched a team of agents to destroy the project.
With the Rebel spy in place, Vader used the Admirals' ambition to sabotage the Executor to lure them to Fondor to meet with the spy - planning to destroy them all at once. After Vader purportedly left the Fondor system to briefly attend to other matters, in actuality remaining on Fondor waiting to strike, Griff and the admirals secretly convened with Skywalker to supply him with explosive weapons necessary to sabotage the Executor. Although Vader's plan to capture the Rebel spy failed when Skywalker sensed the Dark Lord's presence through the Force and escaped the scene, Vader's stormtroopers nevertheless rounded up the traitorous admirals, bringing their scheme to sabotage the Executor project to an end.
Simultaneously, Vader succeeded in uncovering the team of Alliance saboteurs, foiling their sabotage mission as well. Skywalker eventually returned to the Rebel base on Yavin IV - the only member of the Alliance team to survive the failed sabotage mission - with a great deal of information on the Executor stored within R2-D2, his own mission largely a success.
=== Completion and launch ===
Six months after the Battle of Yavin, the Executor reached completion on schedule. The largest dreadnought ever constructed, the ship represented the power of the Galactic Empire and would become the most famous of the Imperial Navy's flagships.
The Executor project had taken years to complete, and the incredible cost to fund the construction of such a large warship - an estimated 1,143,350,000 credits - had practically bankrupted several star systems. The Imperial treatment afforded Fondor during the Executor's construction - namely locking out all civilian traffic from the Fondor system and awarding subsequent dreadnought construction contracts to their Kuati competitors - would erode support for the Emperor at Fondor and eventually lead to the Empire losing the planet to the Rebellion in the years following.