The Secret History of the Ultimate Weapon

The Death Star didn’t hatch entirely from the mind of Palpatine; a planet-sized superweapon had been theorized for years even before the the climax of the Clone War and the establishment of the Galactic Empire gave the now-Emperor the means and desire to construct such a weapon. Early ideas for a planetary battle station were developed by Raith Sienar, a scion of Santhe/Sienar Technologies. After discovering Sienar’s design plans for an “Expeditionary Battle Planetoid,” Wilhulff Tarkin—a Republic military official and close confidant of now-Chancellor Palpatine in the wake of Valorum’s ousting—presented the plans to the Chancellor, who, in his dual identity as Palpatine and Sidious, began quietly enacting plans to iterate on the design and set the stage for its eventual construction.

It was Palpatine’s separatist allies in the Geonosians who would ultimately refine Sienar’s plans into a feasible superweapon, with their battle plans secured by Count Dooku on Geonosis during the outbreak of the Clone War, who returned the plans to his master on Coruscant. As the Clone Wars came to an end three years later—and the Republic gave way to Palpatine’s Empire—the plans for the Death Star were brought out of Palpatine’s personal veil of secrecy and enacted as one of the first great works of the new regime. Constructed in shadow, the need to avoid potential insurgent activity from discovering the weapon prior to its completion, the plans were split up into various files and distributed across Imperial research stations and facilities across the galaxy, in the hopes that a single breach would uncover Palpatine’s plans.