Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/May 3, 2009

Lira Wessex née Blissex was the daughter of famous Galactic Republic engineer Walex Blissex, and an accomplished engineer in her own right. When she was still Lira Blissex, she designed the Venator-class Star Destroyer for the Galactic Republic, later using her success on that project and the political power she gained with her marriage to future Imperial Moff Denn Wessex to push her grand project, the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, into production. Against a storm of controversy, Wessex was vindicated when the Imperial-class proved successful. In later years, she further improved on her design with the creation of the Executor-class Star Dreadnought.

When failings in Wessex's Imperial-class became apparent, she arranged to have her father captured, intending to have him interrogated for any details on starship design that could help her. Blissex was lured to the Victory-class Star Destroyer Subjugator on the pretense that his daughter was dying, only to be captured by the Empire. A Rebel attack forced a change of plans for Wessex, though, who set the ship to self-destruct to wipe them out. When Blissex and his Rebel companions escaped, Wessex was forced to flee the Star Destroyer without her prisoners.

She was later approached by Doctor Vreen, an artificial intelligence expert from Cloud City who had helped design a droid capable of running a starship, and who proposed to her that it could be used to create a self-commanding vessel. Vreen demonstrated his droid, X0-X1, by connecting it to Cloud City's computer core, only to have it take over the city while she was there. Wessex was reunited with her father during this crisis, and she was forced to work with him to shut down X0-X1 and save the city.