Death Star II/Legends



''This article is about the second Death Star. You may be looking for the first Death Star.''

"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battlestation!"

- Emperor Palpatine

Specifications
The Death Star II had a monstrous diameter of over 900 kilometers&mdash;the intellectual and physical evolution of the Death Star I. It was designed to take into account and eradicate the shortcomings of the original. Tantamount in this redesign was the elimination of the two meter wide exhaust port that was the downfall of the Death Star I. Instead, excess heat and gases were exhausted to space through millions of millimeter wide tubes, with highly advanced countermeasures that would seal themselves off if the walls sensed any excess of heat or energy.

The second main advancement in the Death Star II over the Death Star I was the improvement of the superlaser. The superlaser in the Death Star II was much more powerful, took less time to recharge, and had lowered power settings and more sensitive targeting systems to better combat capital ships. The conventional armament of Death Star II was also much greater than that of Death Star I.

History


The Death Star II was built as part of Emperor Palpatine's master plan to destroy the Rebel Alliance and turn Luke Skywalker to the dark side of the Force.

Unlike the first Death Star, which, as a result of supply and design problems took nineteen years to complete, this Death Star took much less time (around two years) to construct. Apparently, construction procedures had been perfected by this time.

The Empire discovered the location they would later build the second Death Star around, when searching for the Shadowstone. Finding this stone was an obsession of Dr. Rygar, one of the Imperial agents who was executed by Palpatine when he failed to capture the stone. The Empire apparently gained interest in this region, as it was relatively unknown and out of the way.

The second Death Star was built in the Endor system in Moddell Sector, where construction was overseen by the regional governor, the weak-willed and easily controlled Moff Jerjerrod. Endor was selected due to the massive concentration of strategic metals on the planets Dor, Eloggi and Megiddo in the system, but the actual construction site was in geosynchronous orbit around the forested Sanctuary Moon, above a powerful shield generator on the surface.

Resources that could not be produced locally were secretly ferried to the distant world from all over the Galaxy along the Sanctuary Pipeline, with some of the hauliage contracted out to three hundred ships from Prince Xizor's civilian company Xizor Transport Systems. It is unclear what percentage of construction material the XTS haulers carried, or whether the outsourcing was genuinely necessary: it seems that Palpatine anticipated Xizor's decision to pass on the location of the Death Star II to Bothan spies aligned with the Rebel Alliance, and this may have been the sole reason for involving the Falleen in the first place. The Emperor even leaked his personal schedule so the Rebels would know when he would personally be aboard. This bait proved too tempting and resulted in the Battle of Endor.

At the Battle of Endor, the Death Star II was unfinished structurally, but, contrary to Rebel intelligence, the superlaser was fully operational. It was destroyed during the Battle of Endor when Lando Calrissian, piloting the Millennium Falcon; and Wedge Antilles, piloting an X-wing starfighter, flew into its unfinished superstructure and destroyed the hypermatter reactor core with well placed concussion missiles and proton torpedoes.

IG-88, a droid bounty hunter, had uploaded his consciousness into a computer core which was installed into the Death Star II. When his consciousness was installed, he literally became the Death Star. When Lando Calrissian destroyed the core, he not only helped save the Galaxy from the Empire, but from the dangerous IG-88 as well.

Emperor Palpatine was the only person on the Death Star II to sense the presence of IG-88. Before the station's destruction, he noticed a series of doors in his throne room opening and closing sporadically.

Behind the scenes
There are discrepancies regarding the size of the Death Star II, which has generated some controversy. The West End Games RPG claimed that the second Death Star had a diameter of 160 kilometers. The majority of Expanded Universe material since then has simply repeated this number. The recent Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy fact book, detailed scaling of the station in the film, and statements by ILM visual effects designer Richard Edlund show that the second Death Star was actually over 900 kilometers in diameter.

According to the West End Games RPG stats, when completed, its massive hanger bays would house four capital ships, 7,200 TIE fighters, 3,600 Lambda-class shuttles, 2,500 Skipray Blastboats, 1,900 Y-85 Titan dropships, and 13,000 Sentinel-class landing craft, including 1,400 AT-ATs, 1,400 AT-STs, 178 PX-4 Mobile Command Bases, 1,420 repulsortanks, 1,420 repulsorcraft, 355 HAVr A9 Floating Fortresses, and 4,843 Juggernauts. As these figures are for the incorrect undersized version, they would be closer to what would be carried by the first Death Star; the proper figures for the second Death Star should be several orders of magnitude higher.

Appearances

 * Shadows of the Empire
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
 * Return of the Ewok (non-canon)