Empirical

"This is the Empirical, master, Lord Vader's top-secret mobile laboratory."

- PROXY, to Galen Marek

The ISS Empirical was a science ship that belonged to Darth Vader.

Description
The ISS Empirical was a mobile research laboratory owned by Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader. A modified cruiser, the Empirical was rumored to be one of many similar research vessels in Vader's fleet. The Empirical ' s purpose was to house Vader's experiments on prisoners, as well as study unique alien species. The ship was propelled by five engines, four in the stern and one mounted nearer the bow, on a spur of the ship emerging from its ventral side. It was armed with at least two turbolasers. The vessel was equipped with at least six escape pods, the room for which was accessible by turbolift from other decks, and had a docking bay suitable for berthing a transport-sized ship.

The Empirical was a top-secret vessel; even Emperor Palpatine's spy network could not track it. The vessel stuck to lifeless star systems in the Outer Rim Territories, traveling courses between them that had long been forgotten. The Empirical ' s crew was made of the elite, a platoon of soldiers personally picked by Vader. A wide variety of stormtrooper classes protected the ship, including shadow stormtroopers, purge troopers, and even the hazardous-environment EVO troopers. The vessel's complement of soldiers was trained to quickly handle threats that broke out aboard the ship, and they would take any measures to prevent test subjects from escaping alive. A number of interrogation droids were used aboard the vessel to watch and control troublesome alien subjects.

Medical and experimental facilities
Fitting with its primary function, the Empirical had a number of rooms with testing and medical facilities. One such, located in Sector Ten&mdash;the stern of the vessel between its engines&mdash;was used to hold Vader's apprentice Galen Marek during his recuperation. Marek was kept restrained to a table inside a glassed-off portion of the room, where several medical droids could operate on him. The room began piping in poisonous gas when Marek tried to escape, and the crew were alerted to the security breach. This same room held half a dozen similar operating tables, all of them empty at the time.

A nearby room contained a number of chambers filled with a toxic gas. Surrounded by catwalks, it was monitored by several stormtroopers, including EVO troopers, and watched over from a small observation room by an Imperial officer.

History
"Check out that noise! I think Lord Vader's experiment just got loose."

- A stormtrooper aboard the Empirical, before being killed by Galen Marek

One of several projects conducted aboard the Empirical was the Dark Trooper Phase Zero project, overseen by Lieutenant Rom Mohc. A way to supplement the Empire's troop shortage after the shutdown of the Kamino cloning facilities, the Phase Zero project involved taking aging clone trooper veterans of the Clone Wars and, using much of the same cybernetic technology involved in Darth Vader's own creation, converting them into cyborgs through the replacement of organs and limbs with cybernetics. Though moderately successful, the Phase Zero project was dismantled when the Empire's recruitment picked up.



In 3 BBY, Emperor Palpatine confronted Vader on Vader's flagship, the Executor, over his taking of an apprentice, Galen Marek. To prove his loyalty, Vader impaled Marek with his lightsaber and cast him out into the vacuum of space. Secretly, however, a droid retrieved Marek's unconscious body and took him to the Empirical. Vader's medical droids spent six months rebuilding Marek, as the apprentice lay unconscious. To the rest of the ship, Marek was viewed as another of Vader's experiments, and he was designated "Subject Zeta" and "Subject 1138". Vader had Marek's droid PROXY and ship, the Rogue Shadow, delivered to the vessel has well, and to aid in his mission Marek was given a new lightsaber. His pilot, Juno Eclipse, had meanwhile been arrested for treason; after some time she, too, was transported to the Empirical, where she feared she would become part of a Sith experiment.

When Marek at last awoke after six months, by which time the Empirical had moved into the Dominus system, he was greeted by Vader, transmitting his image through PROXY. Vader told Marek that Palpatine believed him to be dead, then assigned him the task of building an army to oppose Palpatine. The Dark Lord threatened to activate the Empirical ' s self-destruct if Marek did not comply, but Marek gave in. PROXY, too, had been given instructions, and when Vader cut his transmission, the droid set about fulfilling his orders to help Marek escape, and to eliminate all evidence of Marek's survival, including the vessel and its crew. Marek broke out of his chamber, and his room began to flood with poison gas; he turned it off, but a squad was sent to monitor the situation. an alert was sent through the ship warning that Vader's subject had escaped. Having heard from PROXY that Eclipse was aboard, Marek went for her first, slaughtering his way through the crew, all of whom had orders to kill him. PROXY, meanwhile, accessed the vessel's main computer, and, determining it was the quickest way to eliminate everyone aboard, set the ship on a course into the system's star. The crew of the ship were alarmed when their navigation began malfunctioning, and the rest of the ship was kept apprised of the deteriorating situation by a series of announcements. PROXY continued with his work, disabling security systems and, to make sure no crew members made it out, ejecting the ship's escape pods.

Marek made it to Eclipse's detention cell to find several of the ship's officers with her, behind a force field. After killing the stormtroopers outside it, Marek brought down the field, eliminated the rest of the crew, and rescued her from her restraints. He helped Eclipse get to the Rogue Shadow, which PROXY had gotten ready, and they evacuated. The Empirical, meanwhile, continued on its doomed course, exploding as it fell into the system's sun.

Behind the Scenes
The Empirical was created for the 2008 multimedia project Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and appears in all adaptations of The Force Unleashed ' s story. The Empirical is a level of the video game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3; for the Wii, PlayStation 2, and all other versions produced by Krome Studios, the events of the Empirical occur in a cutscene. In the former version the room where Marek first awakens has monitors on which the name of Lucasfilm Ltd. employee Victor Tancredi-Ballugera is written in Aurebesh.

Despite all adaptations of The Force Unleashed telling the same story, the events and even the layout of the Empirical change between them. In both the novel and comic, PROXY joins Marek as he travels through the ship; in the game, he leaves for the Rogue Shadow and meets Marek there. The ship itself varies between adaptations as well. The exterior views shown in the comic and game differ greatly. Similarly, in the game, Juno Eclipse's cell is located in an area that looks like the bridge of the vessel; however, in the comic, it looks very different.

The name "Empirical" refers to data gathered by observation and experimentation.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game
 * The Force Unleashed novel
 * Star Wars: The Force Unleashed comic

Notes and references
Empirical