"Thats no moon its a space station...." Obi-wan Kenobis immortal words as he stood in the cockpitof the Milenium Falcon and saw the Death Star for the first time. The Death Star was a true marvel of intergalactic engineering, 120 Kilometres in diameter and with 15000 heavy turbolasers. However what really made the death star truelly terrifying was the immense superlaser around which it was built.

The sheer scale of the weapon was quite staggering. For optimuum performance the sperlaser needed to be manned by 168 Imperial gunners, with at least 14 soldiers manning each of the initiation lasers. The majority of the inside of the deathstar was taken up with housing the superlaser. The weapon drew power directly from the stations immensely powerful hypermatter core. It converted and amplified the colossal power into focused energy.

The eight tributary laser beams converged at a central amplification nexus. The outer perimeter of the superlaser dish also had four back up lasers should any of the eight fail. The lens of the cannon (colloquially known as "the eye") was built around an immense amplification crystal.

However the superlasers power was not limitless its power needed to be rechaged between blasts, limiting the number of blasts per day. The weapon could produce scaled down blasts to destroy capital ships ata rate of one perminute (this may only apply to the improved version of the superlaser used in the second Death Star). The superlaser was only able to fire a planet destroying blast once per day.

Even after the defeat of the Imperial forces at the battle of Endor and the destruction of the second Death Star, the superlaser remained a threat. First the fully functional Death Star concept model emerged from the maw installation but it was quickly defeated. Then came the ill fated resurrected Emperor and his Sovereign and Eclipse class star destroyers equipped with axial superlasers capable of searing a planets entire surface but not destroying it outright. Even the Hutts launched a woe-filled project called "Darksaber" to secure their own superlaser. However the superlaser craze has thankfully died down and Alderaan remains the only planet ever obliterated by a superlaser.