Orson Krennic

Orson Krennic headed Advanced Weapons Research in the Imperial military and tied his own career to the Death Star. For its sake he spared neither other people's lives nor an old friendship. The scientist Galen Erso fled rather than build a superweapon, but the director and his death troopers tracked the family down on a distant planet, dragged Galen back to work and had his wife, Lyra, killed.

Scientific setbacks kept delaying construction, so Krennic set about finding new materials: the station's reactor lenses needed a coating of rare kalkite, and deposits turned up on Ghorman. He set out the mining plan at a closed meeting and handed the pacification of the locals to Dedra Meero of the Imperial Security Bureau, whose idea it was to provoke an uprising there. When the massacre came, the director was not on Ghorman, yet the direct responsibility for it lay with him.

With the test on Jedha, where the station's shot fell on the Holy City, Krennic meant to prove the weapon was ready. After the shot, Grand Moff Tarkin announced that he was taking the project for himself. The end came on Scarif: the director was checking Erso's messages there when the rebels struck the base. He shot Cassian Andor in the vault and caught up with Jyn Erso at the transmitter, but he was wounded, could not stop the plans from being sent and soon died when the station fired on Scarif.