WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Wars #7, by Charles Soule, Ramon Rosanas, and Rachelle Rosenberg on sale now.
Star Wars: A New Hope introduced two villains, the Sith Lord Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. Today, Vader is known as one of the greatest villains in all of science fiction, but when these two first appeared, he actually served as a mere enforcer carrying out Tarkin's orders. Of course, Tarkin died at the end of A New Hope, leaving the Sith Lord as the primary villain of the series.
There can only ever be two Sith at any one time, a master and his apprentice. Emperor Palpatine groomed Anakin Skywalker from childhood to become his apprentice. But it turns out that Tarkin groomed a protege of his own, as seen in Star Wars #7 by Charles Soule, Ramon Rosanas, and Rachelle Rosenberg. As Commander Ellian Zahra reflects on her time serving under Tarkin, it becomes clear that the Moff was just as cruel as any Sith Lord.
Zahra was one of three officers Tarkin helped through the Imperial Academy. He groomed all three to be potential proteges, all of whom showed excellent performance while lacking any family ties. Always an avid hunter, the Grand Moff took them to his family's personal hunting grounds on the planet Eriadu. There, Zahra and her two fellow officers, Beldin and Hannevik, were instructed to hunt down a massive albino veermok, the most dangerous animal in the game preserve. Whoever brought Tarkin the beast's head would become his protege. However, he would only wait 12 hours before taking his ship off-planet. Not only did Zahra return with the veermok's severed head, but she told Tarkin that she had killed her two fellow officers to prove her worth. While Tarkin had never explicitly ordered this, he clearly approved -- one had to be ruthless to serve him.
Over the years, Zahra accompanied her lord on numerous missions. She was present when Tarkin berated Director Krennic's failures in building the Death Star, while she personally tortured a member of the Rebel Alliance under the Grand Moff supervision. Tarkin even introduced her to Darth Vader, telling the Sith Lord "I think you might be interested in her tactics."
Eventually, Tarkin sent Zahra on a mission to assassinate Burnium Ro, a warlord using the symbolism of the ancient Nihil organization. Since the Nihil valued chaos, anyone using their symbols was dangerous to the sense of order imposed by the Empire's fascist regime, making Ro's messaging far more dangerous than his criminal activities. As such, Zahra was ordered to bring back the warlord's severed head -- an equally symbolic death. She took Tarkin's personal flagship, the Carrion Spire, and used a network of surveillance drones to track the criminal's movements. When Ro returned to his fortified base, Zahra uncloaked the Carrion Spire and unleashed its full destructive force, destroying the stronghold and killing everyone inside. Zahra returned to report on her victory. Tarkin asked for Ro's head, but Zahra had not brought it, explaining she had thought this request was a mere figure of speech. It was not. The Grand Moff revealed that Ro was alive and that Zahra had merely killed one of the warlord's body doubles. In failing to kill Ro, she had actually strengthened his cause as he used the attack to rally support.
Tarkin dismissed Zahra from his service, ordering her to be relocated away from the Death Star. To redeem herself, she discovered Barrium Ro's new location and stole a ship to kill the warlord. However, she did this as a small band of Rebels was attacking. Being aboard the stolen ship meant she was not on the Death Star when it exploded and so survived its destruction, eventually replacing her former master as the commander overseeing the Empire's war against the Rebellion. In an act that revealed just how she intended to conduct the war, Zahra named her flagship Tarkin's Will.