The Valorous, a Victory-class Star Destroyer, served the Imperial Navy and was part of Black Sword Command. Later, the Yevetha seized it during their revolt, renaming it the Devotion of Yevetha, often shortened to just Devotion.
The Valorous was equipped with numerous weapon emplacements and dual starfighter launch bays on either side of its main structure. Its fighter contingent included TIE/rc starfighters for extended scouting missions. The ship's destructive power was sufficient to overwhelm substantial settlements, like the one on Polneye. By 16 ABY, when under Yevethan command, the ship's exterior might have been painted black.
In the year 4 ABY, the Valorous joined Black Sword Command, operating from the Koornacht Cluster. Alongside the Super Star Destroyer Intimidator, it was one of two Imperial warships captured almost entirely intact at N'zoth by the native Yevetha during their uprising, which occurred eight months after the Battle of Endor. Afterward, these ships, along with several Type II Orbital Repair Yards such as Black Fifteen, and various vessels under construction or repair, formed the core of the force known as the Black Fleet.
The surviving Imperial crew of the Valorous, along with those from the Intimidator, were relocated to Camp Pa'aal and compelled to aid their captors in reverse-engineering and replicating Imperial technology. The two Star Destroyers were then renamed and integrated into the fleet of the Duskhan League, with Valorous becoming the Devotion of Yevetha. At some point, Tal Fraan, a young Yevetha, served on the ship, collaborating closely with the prisoners. Unbeknownst to the Yevetha, the Imperial survivors, retained for their technical expertise and led by Major Sil Sorannan, secretly installed extensive slave circuitry into every Imperial-designed ship within the Black Fleet, intending to eventually use it to regain control.
Twelve years later, in 16 ABY, at the beginning of the Great Purge, the Devotion, under the command of Primate Jip Toorr, served as the flagship for two other Duskhan League warships in an assault on the Imperial world of Polneye, alongside the similarly dark-hulled Liberty and Honor. Jip Toorr ordered the Devotion to deploy four TIE/rc starfighters into Polneye's atmosphere to act as scouts for the capital ships, but the Star Destroyer's Tactics Master failed to anticipate enemy resistance. Plat Mallar, a Grannan colonist piloting one of the few TIE/IN interceptors left by the Empire, shot down one of the scouts. Jip Toorr dismissed the Tactics Master, who then committed suicide. The Yevethan battle group successfully destroyed Polneye without further losses, annihilating nearly the entire planetary population and enslaving the survivors. However, Plat Mallar escaped in his lone interceptor and was discovered by elements of the New Republic's Fifth Fleet.
In 17 ABY, as the Duskhan League and the New Republic prepared to engage in the Battle of N'zoth and other simultaneous battles across the Koornacht Cluster, the Imperial prisoners initiated their plan. The Valorous/Devotion was designated to play a crucial role in their escape. The remaining Imperials aboard the Star Destroyer, led by an officer named Jaratt, seized control of the ship before it could fire, and activated its slave circuits. Along with every other remaining Black Sword ship in the Koornacht Cluster, it responded to an unjammable hypercomm signal transmitted from Sorannan aboard the Intimidator, turning towards Byss and jumping to hyperspace.
This ship makes an appearance in the novel Before the Storm by Michael P. Kube-McDowell, which is the first installment of the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. The ship is referred to as Devotion and is stated to be transmitting the ID signal of the missing ship formerly known as Valorous. In Shield of Lies, the second book of the series, the ship briefly appears, unnamed, in a recorded image depicting events from the previous novel. In a separate scene, the ship is mentioned in dialogue as the Devotion of Yevetha, a vessel on which the character Tal Fraan previously served. In Tyrant's Test, the final novel of the trilogy, the Valorous is mentioned by its original Imperial name as one of the key ships involved in the Imperial prisoners' escape plan.
The vessel later received two entries in the 1998 Star Wars Encyclopedia, listed under both its original name and the Yevetha name, Devotion. This was the first source to explicitly state that Devotion was the renamed Valorous, rather than a newly constructed copy using a duplicate ID. It also asserted that the Valorous was one of the nine Star Destroyers captured at N'zoth in 4 ABY, while the novels left the possibility open that the ship was seized elsewhere in the Koornacht Cluster, as the Black Nine and Black Eleven shipyards were. This additional information was subsequently repeated in later sources, such as The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia in 2008.