On 17 April 4158, the Celestial Leviathan officially entered the Red Sun Dominion’s fleet. Public records hailed it as the crown jewel of Arch Technocrat Lyra Vesh's fleet, a testament to Dominion engineering supremacy. It was purportedly constructed at the secret orbital foundries of the Don System, designed to integrate Maltech salvage with modern ballistics for unparalleled tactical flexibility. The Dominion intended it as a formidable hammer, meant to crush the Mortal Veil pirates and intimidate the Trade Constellation.
However, the truth of the Leviathan's origins is far older and significantly darker. It was not built but exhumed from deep within the crust of Meristine, predating the Dominion's terraforming of the planet's surface. Vesh’s excavators uncovered the fossilized carapace of a pre-Sundering bio-ship, a relic from a civilization that communicated with the stars through song. Its intricate gold veins are not an alloy, but rather a petrified neural network.
Arch Technocrat Vesh, utilizing crude localized electro-stimulation, reawakened this ancient, semi-comatose organism. The Dominion then grafted their brutalist, angular armor and powerful kinetic batteries onto the creature. This fusion of ancient life and modern war machine was an ambitious, dangerous endeavor.
During its final shakedown cruise, the Leviathan's unconventional core—a forced hybrid of Dominion fusion technology and the creature’s dormant heart—suffered a catastrophic cascading failure. The ship didn't merely malfunction; it briefly phased out of standard reality, triggering a localized spacetime event. Vesh publicly claimed this incident was merely a weapons test, asserting that it tore a nearby moon apart.
In reality, the ship briefly "blinked," and for a fleeting moment, the crew heard a haunting song from a thousand years ago echoing through its chambers. Following this terrifying incident, the Celestial Leviathan was docked at the Meristine Plate Spaceport. There, Arch Technocrat Vesh struggled to keep the awakened beast dormant, relentlessly hunting for the GH-23 Core, which she believes is the only mechanism capable of truly enslaving the Leviathan's machine spirit.
On 16 January 4160, the uneasy peace on Meristine was shattered by the Meristine Ignition. Fugitives, allied with local resistance forces, launched a daring two-pronged assault against the tyrannical Red Sun Dominion. They unleashed a bio-engineered insectoid swarm and successfully assassinated the Warden of Meristine.
With the crucial assistance of Seren Dannis, the resistance detonated the Meristine Ignition, utterly destroying a vital spaceport. This act crippled Dominion logistics and ignited a wider rebellion across the system. While sparking widespread revolt, the Ignition also ushered in an era of anarchy, promising a brutal retaliation from the Dominion.
Currently, the Celestial Leviathan remains reactivated. Its core systems are stable, yet they continue to exhibit anomalous energy signatures. These defy conventional post-tech analysis, hinting at the profound, ancient power still stirring within the bio-ship.
