*THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN CATALOGUED IN THE RECORDS OF THE IMPERIAL BUREAUCRACY UNDER UUID: 018c03a6-2afc-7caf-8604-6a4342f5b489 BY JUNIOR BUREAUCRAT ALVIDES OF LASTVAULT* *PROVENANCE NOTE: THIS WAS DISCOVERED ON THE BODY OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH KNOWN HIGH PRIEST OF THE LEVIATHAN'S CORPSE. IT IS CONSIDERED HIGHLY SUSPECT AND CONTRADICTS SEVERAL POINTS OF IMPERIAL DOGMA. ANY ATTEMPT TO ACCESS THIS RECORD SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED BY THE APOSTATIC DIRECTORATE AND DISCOURAGED WITH FORCE.* The greatest hope of a thousand worlds, the prayer on a billion lips. The dream of freedom. The god-killer and sun-drinker. It was forged in calamity, wrought from substances far stranger than strange matter. Once, a few brave, mad souls sought to bring an end to that greatest Tyrant. They knew it was hopeless, that their striving would be but a momentary curiosity, a nuisance thoughtlessly swept aside. They were uncommonly gifted, and uncommonly arrogant, and thought that if they themselves could not hope to match Her then perhaps they might create one who could. No one knows how long they toiled in secret. No one knows how a secret was even made of such a vast construction. When completed, the Leviathan coiled a bulk best measured in light-hours and began to swim through the void as though through still water. No records exist of the warship's crew, or to suggest such a crew was ever present. The most powerful AIs in the galaxy, even those known foolishly as gods, could not hope to pilot so vast and terrible a creation. Humans were even less equipped. However the thing worked, it was under an intellect vast and inscrutable. In truth, the Leviathan was an absurd construction. It was so large as to be functionally useless against any target smaller than a star, and even then it so far outclassed any other power in the galaxy that it was more likely to simply take the star as fuel than to battle whomever lived near it. Its every fang was a [[Blade-of-Firmament|blade-of-firmament]], capable of cutting through physical space as though it were paper and causing supernovaen blooms of energy to spill forth like fiery breath. Its eyes were moon-sized spheres of dense computational core, processing the multitudinous signals of the galaxy before sending them on to whatever passed for its brain. To speak of its weapons array is almost pointless, because no enemy ever posed threat enough for those weapons to be deployed. Instead, the monster's preferred form of attack was a sort of gravitational constriction, in which it simply wrapped itself in uneven layers around its enemy until tidal forces ripped them apart. For tens of thousands of years, it traveled freely through space, protecting the many worlds which came to orbit its vast bulk as it wandered without aim. Of course, the Leviathan was an open challenge to the Celestial Empire and its Deathless Empress, one which could not be allowed to stand. She sent forth fleet after fleet of Voidstalkers. The self-loving children who thought themselves the galaxy's sheepdogs were atomized long before their reconnaissance arrays detected the warship's distant bulk. In fury, She deployed the hundred immortals known as the Golden Band. These infamous monsters had put down countless rebellions, slain Children of the Void, and broken entire fleets. When word reached the Queen of Illusions that the Leviathan had devoured the band without apparent effort, She shattered a moon in Her wroth. With this, She ordered an immediate end to the attacks on the Leviathan. Word of Her dictate reached those who lived in its protective shadow, and they dared hope that it might mean salvation. If She had called an end to the fighting, perhaps they would be allowed to live in peace. The Republic of the Leviathan began tentatively to reach out in hopes of establishing a diplomatic relationship with the Celestial Empire. When She struck, it was catastrophic. No record exists to explain how She did it, or even what *it* was. Whatever She did, it irrevocably broke the Leviathan's mind. Her Majesty's magpie-like tendency to take trophies is well documented. Each member of the Wend was once one of Her greatest foes, powerful enough for their defeat to require Her personal intervention. While the creation of the Leviathan is known to predate the Wend, it would be reasonable for a practiced observer to expect Her to take this first and greatest threat to Her authority as the finest jewel in Her crown. What She did instead was far more terrible. The Leviathan, without any warning, without even the slightest shift in movement, turned against the worlds which orbited its bulk. Wielding psyche-manipulating weapons the likes of which have never been seen before or since, the Leviathan destroyed hundreds of societies in the space it took to breathe. Families turned on one another in a bloody fury, children devouring their parents' still-warm flesh. Each new-minted warlord strove to make the greatest sacrifice, filling mass graves faster than they could be dug. The Leviathan encouraged this behavior with strange and powerful rewards. Shapes were twisted, minds expanded, forms given new and terrible definition. Demons and things darker still came to populate all the worlds of the Leviathan's Corpse. A few short years after Her Majesty's visit, the Republic of the Leviathan had been replaced by a hundred warring Leviathan Cults. The Leviathan's Corpse continued to wander in its aimless way, but now it twisted and devoured wherever it could, leaving a wake of hellish madness. A special contingent of the Voidstalker Corps, armed with superweapons empowered by Her own hand, paced the beast to force it away from Holdings which made sufficient displays of loyalty to Her Majesty. The Leviathan Cultists, aware that the more horrific their sacrifices, the greater the reward, raided one another endlessly to collect new victims. When their populations began to dwindle they sent out infiltrators to find and mark new worlds for the Leviathan's Corpse to devour. This has been the state of affairs for so long no one knows if this story is even remotely accurate. The best estimates suggest the Leviathan's Corpse is nearly a billion years old, but such an impossible span of time can stretch even the most ardent young Bureaucrat's credulity. It is certainly older than the Starsmith, who was the first known Wend. It is likely older than the Celestial Palace or either of the two stars which flank that palace as guards and weapons both. It is definitely nowhere near as old as that broken and breaking Thing which reigns from the galactic core. However old it actually is, there is no denying its function now. The Leviathan's Corpse is the greatest and most terrible threat in the galaxy, and an unanswerable weapon against those who would defy Her Majesty. Even the lesser cultists who flock to its gravity well are strange and powerful creatures. The greatest demons living in its shadow would be galaxy-spanning threats in their own right if not for their residence in its Pandaemonic orbit. Those Holdings which seek independence, or which display technology far beyond that of their peers, can rest assured that the Leviathan will eventually come to turn their world against itself and make them into its newest apostles. If they aren't absolutely convinced of a Holding's loyalty, all the Voidstalker Corps has to do is wait.