Level 4: Ligeia Reach
The Empire's fuel yard: floating refinery platforms on pontoons, methane skimmers and cryo-pipelines on the northern seas of Ligeia, Saturn's largest moon, feeding every outer colony. The main refinery deck is the Orsa Platform. Like Mars and Europa, it was a machine, not a settlement.
The seed rode a skimmer intake into the hydrocarbon sea, and the Nihil brood in the liquid itself. It grew seeps, organ vents that pump slick into the sea, and a node from the pump-leg derrick. The sea burns, and the brood use it.
The Ligeia brood
| Kind | Name | Taxonomy line | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| slick | Slick | Fuel-spitter · Nihilis unctus | A small hunched ranged biped that spits fuel slicks, ground patches that are harmless until lit. |
| flare | Flare | Igniter · Nihilis ardens | A thin ranged biped with a sulfur-yellow chest sac that ignites every slick in a radius. |
| wader | Wader | Ambush-diver · Nihilis vadans | A broad melee biped that dives into the sea and surfaces under the Sentinel. A wake ripple gives it away. |
| tidewalker | The Tidewalker | Node-class · Nihilis aestus | The boss of the Reach: a rig-tall wading biped grown from the pump-leg derrick. |
The Tidewalker
It fights in three turns. First come wake waves, expanding rings. Then ignition: it sprays slick and lights it, and fire lines sweep the decks. Last is the flood: the tide rises, platforms sink and the arena shrinks. Its aggro wipe is slack water. The sea goes still, every Nihil submerges, then all rise with new targets. It never speaks. The intake bell on its head is the organ. The barrel torso is armor.
Defeat line. "Node cut. The tide goes slack." Aestus is the tide.
Objectives
Hold the Skimmer: guard a skimmer's intake until it purges. Cap the Seeps: destroy the grown vents. The caches are the Skimmer Cache and the Seep Cache. The level has a living environment, the Tide, a sea level that rises and falls on a cycle. Its medals are Ligeia Retaken and Not a Singe.