// OPTIONAL

Calus: Guardian! Welcome, welcome! The Leviathan beckons, and you answered. I knew you would survive its greeting. Such tenacity. Such grace and wisdom. This is why I want to... share my bounty with you. We do not have to be enemies. I have heard the Voice in the Darkness, Guardian, and it sings a song of peace everlasting. Come and see.

The Crow: Good. Great. Perfectly normal. All right, Guardian, let's go, see what Calus wants to show us.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: There's material embedded in the hull here. I can't be certain, but I think it might be Ghost Shell fragments.

Calus: Your scout is as keen as he is troubled. I did have some Guardians as guests. They appreciated my generosity, my compliments. I appreciated their capacity for enduring pain, and the generous offerings of their final deaths. Nothing is gained without some sacrifice.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: It looks like someone fought a war in here before us, but I've never read any reports of a full-scale conflict on the Leviathan.

Calus: There were those among my Loyalists who lacked conviction in the face of the unknown. No transition is ever painless. But now? We're of one mind.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: Beyond those doors lie some of my greatest creations, but also my greatest failures. I feel a sense of kinship to my Loyalists. I feel a sense of kinship to my Loyalists. They are like family to me. Even more so now, as each is but an appendage of the greater apparatus I am becoming. I cannot wait for you to behold my majesty.

The Crow: That doesn't make any sense. It sounded like he was talking about a lab. But if I'm reading this map correctly, this door leads to the baths.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: The Leviathan has changed since last I had guests. Its innards have twisted into new shapes, its steely flesh blooming with new growth. I encourage you to witness these changes for yourself, and ask a question: What more could you become, if only didn't fear loss?

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: There's spores in the air here: same kind we'd seen aboard Calus' research vessel, Glykon. They don't seem to be harmful.

Calus: Aspirating the Egregore spores allows them to take root in your body. While they are symbiotic, they are also short-lived. But for a time, they join your consciousness to that of the mycelial network, and other minds that would witness you.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: This ship was once so full of a specific kind of life, vascular and wet: flesh, meat, bone. Now, new life flourishes in the dark. My Menagerie became a feeding trough for such splendor, the likes of which are both beautiful and obscene.

The Crow: The plants we're seeing here appear to be concentrated through those doors. Maybe it's where they started?

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: The map of the Leviathan says there was some sort of arena near here, but I think it’s derelict. No signs of life. There’s bodies, though.

Calus: Once upon a time, I would enjoy watching blood sport with my Shadows. Loyal to the end to their friend, to his riches. My Shadows paved the way for my transcendence, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: In my exile, I thought of the Leviathan as a prison. But what I have found while journeying has given me greater perspective. Do you hear that, Guardian? The Leviathan is breathing. Its veins pulse, its heart beats. This ship is alive, in so many ways.

The Crow: It's not actually alive, is it?

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: Weird readings here. The power conduits below this spot have a reversed flow. The energy is behaving… strangely. I don’t know how to describe it.

Calus: The Leviathan is growing, changing, transforming. You are witnessing the death of one state of being… and the beginning of another. Terrible and beautiful new life will bloom from its carcass.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: One of these days, Guardian, we will meet face to face. There is an inevitability to our lives, the course of them. I merely hope that when we do, it is with one mind and one vision for the future. Not as enemies.

The Crow: People have made me similar offers before, and they never turn out well. For anyone.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: According to the Vanguard database, Calus' throne room is beyond these doors. And below it's some sort of... fabrication lab.

Calus: The heart of the Leviathan, yes. A forge where I replaced tired and imperfect flesh with gleaming steel and glittering jewels. But even those aspirations were misguided. I did not truly see until I slipped beyond the edge of our universe and... was witnessed.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: Our last meeting beyond these doors was exhilarating, was it not? I wish you had been able to stay, to shed this... dead meat you inhabit. Perhaps in time, I can help you understand. All of this, it is temporary. Fleeting. It is not worth fighting for.

The Crow: That sounds a lot like cowardice. You're too afraid to lose, so you'd rather just give up.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: [chuckles] You think this statue is big enough?

Calus: That monument was forged from exotic matter mined from the heart of a neutron star. It was sculpted by one of my empire's finest artists. May he rest in peace.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: I once reveled here for hours on end, contemplating mysteries of the universe while soaking in these now-stagnant pools... Gorged on wines and fruits from across the empire, asking questions of the stars. Yet the truest question was one I could not think to ask.

The Crow: Going to take a while to get that image out of my head.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: Why is Calus showing us all this instead of Caiatl? Is he avoiding her?

Calus: You would do well to keep my daughter's name out of your mouth, whelp. She is not and never will be your concern. Caiatl will come to see things my way... in her own time.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: There's definitely something below us, a larger facility. I can't tell if it's still functional. On a scan, it looks like the hull folded in on itself.

Calus: My Leviathan has been changing, contorting itself into new shapes and forms both regal and majestic. I encourage you to stay around long enough to bask in the majesty of our transformations.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: My cloning facilities below the baths are a labor of love. It took centuries to perfect their design. It has long been a point of personal pride that my Loyalists are handcrafted. Each meticulously engineered to exacting specification.

The Crow: I suppose that makes sense. I can't imagine anyone willingly serving you.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: I'm picking up something weird under the — wait. This isn't water. It's a protein slurry. There's Cabal DNA mixed in this and —

Calus: Ah, yes. I suppose calling these "baths" is a bit of a misnomer. They are built atop a cloning facility where my Loyalists are engineered. What you are standing in is the liquefied remains of failed experiments, which was fed to their unborn kin.

The Crow: I suppose that makes sense. I can't imagine anyone willingly serving you.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: I remember a day when these lifts would rise, expelling new, perfectly engineered Cabal champions into my embrace.

The Crow: Perfectly? The way I hear it, most of them were failures, like the one you engineered to bear the Crown of Sorrow.

Calus: It is not failure, it is progress.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: Based on structural scans, this chain is part of a containment system that connects to a lab below us. It's too badly damaged to use. This must have been a deployment system. When whatever was engineered down there was finished, it was brought here.

Calus: These mechanisms no longer serve a purpose. My cloning facilities no longer serve a purpose. I have been shown... new horizons.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: I'm reading pieces of exterior hull fused with the machinery below this lift. I can't explain how the outside of the ship got in here.

Calus: When this ship passed beyond the threshold of our universe, the change had already begin. You are witnessing its growing pains. I can feel every bulkhead, every door, every pillar pulsing with new life. You understand, now, what I wanted to show you.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: A once-glorious monument, now little more than a sunken head. All things decay and change. It is the nature of the universe. Entropy knows no master, walking hand in hand with the phantom of time. All things that exist are doomed to crumble. Only that which does not exist — which has never existed — is truly free. Contemplate this, my friend.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: Looks like Calus has seen better days.

Calus: There is an unplanned truth in the monument's depiction of my form. Just as I have let this statue crumble, so have I allowed myself to. This withered flesh is an inefficient vessel by which to explore the limits of sensation the universe allows. I wish for something new.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: I imagine this is how Caiatl must see me. A crumbling monument to indulgence, long forgotten. It matters not. I gave my daughter everything she needed to succeed, and she returned the favor with a knife in my back. And yet, I continue to give her chance after chance. Hoping that, perhaps, she will see reason. That I only want what is best for her.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: Huh. Cabal really do love their war beasts. I wonder if this was a specific one.

Calus: Milos, Caiatl's first war beast. I gifted it to her when she was just a girl. She was so very attached to it. Too attached. I had it butchered. It felt insulting for her to love an animal more than her father.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: War beasts are celebrated part of Cabal culture. They were native to our homeworld, Torobatl... when such a world still existed. In my era, each war beast was bred to serve a specific handler from birth. The bond between war beast and soldier was profound. I assume Ghaul saw fit to change that, turning them into something that is a military asset and not a partner. A shame.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: War beast statue. Gold-plated and... can't tell what the material beneath is. Definitely radioactive, though. I wonder if Saladin has a war beast of his own, now that he's working with Caiatl? It's probably best that he's not here, though. With his history? [chuckles ruefully] I'd hate to see what Nightmare the Leviathan would create for him.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: They are majestic, are they not? These fungi are not unlike your world's mushrooms in how they live, how they breathe, how they grow. Their mycelial networks do not proliferate in soil, but rather spread like ethereal conduits between dimensions of space.

The Crow: This... sounds a lot like the Ley Lines in the Dreaming City. Is that possible?

// OPTIONAL

Calus: Do you know these fungi are drawn to the unique psychological phenomena of death? The moment of true terror before life ends… the death of sentient beings fosters the growth of these fungi. Normally it takes centuries for them to spread like this, but…

The Crow: But Calus sacrificed countless lives to feed his pet project. This is horrifying.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: I have become quite attached to this fungus since I discovered it on a world far from yours. It grew in great forests across the planet. Even here, infinitely far from where the first spore was harvested, they remain connected. Darkness is many things, Guardian. Many things.

The Crow: I'm sure Eris might find this information... insightful. But I'm a bit nervous about intelligent fungus that can think across the void of space.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: A once-glorious monument, now little more than a sunken head. All things decay and change. It is the nature of the universe. Entropy knows no master, walking hand in hand with the phantom of time. All things that exist are doomed to crumble. Only that which does not exist — which has never existed — is truly free. Contemplate this, my friend.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: Looks like Calus has seen better days.

Calus: There is an unplanned truth in the monument's depiction of my form. Just as I have let this statue crumble, so have I allowed myself to. This withered flesh is an inefficient vessel by which to explore the limits of sensation the universe allows. I wish for something new.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: I imagine this is how Caiatl must see me. A crumbling monument to indulgence, long forgotten. It matters not. I gave my daughter everything she needed to succeed, and she returned the favor with a knife in my back. And yet, I continue to give her chance after chance. Hoping that, perhaps, she will see reason. That I only want what is best for her.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: Huh. Cabal really do love their war beasts. I wonder if this was a specific one.

Calus: Milos, Caiatl's first war beast. I gifted it to her when she was just a girl. She was so very attached to it. Too attached. I had it butchered. It felt insulting for her to love an animal more than her father.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: War beasts are celebrated part of Cabal culture. They were native to our homeworld, Torobatl... when such a world still existed. In my era, each war beast was bred to serve a specific handler from birth. The bond between war beast and soldier was profound. I assume Ghaul saw fit to change that, turning them into something that is a military asset and not a partner. A shame.

// OPTIONAL

The Crow: War beast statue. Gold-plated and... can't tell what the material beneath is. Definitely radioactive, though. I wonder if Saladin has a war beast of his own, now that he's working with Caiatl? It's probably best that he's not here, though. With his history? [chuckles ruefully] I'd hate to see what Nightmare the Leviathan would create for him.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: They are majestic, are they not? These fungi are not unlike your world's mushrooms in how they live, how they breathe, how they grow. Their mycelial networks do not proliferate in soil, but rather spread like ethereal conduits between dimensions of space.

The Crow: This... sounds a lot like the Ley Lines in the Dreaming City. Is that possible?

// OPTIONAL

Calus: Do you know these fungi are drawn to the unique psychological phenomena of death? The moment of true terror before life ends… the death of sentient beings fosters the growth of these fungi. Normally it takes centuries for them to spread like this, but…

The Crow: But Calus sacrificed countless lives to feed his pet project. This is horrifying.

// OPTIONAL

Calus: I have become quite attached to this fungus since I discovered it on a world far from yours. It grew in great forests across the planet. Even here, infinitely far from where the first spore was harvested, they remain connected. Darkness is many things, Guardian. Many things.

The Crow: I'm sure Eris might find this information... insightful. But I'm a bit nervous about intelligent fungus that can think across the void of space.