Tau Volantis Moon

The Tau Volantis Moon was one of the Brethren Moons, the colossal Necromorphs that were the true source of the Marker signals. Born from an interrupted Convergence Event over Tau Volantis and frozen before it could finish forming, it spent two million years suspended above the world that had spawned it, broadcasting a single plea through the Markers it controlled, until Isaac Clarke and John Carver brought it down.

A half-born Moon#

The Moon over Tau Volantis was never finished. A large portion of its outer organic shell was missing, the visible damage of a Convergence Event cut short before it could complete. It remained in a nascent stage, frozen in the moment of its birth. While dormant, its sensory organs stayed tucked within its inner cavities and its tentacles lay coiled beneath the surface.

In that frozen sleep the Moon could not speak to its fellow Brethren Moons, and it stayed silent through the long centuries, even during the Sovereign Colonies expedition that later reached the planet. What it could still do was broadcast through the Markers. That signal let it reach across to the Necromorphs of Tau Volantis, marshaling their swarms and working, slowly, to gather the biomass it needed to complete the Convergence it had begun.

Formation and the freezing#

At an unrecorded point in the deep past, the Alien civilization native to Tau Volantis discovered a Black Marker. Drawn by its signal, they studied it and built many copies, perhaps in religious reverence, perhaps to harness its seemingly limitless energy. The Markers brought Necromorph outbreaks, which spread until the Black Marker had access to enough biomass to trigger a Convergence Event.

Billions of Necromorphs and corpses were pulled into orbit, where they began to assemble into a planetoid, a newborn Brethren Moon. The surviving Aliens, who appear to have prepared for exactly this, activated a powerful Machine that turned the once-oceanic Tau Volantis into a frozen waste and so halted the Convergence. The Machine had a second function as well, to drag the Moon out of the sky and crash it into the planet, which would have killed it outright. The Aliens never fully configured that phase, and it was never carried out. Its birth foiled, the incomplete Moon was left in orbit, dormant, its signal still leaking through the Markers to stir the Necromorphs of the SCAF expedition and those buried beneath the ice.

Revival and death#

Two million years later, Jacob Danik deactivated the Alien Machine, and the Moon seized its chance to re-initiate the Convergence Event it had begun so long ago. Isaac Clarke and John Carver fought their way to the Machine and managed to complete and reactivate it. The Moon was frozen once more and dragged straight down out of the sky to crash into the surface of Tau Volantis, killing it. Before leaving the planet for Earth, Ellie Langford confirmed that the Moon's Marker signal had finally gone silent.

Legacy#

The Moon's death did not end the Necromorph threat. In its final moments it reached out and contacted its dormant brethren scattered across the universe, calling them to feed. The other Moons began broadcasting the signal anew, and the Necromorph infestations on Tau Volantis and elsewhere were free to resume. The price of killing one Moon was the waking of all the rest, and the remaining Brethren Moons turned toward Earth.