The Leviathan

The Leviathan was a massive, amorphous Necromorph encountered in the Food Storage facility of the USG Ishimura during the outbreak aboard the vessel. It barricaded itself within the Hydroponics Deck, choking the air with corruption and poison-exuding creatures, and grew enormous on the biomass around it before Isaac Clarke destroyed it.

Origin#

The Leviathan collided with the Ishimura while drifting through space. How the creature came to be, and how it ended up adrift, was never settled. It may have been ejected from the surface of Aegis VII by the Hive Mind and at first made up purely of the colonists' biomass, which would help explain its enormous mass together with the contents of Food Storage. Another possibility was that it had been extracted from the planet along with the tectonic load that the Ishimura raised on its gravity tethers, which would have let it drift onto the ship on its own.

After colliding with the vessel, the Leviathan made its way into the Hydroponics Deck and barricaded itself inside the Food Storage facility. The tracts of the Corruption then began to spread at an exponential rate in close proximity to the creature, overtaking much of the deck. Shipboard oxygen levels became critical as a result, and with the appearance of the poison-exuding Necromorphs known as Wheezers, the Hydroponics Deck became unable to support human life. Elizabeth Cross encountered the beast and gave it the name by which it became known.

Form and attacks#

The Leviathan was a massive, amorphous mass, with little shown of its biological structure beyond its fleshy front. It attacked with three tentacles, sweeping them across the chamber, and once a tentacle was destroyed it resorted to spitting organic bombs from its central mouth, in which its core briefly lay exposed. A fresh set of tentacles emerged as the creature neared death. It was extraordinarily heavy, weighing over ten kilotons, a mass it had likely reached by incorporating the biomass of the food surplus stored around it into its original body. The Leviathan was one of the few Necromorph life forms in the saga to be referred to directly by name, alongside the Hive Mind, the Moons, and the Nexus.

Destruction#

The CEC officer Zach Hammond encountered the Leviathan as the Hydroponics Deck lost the last of its breathable air. Soon after, Isaac Clarke, warned of the creature by Kendra Daniels, arrived on the deck and was told by Hammond where the beast lay. Isaac cleansed the air on the deck and mixed a poisonous substance capable of harming the creature, but the poison fell short of being truly effective, and he was forced to settle the matter by force. Entering the Food Storage area, which the weakened Leviathan now left open to him, Isaac killed the creature.

In the events recorded in the later remake of the incident, the Leviathan's history was largely the same, but after being dumped into space upon its defeat it clung to the Ishimura's communication antenna and returned as the Leviathan Remnant. Isaac had to fight it free of the antenna so that Kendra Daniels could contact the USM Valor. The Remnant struck with its tentacles and with volleys of organic bombs, and protected its weak points beneath armor that Isaac had to break through. Once it was defeated a second time, the creature finally died and drifted away into space as a lifeless mass.