A luminous silhouette, vast enough to blot the trench lights beneath it, glides through the thermal darkness of Togogh’s abyssal sea—the newest and perhaps most haunting addition to known galactic life.
Scientists working under Orion Industries’ colonization initiative on the recently terraformed world of Togogh, in the Polirsh System, have announced the discovery of an extraordinary deep-ocean organism they have named the Togogh Leviathan, or “The Mourncurrent.”
The find—confirmed by expedition leader Wulfhelm Mannering—is being hailed as “the most significant biological discovery in Federation space since the Ysoli Gas Phantoms.”
A living current beneath the crust
The creature, first detected by geothermal sonar arrays during a routine seafloor mapping run, measures an estimated nine hundred meters in length. Its semi-translucent body glows in pulses of turquoise light, the rhythm matching seismic activity beneath Togogh’s tectonic plates.
Mannering described the initial sighting as “like watching a thought pass through the water.”
“It doesn’t swim—it drifts on the planet’s heartbeat,” he said during a holo-briefing broadcast from the colony platform Orion’s Crown. “It feeds not on flesh or plankton, but on heat. It drinks the vents themselves.”
Early drone footage shows the leviathan exhaling streams of superheated water from its ventral pores, creating a shimmering halo that refracts the light of its own body—an almost ethereal, cathedral-like glow in the abyss.
Harvesting the unharvestable
The Leviathan excretes a rare substance through its dermal canals: Vireline Extract, a pale-blue neural gel with psychoactive and empathic properties. Initial tests conducted by Orion Biotech and independent Synthetics Lab researchers indicate that Vireline can induce temporary emotional resonance between subjects—a shared awareness described by one researcher as “communal dreaming made chemical.”
However, the compound’s effects are unstable. At higher concentrations, Vireline causes memory bleed, an event where users experience fragments of other minds, sometimes permanently.
Despite this risk, demand for Vireline has already surged through black-market channels. Analyst data from Aegir Station’s Nexi Trade Network shows speculative pricing at up to 12,000 credits per milligram—rivaling the market value of Neuroburst™ Stimulant Packs.
Federation authorities have not yet classified Vireline under restricted substances, though internal communications suggest pending legislation.
A creature older than the colony
According to preliminary genetic and isotopic analysis, the Mourncurrent predates the colony’s establishment by at least three million standard years, indicating that Togogh’s oceans have supported complex biospheres long before Orion’s arrival.
The Leviathan’s tissue architecture defies easy categorization: part organic, part crystalline. Biologist Dr. Enia Tarrow, who analyzed early tissue fragments recovered from submersible probes, said the organism’s cells are “arranged in filaments of living glass—a biological photonic network.”
“It’s like it was built to think in light,” Tarrow told Federation Science Nexus. “Each pulse may not just be metabolism—it could be language.”
Ethical fault lines and corporate ambition
While Orion Industries has claimed exclusive research rights under its chartered extraction license, the discovery has already drawn scrutiny from the Federation Ethics Bureau. Critics warn that the company’s interest lies less in preservation than in profit.
Dr. Tarrow and several staff have reportedly been placed on administrative suspension after refusing to authorize “non-invasive harvest protocols” designed to extract Vireline directly from live tissue.
Off-record sources within Synthetics Division have described the company’s containment module— codenamed SIREN VAULT—as “an abyssal slaughterhouse.”
“They’re not studying it,” said one whistleblower. “They’re milking it.”
The myth of the Mourncurrent
Among the newly arrived miners and deep-rig divers on Togogh, the Leviathan has already become a mythic presence. Rumors spread of its song echoing through the hulls of submersibles—a low, mournful vibration that some claim induces tears or vivid memories of lives never lived.
The locals have begun calling it “The Mourncurrent”—a name drawn from the sensation of sorrow that seems to ripple through the water whenever the creature passes.
“You don’t hear it,” one diver said. “You feel it remembering you.”
Federation response
The Galactic Federation Department of Exobiology has dispatched a research envoy from Outpost Aegir to verify the findings. In a brief statement, the department praised Orion’s “spirit of discovery” but warned against “premature exploitation of non-sapient megafauna in volatile biospheres.”
Still, the Federation’s record of oversight in frontier systems remains weak. Observers note that in previous cases, such as the Veyra-Null coral harvests, enforcement came only after species collapse.
A fragile wonder
For now, the Mourncurrent continues to drift beneath Togogh’s geothermal seas—unbothered, or perhaps unaware, of the turmoil above. Its glow is visible from the colony’s deepest hydro-windows, pulsing softly in rhythm with the planet’s core.
Whether it will remain a symbol of wonder or become another casualty of industrial hunger is uncertain.
“It’s not a monster. It’s a memory of peace, moving through boiling darkness. And we are the noise that woke it.”