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SHIP

Real Name: Unrevealed

Identity/Class: Sentient extraterrestrial starship

Occupation: Partner of Star-Lord (Peter Jason Quill)

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: Star-Lord
   (possibly) the Master of the Sun

Enemies: The Fallen One

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Mobile throughout space (including the Avaleen system, a "Kree fringe system")

First Appearance: Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (September, 2007)

Powers/Abilities: Ship is a sentient starship who was designed and built by beings whose identities have not yet been revealed. Ship was apparently created to provide Star-Lord with both transportation and a partner. Since she was seemingly intended to serve as Star-Lord's personal starcraft, Ship is not a large starship and could probably comfortably transport only a few human-size people at a time. However, Ship could (presumably) carry more people in an emergency situation.

   Ship's configuration is known as "gull-winged" because both of her wings had prominent bends in them, about halfway out from her hull. It is not known if this feature somehow aided her flight (either in space or within planetary atmospheres) or if it was simply decorative.

   Ship's most significant feature is her sentience. Although the exact nature of her consciousness has not yet been revealed, Ship is presumably an Artificial Intelligence which exists within the starship's computer system. To Star-Lord, Ship functioned as his "friend, confidant, teacher and nagging wife." Whether she did so by choice or because she was programmed to behave in that manner has not been revealed.

   Aside from her sentience, Ship was essentially a normal (albeit "state-of-the-art") space cruiser, with all the basic capabilities of such a vessel. Although she had no need of it herself, Ship was equipped with a life support system that maintained a breathable internal atmosphere at the correct pressure and temperature. Ship also had systems which dealt with waste products produced by her occupants, and which generated an artificial gravity field to make movement within her easier. Ship had synthesizers which could create food, drink and/or clothing out of raw materials, and a medical section in which Ship (or Star-Lord) could treat the injuries and illnesses of organic beings.

   As a starship, Ship possessed the ability to travel through interstellar space at many times the speed of light, presumably by using some sort of warp drive. However, no specific information about the capabilities of Ship's star-drive has been revealed.

   Ship possessed advanced sensors and may have been equipped with energy shields (for defense) and hologram projectors (for communications). Ship was also outfitted with certain unspecified weapons, presumably including some type of energy blasters. On one occasion Ship used a weapon which resembled lightning and which was able to kill hundreds of thousands of people even when fired from an orbital distance. Her ordnance matrix was able to absorb energy from external sources (like the life energy released by multiple dying organisms) and channel that energy through her at a specific target. However, channeling too large an energy surge could cause an explosive overload within Ship's systems, damaging or even killing her.

   Whatever source of energy powered Ship has never been revealed.

   Note: This listing of Ship's powers and abilities is based on the theory that she does NOT share a common origin with the Ship from Reality-791. However, if you believe the as-yet-unsubstantiated idea that this Ship and that Ship are other-dimensional counterparts of each other, then click here.

Height: Unrevealed

Width (from wingtip to wingtip): Unrevealed

Length: Unrevealed

Weight: Unrevealed

Sensors: Unrevealed

Hull color: Silver

History: Nothing has been revealed about the origin of this sentient starship known as Ship. She may (or may NOT) have an origin that is much like that of a similar-looking sentient starship (also named Ship) who exists in Reality-791 but so far we don't know enough about this Ship to make that assumption.

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb) - BTS) - At some time in the past, the sentient starship known as "Ship" became partners with Peter Jason Quill, an Earthman who policed the universe as Star-Lord. Exactly how they became partners has never been revealed but may have involved an entity known as "the Master of the Sun." Eventually, Quill came to regard Ship as "Friend, confidant, teacher and nagging wife, all rolled up in one sleek space cruiser."

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb) - BTS) - For an unspecified time, Ship and Star-Lord zipped around the cosmos righting wrongs. During one of their adventures Star-Lord confronted a group of four-armed aliens, some of whom he ended up shooting.

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)) - Eventually, Ship stumbled upon the Fallen One, a former Herald of Galactus who, after having been rejected by his master, now sought to avenge himself on the devourer of worlds by hunting down planets upon which Galactus could feed and then destroying them in an attempt to starve his former master. Overly cocky, Star-Lord rushed in and confronted the Fallen One on the surface of his target planet and nearly got himself killed. Using her medical abilities, Ship barely managed to keep him from dying.

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb) - BTS) - With Star-Lord (and Ship) out of the way, the Fallen One presumably destroyed the planet on which he and Star-Lord had been fighting.

 

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)) - Although Star-Lord was still in no shape to go up against the Fallen One again, he insisted on doing so and thus he and Ship caught up with the Fallen One in a Kree fringe system where the menace had targeted Avaleen-4, an agricultural world with a small mining operation on one of its moons.

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)) - Although everything that Star-Lord had used against the Fallen One had been useless, he insisted on dealing with the ex-herald instead of letting "one of the cosmic big boys handle it." Accordingly, Ship ran an analysis of the Fallen One and discovered that the life energies released when he destroyed a world caused him pain. Ship and Star-Lord realized that if they could channel that energy then they would stand a chance of bringing the Fallen One down. Sadly, the only way to generate that type of energy was by killing a great many living beings.
   In order to prevent the Fallen One from destroying Avaleen-4 and killing its millions of inhabitants, Ship (and Star-Lord) decimated the mining colony, sacrificing the lives of thousands in order to create an energy surge which Ship then funneled through her ordnance matrix and used to attack the Fallen One, rendering him unconscious for long enough for him to be turned over to the Nova Corps.

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)) - Ship died while in the act of funneling the energy surge, leaving Star-Lord drifting in space amongst the debris of her physical form.

(Thanos#12 (fb) - BTS) - Using this method to defeat the Fallen One resulted in 350,000 dead as collateral damage.

(Thanos#11 (fb) - BTS/Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb) - BTS) - With Ship dead and himself now a mass murderer, everything a Star-Lord shouldn't be, Peter Quill decided that Star-Lord had to die as well. His last act as the Starlord was to bring in the Fallen One, and turn his prisoner -- and himself -- over to the Nova Corps. While many were divided over Quill's guilt, both he and the Fallen One were remanded to the Kyln, a life-sentence exclusive prison.

 

(Annihilation: Conquest - Prologue#1 - BTS) - Years later, after having been released from the Kyln and having fought against the Annihilation Wave, Peter Quill was on the Kree homeworld of Hala overseeing upgrades to their defensive programs. When one of the Kree working with him, a woman named Ten-Cor, told him to get over himself and hurry along, Quill replied, "You remind me of a ship I once knew."

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 - BTS) - Days later, after the Phalanx invasion of Hala and their conquest of the Kree Empire, Peter Quill was on the Kree fringe world of Aladon Prime being restored to health by a Kree med-tech. As he was being treated, he recalled some of his career as Starlord, his partnership with Ship and how both had ended during the battle against the Fallen One.

Comments: Created (unknowingly) by Keith Giffen, Timothy Green and Victor Olazaba (who, at the time, thought that they were just using a character who had been created 30 years earlier).
    Based on a previous character created by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin.

   The 3-page flashback at the beginning of Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 is all that has ever been published about the Ship who existed in Reality-616 and was partnered with the Star-Lord of that reality.

   In order to better understand the significance of this flashback, some background on "Ship" would be helpful. To begin with, the sentient starship known as "Ship" first appeared in Marvel Preview#11 as Starlord's partner and friend. Ship would also appear in that capacity in all the rest of the "classic" Star-Lord adventures, including the last of those stories, the framing sequence in Starlord, The Special Edition #1, which was set sometime in the late 21st Century. The stories in Marvel Preview #14-15 revealed that Ship was actually the consciousness of a sentient Yellow Dwarf star whose original body had been destroyed when aliens forced her to super-nova and who, with help from the Master of the Sun, learned to manifest in a new physical form so that Peter could more easily relate to her.

   Ship next appeared in the 1996 Starlord mini-series in which, oddly, Peter Quill did not appear. Instead, this story told of how a young telepath named Sinjin Quarrel found a crashed sentient starship which he soon learned had been belonged to Starlord, a "legendary space hero" who had mysteriously disappeared 12 years earlier. Unfortunately, Ship's memory had been damaged and she didn't know what had happened to Peter Quill (although she later remembered that it was an encounter with an uncharted black hole which had caused her to crash). Circumstances soon forced Ship and Sinjin into working together with Sinjin posing as Starlord and later, after that first situation had been resolved, they agreed to continue working together on "this whole Starlord thing."

   Ship later appeared (sort of) in the 2000 Inhumans mini-series. Co-writers Carlos Pacheco and Rafael Marin wanted to introduce Star-Lord into the Marvel Universe but the past continuity of Peter Quill posed a problem because he had always been alone in his own pocket universe which seemingly had no other MU characters in it. To get around this problem, they decided to use Peter's father, Jason, as the Star-Lord character. Although he doesn't use that name, in this miniseries young Prince Jason does have a "Soulship" of his own and a white version of Peter's Star-Lord uniform (actually a formal dress uniform for Spartoi officers). Jason's role in the mini-series ends with him being banished for his unwitting part in the attempted assassination of Shi'ar Majestrix Lilandra. As he leaves, a precognitive has a vision of a possible future in which Jason would eventually come to Earth where his soulship would "effectively die" and he would meet an Earthwoman who would give him a human child "destined to be a Lord among the stars!"
   Despite the inconsistencies between this version of Jason's past and that presented in Marvel Preview#11 and the fact that Peter Quill's birth was shifted from 1962 to sometime after 2001, many fans accepted this story because it did firmly connect Star-Lord to the Marvel Universe. Also, despite the lack of any direct evidence, some fans came to the conclusion that the obvious similarities between Jason's Soulship and Peter's Ship meant that they were actually the same entity, and that after dying on Earth Ship would return to the planet R'Ralmis where, decades later, the Master of the Sun would introduce her to Peter Quill. However, I don't believe this theory was ever "officially" adopted which is a good thing because...

   In 2004 writer Keith Giffen used an adult Peter Quill as a character in his Thanos series, totally disrupting the attempt to shift Star-Lord's origin from the late 20th Century to the early 21st Century. As written by Giffen, Quill was a prisoner in the Kyln who insisted that starlord was dead. It was soon revealed that Quill had fought and defeated the Fallen One but that 350,000 people had died as collateral damage. Ship was conspicuously absent from these stories, a fact which led some fans (and the writer of the Star-Lord profile in the Annihilation: The Nova Corps Files) to conclude that she and Quill had become separated while escaping the pull of that black hole and that Quill had not sought Ship out because of all those deaths which he had subsequently caused. However, any hope that Ship might still be out there in the MU searching for Quill was dashed in 2007 when Giffen used the three-page flashback that began Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord #1 to reveal that Ship had died as a result of her helping Star-Lord to defeat the Fallen One.

   And so, Ship was dead, her story come to an end, and it wasn't even the happy ending we had seen in Starlord, The Special Edition#1! However, things changed in early 2013 when writer Brian Michael Bendis presented his "streamlined and updated" version of Star-Lord's origin in issue #0.1 of his new Guardians of the Galaxy series. Fans who cared about continuity quickly realized that this Bendisized origin was essentially a re-imagining of the character, one that was so different from the "classic" Star-Lord that it was impossible to reconcile the two versions. As a result, some fans came to the conclusion that the only reasonable explanation was that these origins actually had to relate to two DIFFERENT characters or, to be more precise, two different versions of the same character who existed in different realities within the Marvel Multiverse. This idea has been officially accepted (though it has yet to appear in the GOTG letters page) and while the Bendis version now exists in Reality-616, the "classic" Star-Lord and his adventures have been relegated to Reality-791.

   What does this mean for Ship? Well, two things. The first is that, although the Ship from Reality-616 may be dead, the Ship that is now from Reality-791 can still exist to one day soar off into space with both Peter and his father, ex-Emperor Jason, aboard to continue their adventures.

   The second change is that all Star-Lord stories that were published prior to Peter Quill's first confirmed "mainstream" appearance in 2004's Thanos#8 have been retroactively determined to have happened in Reality-791. This leaves the 616 version of Ship with just a single appearance: the flashback in Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1. And that, in turn, leads to more possible changes. Since all the stories which explored Ship's nature and origin have now been relegated to Reality-791, that leaves open the possibility that, despite the fact that they LOOK similar, Ship-616 and Ship-791 may NOT be other-dimensional counterparts of each other. And that would mean that Ship-616 could have a completely different origin than Ship-791.

   And it is for that reason that I have chosen to not include the backstory about Ship being the consciousness of a sentient star in this profile. That, and the fact that I have absolutely NO confidence that Brian Michael Bendis, who is now in charge of everything Star-Lord in the "mainstream" MU, will in any way acknowledge the events depicted in that flashback. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, when BMB finally decides to reveal what his version of Star-Lord experienced after the events of GotG #0.1, he chooses to completely ignore the time that Peter spent in the Kyln interstellar prison, the reason why he was there, and the very fact that his PQ had EVER had a sentient starship as a partner.

Ship and that OTHER Ship from Reality-616

   If we ignore (for the moment) the Ship who exists in Reality-791, there is still the matter of what connection (if any) there might be between Peter Quill's Ship and the "Soulship" associated with Prince Jason of Spartax. Of course, the "real world" reason for their similarity is that the writers who "created" these Ships did so inadvertently, since they believed that they were just using the "classic" Ship in their stories. However, this truth will not work as an "in-universe" explanation. The obvious answer is that they ARE truly connected somehow, and the only question is how. The only two possible explanations that I can see are that "they" are actually a single Ship but at different points in her life OR that they were different entities who were both built to similar designs by the same as-yet-unrevealed creator(s). So, let's examine those options.

1. First, could Ship and Soulship be the same sentient starship at different times in her life? This theory is possible but there are two difficulties. The first problem is that both accounts state that "Ship" stayed with her partner until she died. This would seem to indicate that they must be two different Ships, each with their own partner. Of course, that problem would go away if the 616 Ship were able to recreate herself after "dying" like the 791 Ship can but that would still leave...
   The second problem is how little time passes between when the Soulship joined the banished Prince Jason in his wanderings (Inhumans IV#4) and when Peter Quill was first seen as a prisoner in the Kyln (Thanos#8). Of course, in the real world those two stories were published 43 months apart but that equates to only between 11 and 14 months in Marvel Time. So, if Jason was Ship's first partner, that would mean that the following sequence of events must have happened in that time frame: Jason and his soulship wandered among galaxies until they "eventually" arrived at Earth where the soulship "effectively" died. Then, after being resurrected, Ship became Star-Lord's partner and they adventured together until their encounter with the Fallen One caused Ship to die again. While I suppose that it's possible that all of this wandering and adventuring could have taken place in about one Marvel Year, it seems unlikely.
   On the other hand, since there's nothing that really insists that Jason knew Ship first, maybe Peter was actually her first partner? If that were the case, then this sequence of events could have occurred: Peter becomes Star-Lord about "10 years ago" and is partnered with Ship. They adventure together for a number of years until Ship dies at Avaleen-4. Then, after being resurrected, Ship became Prince Jason of Spartax's Soulship and accompanied him when he was later banished. Currently, Ship would still be alive and wandering the galaxies with Jason. Clearly, this scenario seems much more plausible than the previous one. The only stumbling block in the way of this theory is that, according to Thanos#7, "the average life expectancy of a Kyln inmate is less than three years pan-galactic standard time due to a Kyln maintenance mortality rating of 99.999 percent." So, if Peter Quill knew Ship first, then that would mean that, by the time Prince Jason was banished, Quill would have been in the Kyln for at least one standard year, and that's assuming that Ship resurrected very soon after dying and that Jason and his Soulship became as close as they were almost immediately.
   In conclusion, while it seems that Ship and Soulship COULD be the same entity, at least if she knew Peter first, it would still be a tight fit in terms of the timing, making it problematic at best. Of course, the fact that there has never been any direct evidence supporting this theory in any published story means that it must remain mere speculation.

2. Now let's consider the possibility that Peter's Ship and Jason's Soulship were always two different entities. While the co-writers of that 2000 Inhumans miniseries apparently considered the Soulship to be an earlier version of Ship, their story doesn't actually reveal this idea directly but instead relies on merely implying it. In the absence of any definitive statement we are left with two sentient starships whose hulls have similar designs, who both have feminine personalities and who are both partnered with cosmic adventurers. While the similarities between these two starships are certainly striking, there is no proof that they are connected to each other and so those similarities could be merely coincidental.
   For one thing, consider their differing appearances. The Soulship looks like the "classic" version of Ship while Peter's Ship resembles the version from the 1996 Starlord miniseries. Of course, the Ship in both of those stories was actually the same vessel and her differing appearances were (presumably) due to her ability to reshape her hull, a skill which neither of the 616 starships has so far demonstrated. Additionally, all three ships in Prince Jason's flight appeared to be of an identical design, suggesting a common origin. So, were those three Spartoi vessels ALL sentient Soulships? Or was Jason's Soulship a conventional Spartoi starship which had received upgrades which made it a Soulship? Or was the Soulship not actually of Spartoi origin at all but had been designed (or reshaped) so that she would be able to pose as a Spartoi warship? Unfortunately, so little information has been revealed about Jason's Soulship that any of these three explanations (or none of them) could possibly be the true story.

   On the other hand, although there is no evidence supporting it, it is possible that the two starships had actually both been built to similar designs by the same entities. Minor differences in appearance aside, the fact that they both possessed feminine personalities would make them true "sister Ships." However, if they do share a common origin, there's no telling what it could be. The Soulship's origin has never been revealed and neither has the story of how she became Prince Jason's partner. Similarly, since being Bendisized, Ship has been severed from her "classic" origin and backstory (which have been relegated to the 791 Ship) and so her past is now UNrevealed, a blank slate waiting for BMB to get around to filling it in. Unfortunately, the lack of any "facts" means that any theories which might explain such a common origin would, again, be nothing more than mere speculation.

   That being the case, I am now going to indulge myself by presenting my own (fanfic) theory about how Ship and Soulship might be connected. The best explanation that I can come up with is that Ship and Soulship are just two of a fleet of sentient starships created by person or persons unknown. These mysterious benefactors want to help uphold justice throughout the universe but for some reason are unable to do so themselves. For this reason they have created these sentient starships to provide support for various beings whom they have chosen to act as their agents in policing the cosmos. These "agents" (like Prince Jason of Spartax and Peter Quill of Earth) have been selected because of their physical and mental capabilities and their willingness to risk their lives in the cause of saving lives and righting wrongs. If the being known as the "Master of the Sun" did actually unite Peter Quill with Ship, then he might have been one of the shipbuilders or at least their representatives.
   Three comments. First, if this sounds similar to how, in a Different Cosmos, the Guardians of the Universe chose the members of the Green Lantern Corps and provided them with their power rings, well, then you would be right. What can I say? When considering an interstellar police force, the Green Lantern Corps is probably the best-known example.
   Second, part of the appeal of this theory is that it reminds me that Starlord was not meant to be a unique entity. Even in Marvel Preview#4, the Master of the Sun refers to Quill having been selected "to become a Starlord" and that such an opportunity is rarely offered. Later, in Marvel Spotlight II#6, the Master mentioned that it had been his plan to create an entire legion of Star-Lords to ensure peace and seek justice throughout the vast cosmos. While that particular Master and his motivation has been relegated to Reality-791, I'd like to think that there was someone with a similar agenda in Reality-616 as well.
   Three, if there are a large number of sentient starships out there in the universe, then that increases the chances that (at least) one of them might show up in a future MU story. Ideally, I'd like to see a story in which Star-Lord meets up with Prince Jason and his Soulships and the truth behind the origin of the sentient starships is revealed. However, to be done properly it would require a writer who cares a great deal about continuity and they seem to be in short supply at Marvel nowadays.

Ship from Reality-791

   The Ship who is the partner of the Star-Lord (Peter Jason Quill) who exists in Reality-791 has appeared in several stories (Marvel Preview#14-45) in which her origin and nature have been revealed/demonstrated. However, since it has not yet been established that that Ship and the Ship of this profile are other-dimensional counterparts who share a common origin, it would be presumptuous of me to just assume that this Ship had the same back story as that Ship. On the other hand, I can see no harm in listing that Ship's powers/abilities in this comments section...just in case.

   Ship-791 originally existed as a Yellow Dwarf star, like that around which the planet Earth of Reality-616 orbits, Sol. This other star was also sentient and aware but (apparently) chose to only observe her environment without tampering with it. After existing for at least a billion years, this star was destroyed by an alien device, detonated in her core, which forced her to destroy herself by consuming twenty billion years of stellar fuel in a matter of seconds. As a result, this star's physical form (along with her eleven planets) was destroyed when she went super-nova. However, after the destruction, the star was shocked to discover that her consciousness had survived the death of her body. The star existed in this state for an unspecified period of time until a seemingly-humanoid being known then as the Master of the Sun arrived to help her. This entity called the star "little sister" and referred to the two of them as beings "such as we," implying that he was also a sentient star. The fact that he was sometimes later referred to as "the Master of Earth's Sun" may indicate that he was Reality-791's counterpart of Apalla. Whatever his true origins, it was with his aid that the star was able to "reshape her 'self' into a physical form to which (humans) could easily relate." This form was that of a sentient starship known as "Ship."

   In her current physical form, Ship's hull is composed of "organic steel" which she can reshape at will. Ship spends most of her time in her standard exploratory configuration but can easily assume other, more aggressive forms (like that of a Sikh'aar gunship) when the need arises. This reshaping can also be as limited as extruding some of her basic mass as material for smaller objects which she wishes to create. Ship possesses many of the features of a conventional starship, including shields, energy blasters, advanced sensors, matter synthesizers (able to form any kind of food, drink, or clothing), and hologram projectors.

   Although possessing a physical form, Ship's primal state of being is energy and, as such, can never be destroyed. However, it is possible for her consciousness to be so disrupted that she would no longer really be "alive" in any sense. Additionally, Ship can subdivide her consciousness to a certain extent. The two Widgets that act as her remote probes are extensions of her self which are animated by her power, and on at least one occasion Ship was able to create a mechanoid form for herself which, despite appearing to be completely human, was not actually an organic life form. However, the act of mind-shifting (transferring part of her consciousness into another form) can be dangerous, especially when her power levels are low.

   Unlike conventional starships, Ship does not appear to contain any power generators within her nor is she known to need any fuel. Instead, Ship's "power" is her own life-force. Although Ship's power can be drained when she exerts herself or when her physical form is damaged, her power reserves will *somehow* increase if she simply rests. However, when her power levels are drained, Ship can lose some degree of her functions, like her sensors or her control over her Widgets. If her power were to diminish too greatly, then Ship would no longer be able to animate a physical form and her self would exist only as energy. On one occasion, during a hostile encounter with the Lorq, Ship's starship form was so damaged that the part of her consciousness which remained within it shifted to join the rest of her self within a separate mechanoid form which she had created for herself, and then, when that form's energy ran low, she shifted her reunited consciousness into Star-Lord's belt. By this time, Ship was so weak that she would have remained there but for the intervention of a powerful alien known as the Trinity-Who-Is-One who healed her and restored her energy so that she could create a new physical form (a duplicate of her earlier form) seemingly out of thin air. Presumably this was accomplished by Ship transmuting some of her energy into matter.

   Although Ship is known to be an energy being animating a physical form which she can reshape at will, she also possesses instrumentation within herself which seemingly allows her passengers to control her to some degree. This would seem to indicate that Ship's form, instead of being simple matter, actually contains technological mechanisms which function like those of a conventional starship. For example, her Widgets fly by means of the gravity reversers within them and Ship once claimed that they were "designed and built from the same scientific foundation the Master of the Sun used when he created me." It may be that the Master of the Sun taught his technology to Ship so that she could use it to create her physical form.

Profile by Donald Campbell.

CLARIFICATIONS:
This particular "Ship" character is definitely a DIFFERENT entity from

  • Ship from Reality-791, the consciousness of a star who has assumed the physical form of a sentient starship and is the companion of that reality's Star-Lord (Peter Jason Quill) -- Marvel Preview#11
    and is PROBABLY a different entity from
  • Ship from Reality-616, a sentient starship who is the companion of the now-exiled Spartoi Prince Jason of Spartax -- Inhumans IV#2

Additionally, Ship has no known connections to

  • Ship, a sentient being whose existence began as a huge data collection device created by the Celestials and left on Earth untold millennia ago that was later enslaved by the mutant Apocalypse until being freed by X-Factor and who eventually evolved into the being known as Prosh - - X-Factor I#19
  • The Great Ship from the Ultraverse, a space vessel created on and launched from the Godwheel which crashed on Earth-93060 sixty million years ago and whose "black box" ended up on that Earth's Moon -- Phoenix Resurrection: Genesis
  • The Ship of Arcturus, the last of the starship fleet created long ago by the super-race which lived on the planet Arcturus IV and which in recent years was flown to Earth where it crashed -- Adventures Into Fear#24
  • The Ship of Empty Souls, a vessel used by the Dark Hunter in a pocket dimension where everything (including the Dark Hunter and his ship and its crew) were creations of Franklin Richards' subconscious -- Daydreamers#1
  • Ship-Master, a Brood who was sent to capture the Acanti Prophet-Singer but was ultimately destroyed by Binary -- Uncanny X-Men I#166
  • or any characters or objects with "Ship" as part of their names or titles

Also, it's important to note that the Star-Lord who is this Ship's partner is the Reality-616 counterpart of (and a VERY different character from)

  • Star-Lord (Peter Jason Quill) of Reality-791, the son of a human woman and a Spartan prince who was transformed into The Star-Lord by the Master of the Sun -- Marvel Preview#4

The Avaleen system has no known connections to

  • Avalon, a landmass in the extradimensional Otherworld which stands between Earth and the Dark Realm of the Fomor -- Avengers I#225
  • Avalon, the orbiting base of Magneto and the Acolytes which was made from the remnants of Greymalkin and Asteroid M (with Shi'ar technology added) and was destroyed during the battle between Holocaust and Exodus -- X-Force I#24
  • Avalon, a Color Enhancements firm employed by the Daily Bugle --[Daily Bugle Civil War Newspaper Special#1]
  • Avalon Five (Broken Haiku, Dot 33, Duke Stratosphere, Firelight, Shiava Blue) from Earth-928's 2099 AD, a group of netgliders who (may have) saved Cyberspace in the year 2097 AD -- mentioned in 2099 Unlimited#5
  • Avalonia, a counterpart of Carol Danvers (then Warbird) who is a Champion of the Realm on Eurth, a near-Earth duplicate created by the Shaper of Worlds with the permission from the Cosmic Powers -- Avataars: Covenant of the Shield#2
  • or any other characters, objects or places with names resembling "Avaleen."

The "Master of the Sun" has no known connections to

  • the Master of the Sun (Ragnar) from Reality-791, an Ariguan with vast powers who transformed that reality's Peter Jason Quill into the Star-Lord and introduced him to the sentient energy being that became his partner Ship -- Marvel Preview#4
  • The Master of the World (Eshu), a primitive hunter from 40,000 years ago who gained great power after being captured and experimented upon by a crashed Plodex conlonization ship and who in recent years has made several attempts to take over the world -- Alpha Flight I#2
  • The Master, an evil Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who is the nemesis of The Doctor -- Doctor Who television series
  • or any of the more than EIGHTY+ other characters in the Marvel Multiverse who use the word " Master" as part of their aliases or who are addressed as "Master" as an honorific.
  • or any of the at least sixteen+ teams of characters who call themselves the Masters of [something]
  • or any of the characters in the Marvel Multiverse who have the surname "Masters."

 

4-armed aliens

   A group of at least six of these aliens once had a violent encounter with Star-Lord, one which ended with the cosmic hero firing both of his guns at them. However, it's not clear if Star-Lord was seriously trying to injure or kill them or just trying to scare them away.

   Pretty much all of the information that can be known about these aliens has to be derived from the image on the left: The aliens are bilaterally symmetrical bipeds that are two to three times as tall as an average adult human (i.e. 12-18 feet) and presumably correspondingly more massive. They have two sets of arms, a larger outer pair (over 6 feet in length) attached to their shoulders and a smaller inner pair that seem to emerge from their upper chests. Each of their four hands have two fingers plus an opposable thumb, and all twelve digits end in sharp talons.
   Their skin appears to be armored and scaly with protruding spikes visible at various points on their bodies, including along their spines, arms and legs. They also have what appear to be external ribcages visible on their backs.
   Their heads appear to be rather expressionless, with features that are mostly fixed (somewhat like birds). They have two large protruding eyes which are yellow with slits for irises. They have no visible ear structures and the "nose" between their eyes seems to lack nostrils. Their mouths are usually open and can gape widely, displaying the large pointed tongues within. They can spit some greenish fluid from their mouths, possibly as a means of attack.
   The planet (or moon) upon which Star-Lord encountered these aliens is orbiting in close proximity to two or three other bodies which are either moons of that planet or nearby planets. It has not been revealed if that particular body was their homeworld or not.
   Nothing has been revealed about the intelligence of these beings. Their lack of weapons and clothing suggests that they are non-sentient animals (but they could also be intelligent beings with criminal tendencies who happen to be nudists who favor hand-to-hand combat). Similarly, nothing has been revealed about the reason for their violent confrontation with Star-Lord. If they are animals, then they could be a pack of carnivores who attacked Star-Lord when he stumbled onto their territory or he could have been hunting them down specifically, perhaps in response to an attack by them on some unspecified sentients.

 

 Comments: Okay, I admit it: The only reason I gave these aliens a sub-profile is because Star-Lord's encounters with them and with the Fallen One are the ONLY two adventures of his (prior to his appearance in Thanos#8) of which we readers have any knowledge. Since every other Star-Lord story has been relegated to Reality-791, only the events depicted in the three-page flashback that started the Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord miniseries are DEFINITELY set in Reality-616. So, I did the best I could with what I had.

 

--Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)


Avaleen-4

   Avaleen is a Kree fringe system, a star system that is close to Kree-controlled space. The only known inhabited planet, Avaleen-4, is an agricultural world which is orbited by (at least) two moons, one of which had a small mining colony on its surface.

   Avaleen-4 also has a Kree consulate stationed on it, indicating that it is neither a Kree colony nor a conquered planet but an independent world which has a diplomatic relationship with the Kree Empire.

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)) <An unspecified number of years ago> - The insane ex-Herald of Galactus known only as the Fallen One came to the Avaleen system to destroy Avaleen-4, but before he could take action Star-Lord and Ship arrived to oppose him, having followed him from the last inhabited planet which he had destroyed. Unfortunately, the only method they had at their disposal to stop him was to expose him to an immense quantity of life energy so as to pain/weaken him. In order to save the millions of lives on Avaleen-4, Ship (and Star-Lord) had no other choice than to sacrifice thousands of lives by attacking the mining colony and decimating its population to generate a massive release of their life energies. Ship then funneled the resulting energy surge through her ordnance matrix at the Fallen One, rendering him unconscious long enough for other measures to be taken to neutralize his threat.
   Ship died in the act of funneling the life energies of the 350,000 people on the mining colony whom she had killed, but the millions of inhabitants of Avaleen-4 were saved by her actions.

 

(Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 - BTS) - Years later, Peter Quill was on the Kree fringe world of Aladon Prime being briefed by a Kree officer, Captain Chan-Dar, about his upcoming mission to infiltrate the Phalanx-occupied Kree homeworld of Hala. Once the briefing was over, Captain Chan-Dar told Quill that she had been "on Avaleen-4 when it happened." Chan-Dar then revealed that she had been assigned to the Kree consulate there and that Star-Lord had saved her life, hers "and millions of - -" but Quill, unwilling to be praised for anything related to his act of mass murder, cut her off, saying "Save it for the press release."

 

   Comments: It's worth mentioning that the inhabitants of Avaleen-4 and the mining colony have never been depicted or described. The presence of a Kree consulate instead of a Kree Governor indicates that Avaleen-4 is not a Kree colony but other than that there is no hint as to the nature of the inhabitants. They could be a native lifeform which evolved to sentience on that world or they could be (non-Kree) aliens who colonized the planet before the Kree could do so. Aside from the fact that they had a level of technology that enabled them to establish a small mining colony on one of their moons and that their population numbered in the millions at the time of the Fallen One's attack, absolutely nothing is known about them.

   The fact that Star-Lord stated that he and Ship "decimated" the mining colony suggests that there might have been some survivors. The verb decimate is defined as "to cause great destruction or harm to" (specifically, it means to kill 1 out of every 10--Snood), but it does not mean the same as annihilate which is defined as "to destroy completely." So, if writer Keith Giffen chose to use decimate deliberately, then not all of the mining colony's population was destroyed by Ship. On the other hand, if Giffen was just being careless in his choice of words, then he used "decimate" when a more accurate word for the level of death and destruction which he meant to convey would have been "annihilate." I guess it will be up to some future writer to decide if there were any survivors. I have to wonder how such survivors would react to Peter Quill. Would they agree with Chan-Dar that it was something which had to be done in order to save the lives of millions on Avaleen-4? Or would they condemn Quill for not having been able to find another way to stop the Fallen One and/or for being too egotistical to ask "one of the cosmic big boys" to handle the Fallen One? I'd like to see such a story.

--Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)


destroyed world

   Very little is known about this planet. Its name has not been revealed and neither has the name of the star system in which it was located. And while the fact that the Fallen One next attacked the planet Avaleen-4 in a Kree fringe system could indicate that this world was close to Kree space, this is only speculation which has not yet been confirmed.

   What little information is known about this planet can be found in the image to the left.
1. The planet had (at least) two moons.
2. The fact that the Fallen One attacked it meant that it was a planet upon which Galactus could feed which in turn meant that it possessed those certain unknown energies which gave it the ability to support life.
3. The presence of the buildings visible in the background means that the planet was inhabited at some point.
4. The fact that the buildings seemed to be in a state of disrepair could indicate that the civilization of the builders had collapsed. Alternatively, the builders' species could have become extinct or decided to leave the planet sometime before the Fallen One arrived. Or maybe Star-Lord's confrontation with the Fallen One just happened to take place in a part of a city that was old and had been abandoned by its residents.

   Aside from its name and location, it has also never been revealed if the planet was inhabited when the Fallen One attacked and if those (possibly-former) inhabitants were a native lifeform which had evolved on the planet or the descendants of aliens who had previously colonized that world.

   Although it has never actually been stated that this planet has been destroyed, it seems HIGHLY unlikely that the Fallen One would have left the planet intact after nearly killing Star-Lord, its only known defender.

--Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)


"Master of the Sun"

   Years ago, an Earthman named Peter Jason Quill confessed his sins to a being whom he knew as the Master of the Sun "and, as a reward, (got) to zip around the cosmos righting wrongs" as the costumed cosmic adventurer known as Star-Lord.

   More recently, days after the Phalanx conquest of the Kree Empire, ex-Star-Lord Peter Quill was on the Kree fringe world of Aladon Prime being treated for injuries he had received during the Phalanx invasion of Hala. As he was being restored to health by a Kree med-tech, Quill recalled some of his career as Starlord, including how he had confessed his sins to the Master of the Sun and been rewarded with the ability to "zip around the cosmos." During this introspective period, Quill mused on how he had never really thought about the whole "Master of the Sun" thing since he had been "too swept up in high adventure and pan-galactic heroics." In hindsight, Quill now wondered if maybe he should have asked a few questions, like "What's my real purpose?"

Note: And that's it, the only confirmed appearance (make that NON-appearance) of the entity known as the Master of the Sun who played some part in how the Peter Quill who exists in Reality-616 was transformed into a cosmic adventurer. Although Quill's "mental mystery tour" is very scarce on details, the clear implication is that it was the Master of the Sun who enabled Peter Quill to travel through space, presumably by introducing him to the sentient starship known as Ship. And that makes sense, because when Keith Giffen wrote that flashback he did so believing that he was writing a story featuring the Star-Lord character who debuted in the 1970s, and in those "classic" stories the Master of the Sun was the one responsible for all aspects of Quill's transformation. Not only did the MOTS give the costume and title of the "Starlord" to Quill, he also altered Quill's body so as to give him certain physical abilities, equipped him with the Element Gun and introduced him to Ship.

   However, since writer Brian Michael Bendis has "streamlined and updated" the origin of Reality-616's Star-Lord, most of Quill's backstory is now a blank slate and what little information has been revealed is significantly different from his classic origin. Specifically, according to his "Bendisized" origin, Peter Quill actually inherited both his Element Gun and the title of Star-Lord from his father, King J-Son (formerly Prince J'Son) of Spartax. So far, BMB has not chosen to fill in any details of Peter Quill's life after his mother's murder by Badoon, including how Quill first learned of his hereditary title as "the Star-Lord of Spartax" and how Quill ever managed to travel into deep space in the first place. Continuity-lovers can only hope (probably in vain) that BMB will bother to incorporate Star-Lord's sentient starship and the events which occurred in the Avaleen star system into Quill's newly-revised history.

 

--mentioned in Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1 (fb)


images:
Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord#1, page 2, panel 3 (main image)
      page 3, panel 3 (Star-Lord in medical bay)
      page 4, panel 2 (decimating mining colony)
      page 4, panel 3 (Star-Lord amidst debris)
      page 2, panel 2 (4-armed aliens)
      page 3, panel 4 (graphic of Avaleen-4)
      page 4, panel 1 (colony being attacked)
      page 3, panel 2 (Fallen One's previous target planet)


Other Appearances: None


First Posted: 03/02/2014
Last updated: 03/01/2014

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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