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Every planet in the known Galactic Front of Helldivers 2 has seen its fair share of chaos, agony and devastating warfare, none more so than Meridia. One of a quartet of planets found in the Umlaut Sector located on the North Eastern galactic plane, Meridia was not only turned into a dead world, it was completely destroyed.
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In its place stands a brutal reminder of the cost of the Galactic War, and a stark warning of what can befall any planet should it be considered unsalvageable by Super Earth. A fate nobody wants for their own world, for those that have already forgotten the event, or weren’t around for it, here’s what happened to planet Meridia in Helldivers 2.
Why Is Meridia A Black Hole?
To start things off, yes Meridia is gone. Should you venture there in your starship all you will find waiting for you is a gargantuan black hole. But why is Meridia like that?
Well, it became that way after a long conflict with the Terminids and an ill-fated attempt by S.E.A.F. to contain them. The plans of Super Earth scientists backfired so spectacularly that Earth Gov had no other choice than to completely delete the planet from the solar system by using Dark Fluid. They were successful in their endeavors, but the presence of an unguarded and gigantic black hole is apparently now causing a lot of concerns, and for good reason.
Life On Meridia Before The Black Hole
To scoot the timeline back briefly, it’s worth going over some of the details of how Meridia got turned into a universal matter vacuum as previously it was just another lush planet. It was abundant with life and was covered in primarily dense jungles, forests and very deep oceans.
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Super Earth colonists flocked to it in droves and it was terraformed fairly quickly. But, like every other planet in the Galactic Front, eventually someone came knocking. In this case it was the Terminids, and they came in droves.
At the time, Super Earth scientists thought that by installing a system of TCS Towers on the planet, and neighboring worlds, they could create a system-wide barrier to the Terminids. This would work for a time as the towers on the planet dispensed lethal pesticides, wiping out the bugs. But eventually, the insects mutated.
Meridia Falls
It turns out some of the chemicals used in the TCS Towers might have had an unintended side-effect on the Terminids. After dissection of a few bugs by Super Earth Scientists, it was found that the towers had caused mutations in the bugs genomes that made them resistant to the termicide.
But not only that, it had also sped up their growth and incubation period almost twentyfold. This exacerbated the problem substantially as the bugs spread fast, overwhelming defences and quickly turning Meridia into a super colony. An event that would send ripples across the entire Galactic Front as Super Earth now had to deal with the massive problem they had caused.
Due to the formation of the Meridia Super Colony, the Automatons were able to invade multiple fronts at once and make substantial territory gains whilst Super Earth was distracted.
How Did Meridia Become A Black Hole?
To solve their issue, Super Earth decreed that they would invade the planet en masse and retake it from the Terminids. But upon arrival above the planet, the Helldiver fleets found that what was once a green, lush jungle planet had become a barren dust bowl filled with bugs.
The atmosphere had turned a sickly brown colour, whilst gigantic towering stacks sprayed Terminid Spores, reducing visibility down to metres in places.
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It was an absolute massacre for the Helldivers, thousands were lost to the mutated Terminid hordes and it was a stark reminder to Super Earth of just how devastating the insects can be. The planet was irreversibly changed, the atmosphere and soil ruined forever, and with no way to reclaim it for themselves Super Earth took a drastic step.
Super Earth tried nuking the planet several times. But it proved just as unsuccessful as the ground invasion.
Operation Enduring Peace was whipped up, a multi-phase plan that would solve the Supercolony problem once and for all. The first step involved Hell Divers deploying Dark Fluid, a substance captured from the Illuminate 100 years ago, into the planet’s surface. This was achieved using drills that sent the fluid deep into the planet’s crust at key points.
Over time the fluid would concentrate together across the world and when a certain amount of critical mass was reached, it would detonate. On the second of June in 2184, Meridia finally imploded. All destroyers were ordered to FTL jump to Super Earth for safety as the planet, its nearest sun, and every other sister world in the system was sucked into the forming black hole.
The battle was won, but Meridia was lost forever.
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