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Every planet in the known Galactic Front ofHelldivers 2has 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.
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, yesMeridia is gone. Should you venture there in your starship all you will find waiting for you is agargantuan black hole. But why is Meridia like that?
Well, it became that way after along conflict withthe Terminidsand 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 tocompletely delete the planetfrom the solar system by using Dark Fluid. They were successful in their endeavors, but the presence of anunguarded and gigantic black holeis 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 auniversal matter vacuumas previously it was just another lush planet. It wasabundant with lifeand was covered in primarily dense jungles, forests and very deep oceans.
Super Earth colonists flocked to it in droves and it wasterraformed fairly quickly. But, like every other planet in the Galactic Front, eventually someone came knocking. In this case it wasthe Terminids, and they came in droves.
At the time, Super Earth scientists thought that byinstalling a system of TCS Towerson 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 planetdispensedlethal 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 anunintended side-effecton the Terminids. After dissection of a few bugs by Super Earth Scientists, it was found thatthe towers had caused mutationsin the bugs genomes thatmade them resistantto the termicide.
But not only that, it had alsosped up their growth and incubation periodalmost twentyfold. This exacerbated the problem substantially as the bugs spread fast, overwhelming defences andquickly 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 makesubstantial territory gainswhilst Super Earth was distracted.
How Did Meridia Become A Black Hole?
To solve their issue, Super Earth decreed that they wouldinvade the planet en masseand 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 abarren dust bowlfilled with bugs.
The atmosphere had turned asickly brown colour, whilst gigantic towering stacks sprayed Terminid Spores, reducing visibility down to metres in places.
It was an absolute massacre for the Helldivers,thousands were lost to the mutated Terminid hordesand 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 triednuking the planetseveral times. But it proved just as unsuccessful as the ground invasion.
Operation Enduring Peacewas whipped up, a multi-phase plan that would solve the Supercolony problem once and for all. The first step involved Hell Diversdeploying Dark Fluid,a substance captured from the Illuminate 100 years ago, into the planet’s surface. This was achieved using drills that sent the fluiddeep into the planet’s crustat 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 thesecond of June in 2184, Meridia finally imploded. All destroyers were ordered toFTL jump to Super Earth for safetyas 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.
