The Great Ship

The Great Ship is an enormous starship, and the setting of most stories in the Great Ship series. It's exact age and origins are unknown. When it was discovered empty by humans, it was already billions of years old.

Structure
The Great Ship is spherical in shape, with a diameter of 50,000 kilometers. Its mass is twenty Earth masses. It is composed of stone, iron, and hyperfiber.

The ship's hull is covered by hyperfiber armor hundreds of kilometers deep, with a surface area of nearly eight billion square kilometers. It is also protected by a network of shield generators, lasers and antimatter cannons. There are fourteen large rocket nozzles on the back. Their engines draw fuel from six moon sized fuel tanks of hydrogen.

There are six great ports leading into the Ship: Alpha, Beta, Caprice, Denali, Endeavor, and Gwenth. Inside the Ship there are numerous caverns, tunnels and oceans, with machinery that can create habitats for all sorts of alien life forms. The Ship boasts 20 trillion cubic kilometers of hollow space. At the time of Marrow, there are over a hundred billion alien passengers, and only a small amount of the space is filled.

Marrow
At the center of the Ship, there is a spherical hyperfiber chamber where the planet known as Marrow is suspended by powerful buttresses. In the center of Marrow, there is a place where new matter is created, making Marrow constantly grow larger. There is a cycle in which Marrow grows in size until it eventually fills the chamber, triggering a burn that shrinks the planet back down. This burn is also causing the hyperfiber to thin out. It is also suggested that there may be a malevolent entity (sometimes called the Bleak) imprisoned in the center of Marrow.

There is native life on Marrow, with evidence of billions of years of evolution. The Dragons of Marrow suggests that all native life on Marrow is part of an entity known as The One, whose death triggers the burning cycle.

Origin
The Ship's early history is unknown to humans. It is known to be billions of years old, but the radionuclides that would incidate its age were somehow removed. Conservative estimates place it around five billion years. In Marrow, Washen speculates that Ship is at least fifteen billion years old.

The novella Alone gives a cryptic description of the Ship's origins, which seem to be consistent with Washen's suggestion. In the early universe, Those-Who-Rule built and launched a ship that would punish their enemies with nonexistance (possibly for the universe). Moments later, they changed their minds and sent a second powerful ship to stop the first. The Great Ship's voice reveals that it is both of these ships. The second ship has caught up with the first ship, but is unable to stop it.

Discovery by Humans
The Great Ship was found approaching the Milky Way at one third the speed of light. A human-built space probe was the first to notice it, and the Belter guild quickly built a fleet of swift ships to be the first to reach it. Humans boarded the Ship and began exploring. An army of self-replicating robots were used to map out the Ship's interior. There were no signs of the Ship's creators or owners, so humans claimed it as salvage. Some aliens tried to claim the Ship. The Phoenix attempted an invasion to capture the Ship, but they were defeated and imprisoned.

The Master Captain decided that they would sell passage on the Great Ship for a 500,000 year voyage around the galaxy. They began taking on alien passengers in exchange for lavish payments, including worlds and rare technology. Eventually passengers would number in the billions.

Marrow and the Waywards
(Spoilers for Marrow)

Early in the voyage, data from an asteroid impact led to the discovery of an mysterious anomaly deep in the Ship. The Captains dismissed the possibility of a hollow core, but a wealthy human passenger named Diu investigated in secret and eventually had a shaft dug down to Marrow. He lived there for thousands of years, learning about Marrow and stashing vaults full of supplies and machinery. He would later leave Marrow and become one of the Captains. He would eventually arrange an elaborate hoax to lure hundreds of the Ship's Captains down to Marrow, trapping them there for thousands of years.

In order to escape, the Captains had to build an industrial society on Marrow, and had to have children to increase the population. The majority of the Captains' descendants joined the Waywards, who were not loyal to the Captains and believed themselves to be the reincarnated souls of the Ship's Builders.

The Waywards eventually took control of both Marrow and the Great Ship itself, making Miocene the new Master Captain and Till the new First Chair. Pamir and Washen led the resistance against Miocene, eventually taking back control of the Ship and restoring the original Master Captain. However, a near collision with a black hole had caused the Ship to be thrown off course, such that it would eventually leave the Milky Way.

The Polypond
(Spoilers for The Well of Stars)

On it's new course, the Ship found itself approaching an unavoidable nebula called the Inkwell. The Captains were eventually able to make contact with the Polypond, who promised to assist them in passing through the nebula. However, the Polypond was able to move thousands of watery moons, asteroids and comets into a sphere around the Great Ship, and eventually crash them down, creating a massive living ocean on the surface of the Ship. Its ultimate goal was to cut open the Great Ship and unleash whatever lie in the center of Marrow. It believed that the Creation of the universe had been halted, and that this would allow it to continue. The Polypond nearly succeeded, using the Sword of Creation to cut the Ship in two.

Before Marrow could be destroyed, control of the Ship was seized by the !eech, who activated previously unknown engines that caused the Ship to accelerate to safety. Washen and some of her allies fled to Marrow.

In Hatch, set thousands of years after the Polypond attacked, the Ship is still covered by a massive ocean full of moving creatures and machinery, though whether the Polypond is alive or not is unknown. There are thousands of refugees living in a city on the Ship's rocket nozzle.

Distant Future
(Spoilers for Kingfisher and The Dragons of Marrow)

In the forward to Kingfisher, its stated that the Great Ship eventually passes through multiple other galaxies.

Humans and other species of the Milky Way eventually sent a large vessel to pursue the Great Ship.

In The Dragons of Marrow, it is revealed that humans have been living on Marrow and fighting the !eech for billions of years.