Elder One

The Elder One is the final boss in the game, which the players are trying to defeat or prevent from awakening. One Elder One card is chosen randomly at the start of the game as part of the Game Setup, and kept face down until the Elder One awakens, which happens if Enemy Discovery token reaches the Elder One Discovery token on the Discovery Track before the Player Discovery token does.

When the Elder One awakens, the Elder One Board is reveals, it's miniature is placed on the Game Board world map as directed by the Elder One Board, and their "Upon Awakening" effect is resolved. This can happen during any Act. Once awakened, an Elder One remains in play until the game is finished.

Elder One activation

The Elder One is activated similarly to Enemy Ships. Whenever it activates, its "Whilst Arisen" effect should be checked, and resolved if necessary.

The Elder One will attempt to complete its objective in the same way that enemy ships attempt to reach their Destination, but the Elder One doesn't have an Engagement Range, and will pursue its objective above all else. But if it doesn't have any clear destination when it activates, it will move toward and attack the closest player ship.

Combatting and slowing down an Elder One

An Elder One can't be killed in combat; it is defeated by the players advancing the Player Discovery token on the Discovery Track, but players can combat it in order to reduce its Dice Value by attacking it, thus making it less able to hinder the players from reaching their goal.

Each time an Elder One's health is reduced to 0, place a Dice Value Modified token (a small square black token with a minus sign on it) on the Elder One Board and remove all Trauma from that board. Elder One rolls one less Enemy Die for each of those tokens on its board; but their Dice Value cannot be reduced to 0; it will roll at least one Enemy Die when it activates.

Notes

Note: expansions may provide other final bosses, that may be called something other than "Elder One", but unless rules in the expansions say otherwise, the same rules apply for those final bosses as for the Elder One.

Note: there are details about the placement of the Elder One miniature when it awakens that are unclear in regard to how to place it if there are player ships or enemy ships blocking some of the spaces where it would spawn, or if there are unexplored spaces. For lack of an official clarification, the best option seems to be to place it as close a possible on available space without overlapping any stuff on the map tiles, except maybe Storms. (One of the Elder One Boards has a Whilst Arisen effect that says that version of the Elder One destroys Ports it is placed on top of, suggesting that the Elder One doesn't normally destroy anything it's on top of unless an effect explicitly says so.)

Elder One Board

The Elder One Board contains information about the final boss of the game. There are multiple Elder One Boards, and one is chosen randomly and face down when the game is Setup, and is not revealed until the Elder One awakens.