In the ancient tongue of the Beyonders (The supposedly dead race who built the Daedacus) the word Daedacus means collector. For this is what the world was. At one time long, long ago this world was actually a vast ship designed to roam the universe looking for and collecting samples from each and every planet it encountered. Plant, animal, and other types of lifeforms and artifacts were all collected. During its long journey the vessel across and collected samples from millions of planets. At a point in its long journey close to completing its mission, the ship came across a planet which was home to a space faring race called the Ovid. Giant crablike creatures, the Ovid swarmed into space attacking the immense ship mercilessly. In an attempt to protect itself, the lone Beyonder put the ship through a wormhole to escape the Ovids. The crablike beings attack had crippled the ships engines and left it stranded just beyond the wormhole. In a desperate attempt to hide/protect itself the ship sent out its collectors (smaller ships used to collect samples from encountered planets) who began to move meteors, and other space debris toward the ship. Using the debris, the ship began to construct a vast thick shell about itself as it floated through space. Falling into an orbit around a nearby star, the ship even had the collectors destroy a whole planet to use as raw materials for its shell. When finished the ship now resembled a planet with a cylindrical shape instead of the normal spherical one. Over the years of building the shell, several sections of the ship began to malfunction and this put the ships mission in jeopardy. The power failures and massive equipment malfunctions caused some of the ships vast stores of specimens to die off or become mutated. As a way to protect itself and its mission, the ship (over much time) altered its shell to allow life to live and flourish. It leaked vast stores of water onto the planetoid surface, it also worked to create an atmosphere compatible to the majority of its collected lifeforms. When this was all done the ship began to slowly introduce life to its surface. Using as a template the millions of planets it had come across thus far, the ship began to release life in the same order that it had observed on many other planets. Plants were the first to be released, needed to maintains the fragile atmosphere and to support the herbivores that were soon to come, plants soon flourished across much of Daedacus shell. Next were simple animals and dinosauristic reptiles that the ship had deemed right to populate its surface. The next and most important step was to choose amongst the 100s of thousands of sentient lifeforms to be released next. Having studied so many worlds the ship chose the Elven races as next to be released. The elves (according to the ships vast collection of knowledge) were the most logical race to act as guardians and caretakers of the ships surface. The elves ruled Daedacus as its sole intelligent lifeform for several 1000 years and the world slowly became a veritable paradise. Unfortunately over the long years more and more systems of the ship began to fail, causing the ship to release more lifeforms (to conserve power and equipment for the day when its masters would return). The following lifeforms were released in this order, giants, gnomes and humans. Then what the ship had feared happened. A fleet of Ovid ships came through the wormhole. The ships upon finding a new world to plunder, began an attack upon the planet causing even more destruction and death. Unsure what to do, the ship began releasing more destructive races, including giants, dragons, beholders and worse. Many were the race lost totally in the first Ovid war. Several species of dragons and giants were gone totally from the losses involved in the war. In the end the Ovid fled with heavy losses and Daedacus fearing future attacks, released almost every sample it had onto the planetoids surface. strangely enough, none of the races questioned how they came to be here and each believed this was home and had always been so. The ship though had siphoned off the creatures world specific memories for cataloging while leaving racial abilities and memories intact. Over the years each race carved its own nitch and grew to great numbers or fell into constant squabbles between races who enjoyed the same environment and terrain.
Over the long years the lone alien Beyonder finally gave up hope of ever hearing from its masters and put itself into a deep cryogenic sleep, awaiting the day when it would awake to look upon its brethren. The ship itself was put on auto and life was allowed to take its natural course.
Even though the ship was on auto, its internal defenses are active, and the ship is very able to defend itself. Beings who somehow manage to tunnel down through the many miles of rock will find a dense wall of metal which is impervious to any form of damage or magic. The metal is dull gray in color and feels almost warm to the touch. It has 100% magic resistance and 100 hps per square foot.
The only known way into the ship is through the many scattered pyramids about the planet's surface. Each pyramid sits next to two more and all are made up of the same metal as the skin of the ship. They can only be entered using special keys hidden about the planet. This is a form of test used by the ship to evaluate the more intelligent species up above. Most known races attribute these structures to being built by an ancient unknown race, now thought extinct. Even the elves have no idea who or how they were built. When a being finds a key and understands how to use it, they are given access to the ships interior. Few have made the connection and none have come back from inside. Such beings are captured by the ship and held for examination.
What the future may hold, no one knows. Will the Ovid return? Will the remaining planets defenders be ready for them? Only time will tell.