The Pleiades-class Battleship (named after the first vessel of this class ever encountered) is a massive and extremely powerful type of battleship in service with the Dark Nebula Empire, acting as the flagship of Dark Nebulan Fleets. It's known for it's powerful weapons, strong armored plating, and surprisingly high speed and maneuverability for it's size, while carrying a sizeable auxiliary craft complement that made it one of the most formidable warship’s ever encountered.
The ship comprises of a disk-shaped main hull, a command tower above and it's powerful engines below. The ship also has lateral thrusters on it's sides, which allows it to move side-to-side quickly if needed. It's hangar is located on the front of the ship, with it's exit facing forwards. This hangar is capable of fitting many auxiliary craft, possibly more than what the Yamato was capable of carrying.
Beam Cannons on the Galliades
It's armament comprises of a pair of main beam cannon turrets, one ahead of the superstructure and one behind, alongside one slightly smaller secondary beam cannon turret behind the fore main turret. This secondary beam cannon turret is sometimes portrayed to be as large as the main cannons, though sometimes it appears smaller. Though it's armament is fewer compared to other foreign ships, they appear to still be just as powerful. It also appears to have a few beam cannons on it's nose of unknown caliber, which was seen in action only once in Space Battleship Yamato: The New Voyage.
Other than high speeds and a powerful main armament, this ship also boasts powerful protection consisting of extremely thick armored plating capable of dispersing energy from conventional enemy beam weapons that would prove useless. It was so powerful that only superweapons such as Wave Motion Guns have a guarantee of destroying these ships.
History[]
The New Voyage[]
In 2201, the Dark Nebula Empire sent a mining fleet to Gamilas to mine materials used for their war machines, which was intercepted by Dessler's fleet. The mining fleet sent a distress message to Commander Daeder, who in response, sets out with his fleet to seek and destroy Dessler's fleet and secure the materials on Iscandar to be used as a new source of energy. Among the Dark Nebulan fleet was the battleship Pleiades, the fleet flagship under the command of Daeder himself.
During Dessler's attempt to convince Starsha to evacuate from Iscandar, Daeder and his fleet unexpectedly arrive on the scene and launched a deadly surprise attack on Dessler's fleet and taking out half of their ships. Dessler then orders his fleet to land on Iscandar while deploying dessler mines to prevent Daeder's advance. However, the Pleiades has an auxiliary craft complement capable of going through the minefield, which succeeded in causing further damage to Dessler's fleet. Not long after, Daeder's capital ships finally broke through the minefield through sheer firepower, giving him the chance to finish off Dessler, but before he could, Kodai on the Yamato arrived just in time to save Dessler.
Seeing the Yamato as a new threat, Daeder averts his focus on the Yamato. But despite his fleet's numerical advantage, he still failed to destroy the battleship, forcing him to personally take on the Yamato with the Pleiades. When Yamato's counterattack failed to even dent the Dark Nebulan Battleship, Kodai ordered the firing of the Wave Motion Gun, but with Iscandar in it's line of fire, was forced to change course before firing. Daeder, noticing this, played out an backhanded move... using Iscandar as a body shield. But just then, Iscandar suffered a large volcanic eruption so powerful that it pushed the planet away from Yamato's line of fire, allowing them to fire the shot and bring an end to Daeder and the Pleiades.
Be Forever Yamato[]
The Pleiades-class Battleship, Galliades arriving on a now occupied Earth with the rest of the Dark Nebula Empire's fleet.
In the year 2202, the Dark Nebula Empire launches an surprise invasion towards earth, by embedding a huge nuclear missile on it's surface, and then breaking through it's defenses with it's invasion force and the Black Fleet. Among the fleet is the flagship Galliades and it's escorting ships under Commander Kazan. After successfully winning the battle on earth's surface, Earth's space fleet attempts a counterattack on the Black Fleet with it's unmanned ships, under the command of Daisuke Shima. However, the Galliades and the Black Fleet sneaks up and immediately attacks them from behind, catching them by surprise. During the ambush, Kazan's warships successfully destroys the control center of earth's unmanned fleet. With nothing to command them, the unmanned fleet loses control and is utterly annihilated within minutes by Kazan’s forces. With almost all resistance destroyed, Kazan informs his great victory to Emperor Skaldart, who gives Kazan a new task: Find the Yamato.
Shortly after his departure from earth, Kazan while aboard the Gallaides quickly locates the Yamato and attempts to give chase, but is surprised to find out that Yamato's new warp engine allows it to warp faster, escaping Kazan's grasp, and much to Kazan's surprise. However, this would not be the last of Yamato's encounters with Kazan. During Yamato's attempt to speed up it's progress using space currents in the Dark Nebula, it encounters an unnamed Pleiades-class Battleship with it's escort ships, led by an unnamed Dark Nebulan Commander. Captain Yamanami then ordered the Yamato to take cover behind one of the gas clouds to obscure it from detection, before launching a surprise attack from the enemy fleet's flank. This maneuver was a success, but the unnamed Pleiades-class Battleship survived and escapes the Yamato and disappeared into the depths of the nebula. The Yamato was about to chase after the fleeing enemy flagship, when Kazan's fleet quickly caught up with the Yamato and chases it into a cleaver laid trap. There, a fleet of multiple Goruba-Type Autoplanet Floating Fortresses led by supreme commander Grotas, who immediately orders all of the fortresses to attack and destroy the Earth Space battleship. Ultimately, this plan ends up failing after the Yamato fires upon every single one of the Goruba's with the new wave motion cartridges, causing a massive chain reaction that destroyed every single one of the space fortresses, the blast which also killed supreme commander Grotas aboard his personal flagship as well.
The Galliades and the unknown Pleiades-class Battleship were not seen again after. It still remains a complete mystery as to what happened to the remains of the Dark Empire's Fleet after their homeworld Dezarium was destroyed along with their Emperor.
An early concept sketch of the Pleiades-class Battleship for "Yamato A New Voyage".
Trivia/Merchandise[]
The only officially released Dark Nebula Empire toy model kit of the Pleiades-class Battleship made by Bandai.
To date the Pleiades-class Battleship is so far the one and only Dark Nebula vessel to be officially released as a standard model kit by Bandai model company in 1979. It is a very rare find nowadays.
