Idea: Giant Space Leviathan
You've seen that giant skeleton on the map. Imagine if it were alive.
You could do a bunch of fun things w/this:
- it ate the artifact! Kill it (quite possibly w/help from other crews) and the artifact will float out into space, and then the race is on... - similar to bombs, imagine a hardpoint you could install on enemy ships that attracted the ire of this thing... - perhaps it sends out "spawn" that attempt to board your ship
I know, farfetched. But...