Master

The masters will appear periodically during any campaign. Their arrival is marked by a pink wormhole called a "Massive Subspace Anomaly" appearing somewhere nearby player controlled space. Once the pink wormhole manifests a small fleet will begin making its way towards player controlled worlds. During this journey it will engage any other fleets it passes, including AI player fleets and random hostiles such as pirates, sometimes resulting in it being destroyed before the player is ever even aware of its presence. As a campaign progresses the size and power of the fleet that appears from the wormhole will increase. Defeating the fleet drops an anomalous box containing "precious metals" that rewards the finder with 50BC.

Getting a ship to the pink wormhole location will result in a special research project. Once this project is completed the player who completed it can then travel through the pink wormholes to face the Master dreadnaught "Master of Orion II". Depending on how early in the campaign it is the dreadnaught can be accompanied by anywhere from a couple to several smaller master ships. Once a player defeats the Master dreadnaught they are rewarded with the ship module "Death Ray", arguably the strongest ship weapon in the game, at the cost of needing thousands of units of power. A turn later GNN will broadcast who defeated the dreadnaught and reveal that he has been using his broadcasting station to transmit the Stardrive technology to races every few thousand years in hopes that one may one day destroy the dreadnaught and stop the Masters from wiping all life from the universe as they apparently have for countless "cycles."