The Archigos was originally ship built for The Archigos Experiment, and designed by Alastair McKenzie. Designated Testbed 1, it was an unused destroyer hull from a failed design repurposed as an engine testbed. It's main requirement was to hold two full sized cruiser fusion reactors, as many subspace engines as possible, and have the hull strength to survive crushing graviton sheers. When it launched, it didn't even have point defenses. During the development, it was christen the Odysseus.
After it's first successful hyperspace jump, the Odysseus crashed into a Sooni colony world. While it suffered some significant damage to secondary systems, the space frame was in good condition as were most of the primary systems. The ship was repaired and armed with a custom built spinal gravitic lance, and some improvised point defense lasers. During this rebuild, it was renamed the Archigos.
During the next 10 months, the Archigos was under constant attack by a vastly superior force. It primarily used it's speed, power and excessive amount of subspace engines to avoid or deflect attacks. It proved itself capable of taking punishing amounts of incoming weapons fire and still surviving long enough to run away.
After it's second successful hyperspace jump, the Archigos returned to League space, where it was dry docked. Alastair McKenzie headed up it's full workup into a new class of destroyer, designated the Advanced Research Destroyer. The Archigos was the lead ship of the class, and given the designation AR-1. (See the Archigos Class for more information.)
For her initial shakedown, McKenzie was given command. He'd pulled a lot of political strings to promote a ship that was, inherently not well suited to the enemy the League thought they were fighting. The ship proved tough and incredibly fast, with the Archigos punching significantly above her class. McKenzie racked up several cruiser and battlecruiser kills, even managing to take out a dreadnaught in a rather pitched battle.
Unfortunately for the Archigos, these battles took a tole, and she spent over one third of her two year shakedown in dry dock being repaired from yet another pitched battle. Casualty rates were the lowest in the fleet, but her repairs were the highest by a large margin.
Because of the concerns her shakedown had shown, the initial production run was cut by a quarter. McKenzie was kept on as her Captain, but he was ordered to prove that this class was something more than a money sink. The Archigos was put on patrol duty, a service she shined at. She hit hard enough to scare off almost anything smaller than a dreadnaught, and with some clever flying, McKenzie was able to keep her out of the dry docks for several years.
The Archigos was the only ship of the initial run that showed any positive numbers, however. The Admiralty (correctly) took it as a sign that while a clever Captain could really make these ships something special, the average captain used to more traditional ships, didn't know how to use the class's strengths. So, the order came down to refit the entire class with a more traditional loadout.
McKenzie fought tooth and nail to keep the Archigos out of the refit. This class had been built with one goal in mind, and the refit absolutely ruined the whole point. Finally, he was able to pull in enough favors and got an engineering report from the dry dock that due to her history as the Odysseus her initial specs were already a sort of retrofit on top of the original testbed frame. The report gave an eye-watering amount to complete the refit, instead making the Admiralty consider retiring her instead.
Not to be dissuaded, McKenzie cut a backroom deal with the Admiralty to finally take a Flag officer poison, in exchange for keeping his pet project alive. Archigos was given a new commander, and avoided the refit.
The Archigos was, like the rest of her sisters, an odd duckling very few knew how to utilize. Her new captain was not one of those few. She served, mostly on patrols, for the next decade seeing very little action, and without her name carrying any weight, other than that of the lead ship in a class that was increasingly considered one of the biggest blunders of League shipbuilding.
When Owen Rees took command, he was determined to make the Archigos a respectable ship. McKenzie had recommended him for the position, knowing Rees to be an intelligent, if not brilliant captain. To his credit, Rees understood his ship operated under a different doctrine than most of the fleet, and set about trying to hone this new doctrine. He was arguably successful as the Archigos started to be involved in more successful engagements and over time became known as a good command, if you got posted to her.
During the failed [Terran][] invasion of Tel'Erani, the Archigos was rammed through a [Terran][] battlecruiser and into an interdictor. She'd already been heavily damaged by this point, and she suffered heavy damage in the collision. She did manage to save most of her crew and her over-engineered space frame survived mostly intact.
The Archigos was recovered, and taken to the Prometheus spacedock, where initial repairs began. However, the cost was high enough that it was decided her crew would be reassigned and she would be repaired 'as circumstances allowed', meaning the only reason she wasn't retired was because McKenzie was now a member of the joint chiefs, and commander of Prometheus. Any other spacedock would have retired her, scrapping her for parts.
During the events of The Fall, McKenzie found himself in need of a ship to chase down the Sooni assassins. He opted for the Archigos because while she'd barely been repaired, he knew how to fight with her, even in a heavily damaged state. Despite most of her missile tubes being damaged or destroyed and only one of her reactors functioning, McKenzie was able to fight the uncompleted dreadnaught the Sooni were escaping in to a standstill.
Immediately after the Rekonin helped calm the situation at the station, McKenzie ordered the immediate repair and refit of the Archigos. She kept her original armament, but the individual weapons were upgraded, and her reactors over overhauled to increase their power output significantly. Specialized command and control hardware was installed, and the Archigos was turned into the Presidential Flagship; it can command the entire League fleet from anywhere in the galaxy.
She currently stills serves as President McKenzie's personal flagship.
What makes a hero ship has always intrigued me. I like it when hero ships have a storied history, and a past that informs how the characters of a story engage with them. The Archigos was, since the very begining, slated to be destroyed in the first or second chapter, holding out far better than she had any right to be. Characters would refer to her with fondness, and the reader's relationship with her would grow through the character's stories of the lost ship. Early on, I decided that it was a shame to have such an emotionally charged ship be completely destroyed, and always brought her back as a supporting ship at a pivotal moment in the story.