Initially designed, grown, and constructed at the behest of High Beneficent Toth during his term as personal aide to the Septarch Quintillian, the Biliophage Uncreus casts a shadow over much of the pre-Sandalphon era. As the first known airborne weapon of mass destruction, the immense bilophage quickly became the cornerstone of Quintillian's military might, and contributed as much to the Septarch's empire as did Quintillian's own canny manipulation of the Rail Wars. Measuring over three hundred doctares from the tip of its tusks to its rear fin plating, Uncreus was the largest flying object in the sky before the era of the smokeships, and in its prime scattered nearly as many enemies through terror as it killed with its dorsal guns and lung exhaust. It is often credited with causing more deaths than the Lakanian Plague, although there are no records to support this assertion. After Quintillian's death, the biliophage was passed from one successor to another until its own demise, and served as much as an emblem of power as a means to it.

The biliophage was also the first heavier-than-air vessel held aloft by neither Cloudstone nor the Convection Engine, and as such was hailed by Naturalists as a revolutionary step toward rapid, environmentally-safe flight. While Naturalist leader Dwight Lansford admitted that the ship's appetites and capacity as an engine of mass death were "regrettable," his followers siezed upon its aether-safe technology as the dawn of a new, natural age of flight, which would ultimately culminate in the development and scandal of the Meat Turbine.

By the time of the Little War the biliophage had been rendered obsolete by both advancing age and new military technology, and Aerograde Vinius ordered it disassembled. At its decommissioning ceremony, however, Uncreus's handlers slipped before the critical dosage could be administered and the vessel broke loose, killing fifteen thousand in three days before it could be successfully destroyed. The incident provided the Oversight Committee with the opportunity to bring to account the original designers of the biliophage, most of whom had graduated to positions of power in its rival, the Council of Advisors. The biliophage's creators fiercely plead their innocence, maintaining they had only built the ship on Toth's orders. Toth, now chairmain of the Committee, found this argument unconvincing, and sentenced them to death.

It is presumed that further biliophagi were never constructed for fear that they would breed.

—Rudgaard Vanderplast