Jorus Q. Merrill
I'm a Vima-da-Boda, honey
- Intent: A submission for the Wondrous Ruins of the Past contest, Prompt 2: "The remnants of an ancient transportation network drift in the far Unknown Regions."
- Image Credit: Chaehyeon Ra
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Hyperspace wormhole, Thera
- Astronomical Location Name: Xelec, the Lonely Warren
- Classification: Dead biological megastructure
- Location: The Unknown Regions, edge of the galaxy, near Noris
- Rotational Period: N/A
- Orbital Period: N/A
- Size: Massive
- Affiliation: None
- Population: Sparse
- Demographics: Wide assortment of species, especially Unknown Regions species (e.g. Chiss, Lugubraa, Ebruchi, the occasional Croke or Thakwaa).
- Accessibility: Xelec, the Lonely Warren, is nearly impossible to reach by conventional means due to an especially tangled, turbulent area of the hyperspace distortions that characterize the Unknown Regions. Hyperspace wormholes randomly connect the inside of the Lonely Warren with random locations throughout the Unknown Regions and surrounding areas. These random wormholes are effectively the only way to reach the Lonely Warren. Ships that stumble through a wormhole into the Lonely Warren are often ambushed. Each wormhole lasts no more than twenty-eight minutes.
- Description: The planetoid called Xelec or the Lonely Warren is the corpse of the Xelec, a gigantic spacefaring creature. From outside it resembles a worm-eaten apple-shaped planetoid. Its interior is riddled with starship-scale boreholes from chaotic hyperspace wormholes. Most of the interior is hard vacuum, broken by pockets of stolen atmosphere and ecosphere stemming from the rare occasions when wormholes have connected with life-bearing planets. Gravity varies but is typically quite low (0.1-0.3 standard).
POINTS OF INTEREST
- Dezek-tiir: An Ebruchi-dominated scavenger settlement in a knot of side tunnels too small for capital ships. Surviving a visit to Dezek-tiir requires knowledge of trade languages like Sy Bisti or Rammocate and/or a fast gun hand. Dezek-tiir has a breathable atmosphere, barely. Air purifiers and canisters are a hot commodity, as are artificial gravity generators. You might get a marginally warmer welcome if you have any connection to the long-gone Lords of the Fringe. If you want a potentially-trustworthy guide who has a feel for where and when the next wormhole might appear, Dezek-tiir or its rival scavver settlements are good places to start. Conveniently, you might make contact with them when they welcome you to the Warren with net traps, about ten seconds after you come through a wormhole.
- The Inner Skull: Fly through the Warren and you may reach the innermost chambers of the Xelec's skull. Even those least sensitive to such things can feel the long-dead creature's insatiable hunger. Haunted would be one word for it: the echoes of the Xelec's self-destructive gluttony are the reason that hyperspace wormholes still lash out. The Inner Skull is littered with the wrecks of small starships that tore each other to shreds, overwhelmed by the mindless hunger of the Xelec. For spacer and Force-user alike, surviving the vast chasm of the Inner Skull is an unparalleled trial by fire.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Xelec was a semi-sapient spacefaring creature. Like others of its kind, it fed itself by creating hyperspace wormholes. The Xelec's bite connected — and ended — civilizations.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, an entire nest of proto-Killik mist-weavers sacrificed themselves to kill the Xelec. They underestimated the sheer force of the Xelec's hunger. The hyperspace wormholes continued to form, but chaotically, connecting random points within the Xelec's body to random locations across the Unknown Regions. Distortions ripped out the Xelec's insides and left huge, twisting tunnels in their wake.
The remaining flesh mummified over eons. Stranded scavengers learned to burrow into the tunnel walls for safety, and built boltholes and settlements from the debris of random wormhole connections and unfortunate explorers. If not for the merciless dog-eat-dog ethos of the Lonely Warren's scavver clans, the gigantic corpse would be a salvager/archaeologist's dream.
Today the Lonely Warren drifts through interstellar space, encysted in the hyperspace distortions of the Unknown Regions, connected to the galaxy only by random wormholes. It remains a tall tale — the planetoid Xelec, the shipwrecks of the hungry tunnels. The Lords of the Fringe attempted to gain control of Xelec more than once. Occasional Fringe scouts and patrols made it through random wormholes. Their bones and broken warships decorate the tunnels; their children rank among the scavengers.
Firsthand accounts are rare. Those whose starships blunder into the Xelec's wormholes are, so to speak, vanishingly few. As one example, Jorus Merrill once escaped a Fringe fleet with a desperate leap into one of Xelec's wormholes. Out of two dozen Rebel Alliance guerrillas, he was the only survivor. To this day, thirty years later, he does not talk about Xelec.
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