Local Void

The Local Void, sometimes also called the Northern Local Supervoid is a region of space largely devoid of matter. It forms the space between the Coma Supercluster and the Laniakea Supercluster, with its southern tip touching the outer filaments of the Perseus-Pisces Supercluster. The Local Void is an immense expanse. Though precise definitions of its extent and shape are disputed, it is thought to be between 150 and 300 million lightyears across. Even very massive black holes would only allow ships to jump, at most, about 10% of the distance across the Void.

Geography

The Local Void is divided into four regions: the Cycladean Bridge, the Ionian Bridge, The Center, and The Four. Isolated dwarf galaxies, globular clusters, and rogue stars exist outside these clusters, but these form the bulk of the matter found in the Void. The Cycladean Bridge runs from the Coma Cluster to The Center; the Ionian Bridge runs from the Leo Cluster to The Center. Both the Leo and Coma clusters lie in the Coma Supercluster, across the Void from Laniakea. The Four is an isolated group of giant spiral galaxies in the north-central part of the Void, millions of lightyears from anything.

Culture

The most significant cultural difference between the Local Void and the Kingdom of Mankind is that mana exists in the Local Void (and is hypothesized to exist in all voids), whereas the entirety of the Kingdom spread along the galactic filaments has no mana. This has caused society in the Local Void to develop differently.

The Local Void is dominated by the Guardians, presumed descendants of those who fled in the wake of their defeat in the Guardian Uprising in the 89th Century. Guardian power is concentrated in The Center, and spans out through the Cycladean and Ionian Bridges. Humans are concentrated in The Four, and live on an array of low-tech worlds that are surveilled and manipulated by the Guardians. The Guardians use human slaves "harvested" from the worlds of The Four for labor and experimentation.

Some free humans exist outside The Four, generally on the fringes of the outer galaxies of the Cycladean and Ionian Bridges. These humans are largely ignored by The Guardians, and exist amid an underworld of spacers and pirates. A small group of humans awake to the existence of the kingdom outside the void, upset at the state of affairs in the void, have formed The Resistance, a collection of mages, mystics, and soldiers who wish to upend Guardian domination in the void and rejoin humans in the void with humans in the filaments.

See Also

Magic in Dark Energy