Elias Speaks of the Great Hollow Nebula

“Traveler, if you wish to understand the place my people call home, do not look to Elarra first. Look instead to the void that conceals it—the Great Hollow. From the outside, it appears as a bruise upon the galaxy, a wound in the starfield where light itself refuses to dwell. Most charts do not even name it. The Authority calls it the Dark Corlan Nebula 19.2.8, for they cannot imagine what lies within.

But step across its threshold and the universe changes. Sensors dull to silence. Compasses forget their allegiance. Even the most advanced vessels lose their bearings, for inside the Hollow, reference itself collapses. Its clouds are dense, churning with charged particulates that scatter every wavelength. Traveling at light-speed through such depth is folly—the debris strains hulls, disrupts drives, and shreds navigation arrays. There is an old pilot’s rule: ‘Trim to sub-light inside the Hollow, or the Hollow will trim you.’

Know this as well: the Hollow is vast—many light-years across. Those who skim its edges may find their way back, if fortune favors them. But those who venture too deep are doomed to drift forever, swallowed by distances that no beacon can traverse. To enter too far is to surrender oneself to silence without horizon.

Across centuries, wreckage has accumulated. Freighters, dreadnoughts, survey ships, even Authority cruisers—each now lies adrift, scattered like rusted constellations in a place that devours stars. Some whisper that the Hollow hungers, that it feeds on steel as easily as hope. Whether this is superstition or instinct, I leave for you to decide.

And still, there are those who enter willingly. Scavengers, fortune-seekers, grave robbers—they slip between derelicts, scanning the husks for relics or secrets of value. But the Hollow does not reward greed. Many ships go in seeking treasure; far fewer emerge with anything but silence.

To reach Elarra, one must pass through that haunted gulf where the dark grows heavier than gravity. And understand this above all: not all who seek my people arrive. The Hollow permits passage only to those it does not claim.”