Rainbow Nebula
Not a system but a medium — soup dense enough to hide a ship, slow a shell, and let a winged hull turn like an aircraft. Every rule of open space runs backwards inside it.
No model for this one — the Rainbow Nebula is a region rather than a system, and the books never give it a star to orbit.
What the books say
- The soup defeats sensors: nothing is detected until it is on top of you.
- Engines betray you. Powered down you are invisible; the moment you burn, a destroyer has your position.
- Signals are intercepted, so calling for help is the same as surrendering your location.
- Hunters flush hiding ships with proximity rounds rather than searching for them.
- Density slows both ships and their shells — rounds travel slower inside than out.
- Corsairs carry wings and a tall tail fin for maneuver in a dense medium, and are markedly slower and clumsier once they leave it.
- In open space, survivability is thrust and velocity. Inside the cloud it is stillness and patience.
- The gas will catch fire around an explosion.
- Heat and radiation kill in seconds through a breached hull.
- Merchant traffic from Hestos crosses it constantly, which is why the piracy lives here.
Read out of Rogue Fleet.
Elsewhere on the chart
- Tassi Tassian
- Jark / Coridan Jark
- Mateen / Rodam Mateen Collective
- Charoth
- Hestos Hestonian
- Charlon
- Despona Desponian