The Space Between Stars

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"These are real stars. They burn above the roof of the Neath, beyond the earth, in the spaces of heaven."

This page contains extensive spoilers for the following formerly restricted content and Sunless Skies content: Seeking Mr Eaten's Name and Ambition: The Truth. Proceed at your own risk.

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"A waste stretches before you. The star that reigned over it died cold aeons ago. Now, its domain is empty of life; drowned in darkness; harried by a howling wind. Your crew beg you to turn back. All that waits ahead is the slow shedding of all that you were, then a frozen death."[1]

The Space Between Stars, also called the Wastes, is the frigid, dark, and windy space between living stars.[2][3] These impossibly vast swaths of the High Wilderness[4] are littered with the frozen ruins of dead solar systems.[5][6] The light of distant stars - too far away for their protection to be of any assistance - drives human travelers mad[7][8] before they eventually freeze to death.[9]

At least some portions of the Wastes are referred to as the Graveyard of Stars; the suns here were slain under the rules and endless starlight-shed of the Courtesy.[10] The wind that haunts the Wastes is implied to be the howl of the ghosts of murdered stars.[11]

The Waste-Waif, the god of the skies who watches over abandoned places,[12] dwells in the Space Between.[13] And don't gaze into the darkness. It looks back.[14]

The Focused Albatross is a Parabolan creature that is half "cold-born," as one of its parents came from the Space Between.[15]

In the Sunless Skies timeline, the Singh-Jenkins Expedition, which charted swaths of the heavens under Albion's banner,[16] was eventually lost in the Wastes.[17][18] This expedition also pioneered the creation of transit relays, which allow warp jumps across the High Wilderness.[16][19]

Spoken By Dead Stars[edit | edit source]

Spoilers do not lie ahead for the Discordant Studies storyline from Fallen London.

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this is how the correspondence sounds—
—when it's spoken between stars[20]

The space between Correspondence sigils is likened to the space between stars.[21][22] Drinking moonish water may induce comparable visions.[23]

The Discordance is "the language of stars that have died and laws that have passed away." According to Mr Fires, it pollutes the Space Between Stars.[24]

Possible Connections to Seeking[edit | edit source]

"All these little lights to remember him by. Like and unlike the lights between."[25]

Some parallels are drawn between Mr Eaten and the Space Between Stars.[26][27] It's possible Mr Eaten alludes to the Courtesy and how it spreads the Liberation of Night.[28][29]

The glyph at the door of Winking Isle's nonexistent lighthouse, "a place between spheres of influence,"[30] may have double meaning: it lies between Parabola and reality,[31] but could also possibly be a nod to the space between Judgements' spheres of influence.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ The Graveyard of Stars, Sunless Skies
  2. ↑ The Graveyard of Stars, Sunless Skies "A waste stretches before you. The star that reigned over it died cold aeons ago. Now, its domain is empty of life; drowned in darkness; harried by a howling wind."
  3. ↑ Search for your friend, Sunless Skies "The Wastes are st-starless spaces, cold and barren. Haunted by evil winds. She cannot survive there."
  4. ↑ Venture in, Sunless Skies "A day's hard travel later, you are still only on the outskirts of the waste. You have seen no living thing. The cold of the skies you left behind is only a ghost of the cold here. The cold here stills and slays."
  5. ↑ Ambition: Search the Wastes for your friend, Sunless Skies "You find nothing but frozen ruins, grim grey monuments, and rubble strewn across the sky. Winds hound your locomotive, battering her every hour of the endless night. Frost is a constant threat, creeping along pipes, infiltrating the stores. "
  6. ↑ Examine your surroundings, Sunless Skies "Are they the frozen gobbets of shattered worlds? Ruins, abraded beyond recognition by the roaring wind? Old idols, whose shape would never have been recognisable to you?"
  7. ↑ Star-Seared Explorer, Sunless Skies "This engine has ventured into sunless wastes, and spent too long under the cold, searing light of distant stars, which burned all reason from its crew."
  8. ↑ Listen to the wind, Sunless Skies "You all spend a sleepless night [...] while the wind hammers your vessel. At three o'clock, one of your crew begins to howl like a dog. He will not stop, even when gagged, even when his throat bleeds. You are forced to restrain him to quarters."
  9. ↑ The Graveyard of Stars, Sunless Skies "Your crew beg you to turn back. All that waits ahead is the slow shedding of all that you were, then a frozen death."
  10. ↑ Ambition: Search the Wastes for your friend, Sunless Skies "These are regions where the suns have died, victims of the polite slaughter concealed by the Courtesy."
  11. ↑ Listen to the wind, Sunless Skies "The closer you listen, the more it sounds like a scream, raw with anguish and fury. The ghosts of the murdered must scream thus."
  12. ↑ Attention: the Waste-Waif, Sunless Skies "One of the gods of the sky, the Waif occupies abandoned places, and is associated with outcasts, the dying, and unkind winds."
  13. ↑ Propitiate the Waste-Waif, Sunless Skies "You have angered one of the spiteful gods of the sky. Perhaps, here – on the edge of the places it has taken for its own – you can win its forgiveness."
  14. ↑ Look out into the dark, Sunless Skies "Who were you talking to, Captain?" a crewman asks. "You've been answering questions. Giving your name. Our names. [Names from your past.]"
  15. ↑ Bring in the Silk-Clad Expert as a Paid Assistant (30 FATE), Fallen London ""It is not entirely a bird," [...] "One of its parents was [...] from between stars. Cold-born.""
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Recall what your academic associates told you about her, Sunless Skies "[...] the Singh-Jenkins expedition. It constructed the first transit relays, exploring far-flung regions in an attempt to decipher the language of the heavens. The expedition was lost, years ago."
  17. ↑ Consider the meaning of the sigil, Sunless Skies "You have heard that Singh-Jenkins went off the maps, into the sunless wastes where the winds wait."
  18. ↑ Search the frosted ruins for one of the lost sigils, Sunless Skies "[...] You [...] discover a camp, frozen hard as iron. Perhaps the movement was this brittle flag [...] It is marked with the quill-and-star emblem of the Singh-Jenkins expedition."
  19. ↑ Transit Relay, Sunless Skies "This is a Singh-Jenkins relay, allowing transport (via a loophole in some cosmic mandate) across the sunless wastes to a far-flung district of heaven."
  20. ↑ this is how the correspondence sounds —, Fallen London
  21. ↑ Getting to know Benthic, Fallen London "Symbols of the Correspondence swim to mind, denoting the vast empty blackness of space between the stars."
  22. ↑ Perhaps you can remember something useful, Fallen London "The space between the sigils of the Correspondence is the space between stars. Silence is a sucking void. When they find you, they find you by your screams. Your throat is raw."
  23. ↑ Buy some and drink it, Fallen London "(Between the stars) The stars! The lights! Are they inside your head, or pushing through the walls? Is the universe really that large? For a few moments, or perhaps hours, you are standing outside space, conversing in words of twisting flame with some of its creators."
  24. ↑ Speak to Mr Fires about the symbol it read, Fallen London ""Discordance," hisses Mr Fires. "The cold language, the language of stars that have died and laws that have passed away." And it goes on like that, about dead light and corrupted law and the space between the stars polluted."
  25. ↑ Set fires around the city, Fallen London
  26. ↑ Mr Eaten (Sacksmas), Fallen London "The space between stars is the space between your atoms. Nothingness dissects you. You are made hollow."
  27. ↑ Restitution for the Drowned Man, Fallen London "The cold Between is not a winter cold. It is the electric cold of the curved places. [...] It sharpens the Judgement-light to the claws of candles. It is the road when the wind rises. The Drowned Man has forgotten all that, and so now, again, will you."
  28. ↑ Char yourself with Enigmas, Fallen London "In the Between there are fires, and each fire a mystery. But oh, oh ho, those fires that hunger. The squirming heart of each a liberated dark. [...] The Gate is the place but the Night is the heart. We will conjure the fire, you and I, but we will be conjured by the dark. The stars are hungry."
  29. ↑ You have given up your intrigues, Fallen London "The heavens have their squabbles. The White, the Red, the Gold, are only names for colours of a thousand subtleties. Their laws and alliances are a perfect tension."
  30. ↑ Enter the lighthouse., Fallen London "No door - marked with the glyph that means ‘a place between spheres of influence’ - is uncovered by no light [...]"
  31. ↑ Enter the lighthouse., Fallen London "Here he once stood, on the border between Parabola and the Wilderness [...]"
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