Editing The Space Between Stars

{{Major spoiler}}<blockquote>{{Sky Location|title1=The Space Between Stars|image1=Ruins ambience.png|region=[[The High Wilderness]]|alias=The Wastes<br>
The Graveyard of Stars}}
''"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."''<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|The Graveyard of Stars|Sunless Skies|}}</ref></blockquote>The '''Space Between Stars''', also called the '''Wastes''', is the frigid, dark, and windy space between living [[stars]].<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/Ambition:_the_Stars_are_Dying|Search for your friend|Sunless Skies|}} ''"The Wastes are st-starless spaces, cold and barren. Haunted by evil winds. She cannot survive there."''</ref> These impossibly vast swaths of the [[High Wilderness]]<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref> are littered with the frozen ruins of dead solar systems.<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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. "''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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?"''</ref> The light of distant stars - too far away for their protection to be of any assistance - drives human travelers mad<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/Star-Seared_Explorer|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."''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref> before they eventually freeze to death.<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref> At least some portions of the Space Between are referred to as the '''Graveyard of Stars'''; the suns here were slain under the rules and endless starlight-shed of the [[Courtesy]].<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref> Don't gaze into the darkness. It looks back.<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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.]"''</ref> 

The wind that haunts the Wastes is implied to be the howl of the ghosts of murdered stars.<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref> The [[Waste-Waif]], the god of the skies who watches over abandoned places,<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/Attention:_the_Waste-Waif|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."''</ref> dwells in the Space Between.<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref> 

The [[The Focused Albatross|Focused Albatross]] is a [[Parabolan]] creature that is half "cold-born," as one of its parents came from the Space Between.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Bring_in_the_Silk-Clad_Expert_as_a_Paid_Assistant_(30_FATE)|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.""''</ref> 

In the ''Sunless Skies'' timeline, the Singh-Jenkins Expedition, which charted swaths of the heavens under [[Albion]]'s banner,<ref name=":0">{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Surveyor%27s_Proposal|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."''</ref> was eventually lost in the Wastes.<ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Imagined_Contents_of_a_Span_of_Time_Between_When_an_Event_was_Supposed_to_Occur,_and_When_it_Finally_Did|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."''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Graveyard_of_Stars|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."''</ref> This expedition also pioneered the creation of transit relays, which allow warp jumps across the [[High Wilderness]].<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Citation|https://sunlessskies.fandom.com/wiki/Transit_Relay|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."''</ref> 

==A Place Between Spheres Of Influence==
{{Peckish spoiler small}}<blockquote>''"All these little lights to remember him by. Like and unlike the lights between."''<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Set_fires_around_the_city|Set fires around the city|Fallen London|}}</ref></blockquote>Frequent parallels are drawn between [[Mr Eaten]] and the Space Between Stars.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/A_Complete_Set_of_Preserved_Internal_Organs|Mr Eaten (Sacksmas)|Fallen London|}} ''"The space between stars is the space between your atoms. Nothingness dissects you. You are made hollow."''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Restitution_for_the_Drowned_Man|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."''</ref> His candles and/or his followers may perhaps be "lights between lights,"<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/The_Chapel_of_Lights|The Chapel of Lights|Fallen London|}} ''"Furtive faithful gather in the shadows between the many, many candles."''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Set_fires_around_the_city|Set fires around the city|Fallen London|}} ''"All these little lights to remember him by. Like and unlike the lights between."''</ref> and as he is now, he is said to be "dead as between."<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Grieve|Grieve|Fallen London|}} ''"[...] dead, the voice from the well, dead as stone, dead as time, dead as between."''</ref> He is also aware of, and thus alludes to, the [[Courtesy]] and how it spreads the [[Liberation of Night]].<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Char_yourself_with_Enigmas|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."''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/You_have_given_up_your_intrigues|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. But sometimes, in some places, the stars are hungry."''</ref> ''(The stars are hungry.)''

The glyph at the door of [[Winking Isle]]'s nonexistent lighthouse, "a place between spheres of influence,"<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Enter_the_lighthouse.|Enter the lighthouse.|Fallen London|}} ''"No door - marked with the glyph that means ‘a place between spheres of influence’ - is uncovered by no light [...]"''</ref> is a double entendre: it lies between [[Parabola]] and reality,<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Enter_the_lighthouse.|Enter the lighthouse.|Fallen London|}} ''"Here he once stood, on the border between Parabola and the Wilderness [...]"''</ref> but could also be a nod to the space between [[Judgements]]' spheres of influence.

==Spoken By Dead Stars==
{{Discordant spoiler small}}<blockquote><font color="b3e4ff">'''''this is how the correspondence sounds—'''''<br>'''''—when it's spoken between stars'''''</font><ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/This_is_how_the_correspondence_sounds%E2%80%94|this is how the correspondence sounds —|Fallen London|}}</ref></blockquote>The space between [[Correspondence]] sigils is likened to the space between stars.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Getting_to_know_Benthic|Getting to know Benthic|Fallen London|}} ''"Symbols of the Correspondence swim to mind, denoting the vast empty blackness of space between the stars."''</ref><ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Perhaps_you_can_remember_something_useful|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."''</ref> Drinking [[Moon-Misers|moonish]] water may induce comparable visions.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Buy_some_and_drink_it|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 [...] you are [...] conversing in words of twisting flame with some of its creators."''</ref>

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.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Speak_to_Mr_Fires_about_the_symbol_it_read|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."''</ref> 

==References==
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