Great Wound

"The readings... I've never seen anything like this. I don't think anyone has. It's almost as if an astronomical claw tore a great wound in subspace here."

— Commander Carrie Kirby, CNS Torch

The Great Wound is a star system comprised of no fewer than eleven black holes located in close proximity to each other. Discovered by the Commonwealth of Man science ship CNS Torch in 2243 CE, the system has remained off-limits by order of the Colonial Navy ever since. The primary black hole of the system, the eponymous "Great Wound" itself, is an intermediate-mass black hole with a mass approximately 4,000 times that of Deneb. The Great Wound is surrounded by ten other black holes, though these do not appear to be ordinary black holes created by the collapse of stellar objects. Instead, they appear to be tears in spacetime itself, rupturing the boundary between realspace and the dimension of subspace. The immense gravitational forces, subspace storms, and roving void clouds (which appear to congregate in this system) has prevented the establishment of any permanent presence in the system.

The name "Great Wound" comes from Commander Carrie Kirby, captain of the UNS Torch, who described it as such in her report after surveying the system. Despite the occasional followup survey from the Colonial Navy, no suitable explanation has been found to account for the creation of the Great Wound. Some of the theories proposed include a superweapon capable of destroying an entire star system, a backfired experiment that collapsed the system's star, attempts at teleportation or novel forms of FTL travel, or a failed breach from another dimension, among others. Ultimately, the truth is likely to remain unknown, joining the ever-growing list of mysteries about the universe.