Subspace Locis
"The brief said the shadows would be stable. Said I could walk a kilometer on this stuff, grab some samples, and pop back out. Said the Sentients here weren't active. Said a lot of things. The clay's bleeding, my recorder keeps whispering in a dead woman's voice, and I think I saw my childhood cat just now. I'm retiring. If I make it back."
In the study of Redspace, the hostile and paradoxical dimension underlying conventional space-time, researchers have adopted the term "locus" (plural: "locis") to refer to distinct and quasi-stable regions within this ever-shifting hyperspatial landscape. While navigators often refer to these locis by names borrowed from Greek mythology, such as Styx and Lethe, scientists within the Pan-Solar Consortium and affiliated institutions rely on more systematic identifiers, rooted in Dimensional Gradient Topology (DGT) and classified by unique three-letter codes. Each locus type reflects a different psychophysical and temporal topology, governed by wholly alien principles.
Type I — SBT (Subspace Boundary Threshold) / Styx
The SBT is the closest approximation of Redspace to realspace, forming a kind of porous and permeable boundary layer. Its defining traits include low Inversion Entropy, relatively predictable temporal flow, and mild Ψ-Flux densities. Visual perception in this region is marked by hazy, red-tinted nebulae with wide visibility. It is navigable by appropriately shielded vessels for limited periods, and many of the few successful Redspace transit runs were conducted within or near SBT zones.
While still dangerous, SBT locis are considered marginally survivable, largely due to their tendency to repel higher-order Redspace Adversarial Intelligences (RAIs), whose proximity to realspace seems to degrade their structure. However, Verminous and Minor RAIs remain present in unpredictable concentrations, and Sentients have been known to skirt the edges for reasons poorly understood.
Type II — LAR (Low Activity Region) / Lethe
The LAR constitutes the "deep vacuum" of Redspace—an immense, stagnant fog of red opacity devoid of structure, light, or apparent meaning. Navigation in LARs is functionally impossible; visual cues collapse, instruments fail, and time behaves as a thick, treacly suspension. Though time does flow here, it often does so without utility: one may spend an apparent moment and lose or gain months on reentry to realspace.
These locis are populated primarily by Supersentient RAIs, beings of such incomprehensible scale and cognition that their very presence warps the local topology. LARs are also transited by other RAIs attempting to avoid detection. Unfortunately, Supersentients are not dormant here—they are hunting. Vessels and other RAIs caught in their wake may be dissected mentally, physically, and metaphysically before ceasing to exist in any coherent narrative of time.
Type III — NPZ (Noospheric Projection Zone) / Acheron
NPZs are Redspace "landmasses," composed of the projected Subspace Shadows cast by sentient minds in realspace. These shadows cluster and adhere through an unknown principle resembling gravity, eventually forming celestial bodies of enormous and irregular mass. Some are asteroid-sized; others reach Jovian proportions. Their surfaces are malleable and responsive to will, and they can be shaped by dominant entities, especially Sentient RAIs.
Within NPZs, the geometry often mimics the psyche of the dominant RAI: twisted spires of hate, sprawling baroque oubliettes of despair, and occasionally human-like ruins from long-dead hosts. These locations are headquarters for "Knights" and "Presidents," lesser and greater Sentient RAIs respectively, who mold the substance of the NPZ into their dominions. While landings on NPZs have occurred, notably by the Hellfire Cabal and the Stellaris Mining Consortium, they are almost always one-way trips.
Type IV — EII (Entity Infiltration Isocluster) / Phlegethon
EIIs resemble NPZs in appearance but differ radically in function and origin. Rather than being composed of noospheric mass, these locis are extruded aggregations formed by RAIs themselves, often under the influence of a Supersentient "overlord." They serve as hives, warrens, or spiritual conurbations for swarms of lesser RAIs, and exist in opposition to human perception and sanity.
The architecture of an EII is chaotic, dug downward rather than built upward, with narrow corridors and hive tunnels inhabited by millions of Minor and Verminous intelligences. Supersentients that "rule" EIIs do so through fear alone, seldom residing within them. These clusters are frequently at war with each other, as RAIs kill one another by instinct unless held in check. No human has ever survived entering an EII.
Type V — TVC (Temporal Vortex Corridor) / Cocytus
TVCs are where Redspace's most dangerous trait manifests: chronotemporal dislocation. These corridors form eddies and streams through LARs, carving navigable paths with unpredictable and nonlinear consequences. Travelers entering TVCs may emerge minutes before their departure, centuries after, or even in divergent timelines where causal memory has been rewritten.
Despite the apparent unpredictability, Supersentient RAIs navigate TVCs flawlessly, implying a governing logic or mathematical model far beyond current comprehension. To human navigators, they are pure hazard—unmappable and unknowable. Instruments fail entirely within a TVC, and even attempts to chart them post facto are unreliable. Still, many desperate captains have chosen the Cocytus over capture or death, often vanishing entirely from known reality.
Final Notes
Though science resists poetic terminology, the names given to Redspace locis by navigators have proven uncannily accurate in tone, if not in origin. Styx protects, Lethe forgets, Acheron mourns, Phlegethon burns, and Cocytus wails. The study of these locis remains one of the most dangerous and morally fraught endeavors in postwar human science, its practitioners risking not only life but soul—if such a thing even exists.
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