【英文搬运】星球大战：遭遇超自然第七章：地狱环_世界信息

Few came to Attahox anymore. The abject poverty and naked desperation of ateeming populace reliant on narcotics and violence contributed much tothat. The fact that the Empire had at one time used it as a garbage dumpdidn’t exactly help with tourism, either. There was simply nothing on Attahox worthvisiting. Even the criminal element knew they could do better on worlds like VorzydV, Keyorin, Nar Shaddaa, or a thousand other dens of iniquity. As to the ExaltedTorgaigne, once the major crime syndicate on Attahox, they had fractured into half adozen splinter groups that never rose above bullying and minor gang wars.

Early in my career, Professor Misqa Tonique and I uncovered the relics of a lost civilization on Attahox. The tantalizing hints and alluring glimpses they gave into the dimpast were the first inklings of the journey I’d one day take.

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A rarity in her field, Professor Tonique was predisposed to let the evidence speakfor itself, eschewing the common practice of overlaying her findings with conjecture,drumming up support for it amongst like-minded colleagues, and then pushing it tothe scientific journals to try and make it the prevailing theory. She left conclusionsfor specialists to determine, even if those conclusions did not align with her owninterpretations.

Some weeks ago, she sent me confirmation of undeniable congruence between theOphidian Grotesques scattered across the galaxy. The sculptures were aptly named.Their reliefs depicted disturbing tentacled, serpentine, and horned beings in lurid detailalongside other strange sigils that could not be identified from any known script,pointing to the existence of an ancient cult that had once been present throughoutthe galaxy. What relation these deities had to those I’d previously written about, theFather of Shadows and his cohorts, or the primordial Sith couldn’t yet be ascertained.Secret societies position their sinister gods as Bringers of Wisdom, obscuring the truthbehind elaborate codes, numbers, symbols, patterns, and coincidences, things hidingin plain sight—snares for the unwary seeker—all made in sneering mockery of thecivilized world, as if to say, “We are far above you, around you, watching as you goabout your pathetic lives, oblivious like vermin, pawns to be used, manipulated, anddestroyed at our whims.” In order to conceal the aversion new acolytes would feeltowards these things, cults engaging in such malice would not reveal themselvesuntil the adept was of a higher level… or trapped in their web.

If Professor Tonique knew what I was about to do, she would have done everythingin her power to discourage me. “We are not adventurers,” she once proclaimed. “Thehistorian’s job is the patient assessment of findings through the painstaking work ofresearch and applied knowledge.” And she is right, of course. But while I may not have believed in monsters, I did believe in monstrous men, and so I convinced myselfthat I was being guided by something important, greater than the academic calling,something my associates will call a “midlife crisis.” But if evidence could be found ofthe Osserians in Otherspace—inscriptions, engravings, monuments, anything—itwould give us a far more concrete picture of the Cosmic Wars and those powers thatfought for dominance in the ancient galaxy.

And with a possible map at my disposal, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Attahox was not our destination but rather its mysterious and accursed neighbor,the Hellhoop, a name derived from the Corellian and Naboo mythologies and tied tothe Six Gates of Chaos, referring to the encircling netherworld where the spirits of thewicked go after death. Since most of the ships that disappeared in the vicinity of theHellhoop year after year were pirates, scavs, and slavers, it seemed an appropriatemoniker, though now that I looked upon the region, I shuddered at the legends.

The Hellhoop was hardly the only region with such a doom-laden reputation, butthe records of other worlds were scarce or fragmented. There was Ultra, said to beencircled by a graveyard of ships and haunted by a malevolent entity, and Pendar, apocket dimension reported to be surrounded by a “life zone” that housed bizarre andterrifying creatures. But one terrifying event within the Hellhoop had occurredrelatively recently, and it was credited to the most trustworthy of sources.

In the year following the Battle of Yavin, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca made a pitstop on Attahox for what Han thought would be an easy job smuggling out Phosovane Salts, a base ingredient of certain painkillers in the Outer Rim. It was thencontrolled by the Exalted Torgaigne, a paltry criminal organization then run by theruthless Vor Childermoss. Han hadn’t counted on the erstwhile assassin coming afterthem. Knowing he was not one to be trifled with, Han flew the Falcon into theHellhoop. Undaunted, Childermoss followed… culminating in both getting swallowed up in the maw of a colossal, iridium ship.

As discussed in my previous treatise, the crew of that strange vessel revealed themselves to be the repugnant cult of Five. They killed the crime lord and his henchmanand kept Han and Leia alive for physical and psychological torture. Thinking theWookiee a mere pet, they put him in with other captive animals that they used fortheir experiments and one particularly odd prisoner, an energy-being made up of aglowing mass of interlinked, pulsating orbs called Wutzek. The Five had been particularly proud of this capture, which they claimed was the last of the Force Demons.When Chewbacca escaped his bonds and freed Wutzek, the entity wasted no time.With a burst of white light, he disintegrated the sadistic Five. The Wookiee waspermitted to depart with his friends and menagerie. Once the Falcon was at a safedistance, the cult’s ship was destroyed by a flash of light that resembled a gargantuanimage of the liberated Force Demon itself.

No one knew what became of the powerful entity, but as the Falcon traveled to asanctuary world to drop off the rescued animals, Chewbacca informed his companionsthat Wutzek had given him a glimpse of the origins of the galaxy in which he was shown numerous beings of his kind roaming the dawn stars, and said that he intendedto prepare the galaxy for new offspring. Nothing had been heard of him since.

Every year there are numerous pilots who report scary stories in various parts ofthe galaxy. Most are the result of too much spice and lum or a misunderstanding ofexotic cultures. But this was Han and Leia, and as their story spread over the years,the Hellhoop was scrupulously avoided.

Upon our approach, we passed through the eerie, ringed configuration of asteroids,I was relieved to see no giant ship waiting to swallow us up, nor any bizarre entity ofpulsating lights. I’d met a few exotic aliens on my journeys but nothing quite likewhat the crew of the Falcon had described.

According to Han and Leia, the cult of Five said they had, “left the normal dimension centuries ago,” so that when they were finally freed, they were relieved to findthey were back in Realspace. This likely meant that the cult spent their time inanother dimension. Was the Hellhoop a portal to this other dimension? Was there aplace where the walls were thin or where the realms overlapped? Since the cult’s shipwas never reported anywhere outside the Hellhoop, it must have remained within it,catching those unwary enough to enter.

Of course, it was possible that their vessel had a unique propulsion system thatcould take them in and out of Otherspace, but my guess was that they accessed somegravitic anomaly in space. Perhaps they were the ones who’d opened that door incenturies past… If their ship was the key to entrance, then our journey would end indisappointment… or worse. But the Char Ontee arrived there by accident, as had theRebels. Also, the Cult of Light, a benign offshoot of the Charon Death Cult, managedto escape by means of the hyperdrive technology they’d developed. This all suggestedthat no special vessel was required for passage.

Admittedly, I had only partial information and speculations. If craft were stilldisappearing—and reports persisted that they did—that meant the phenomenonwasn’t entirely due to the cult’s abductions. Where were they disappearing to? Theconventional answer was a lurking, hidden black hole, and if that was the case we’dbe pulled in, as countless ships before us, and crushed by the immense gravitationalforces that would transform us into dark energy and recycle us back into the universe.Regardless, we’d be dead.

But there are some who believe that these rare celestial anomalies in space are actually wormholes that could transfer one to other regions of space. Interstellar cartographers have scoffed at this conjecture, but the Gree Hypergates created what wereessentially Hyperspace wormholes and, in his Book of Anger, Darth Sidious described away to use the Dark Side to do so. The Quintarad, in the Void of Aogros, deep in WildSpace, may be one such example, though due to the tangle of plasma that engulfs it, noone has ever survived a probe of that region. I suspect that the appropriately namedDemonsgate had also been a portal at one time.

If this venture failed, my next option would be the Endor Gate. Myths on the Endor moon assert that it opened in the past to allow the Wizards of the Night Spiritaccess to our realm. It was later closed with the help of a mystical gem called theSunstar-Shadowstone…

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