as charted by Doran Valenus, Cartographer Primus
THE SHROUDED PASS
The sector known to navigators as "Shrouded Pass", located in the Terminus region of The Forge, consists of four currently charted settlements, as follows:
VESPER (Coordinates H-10-5)
Home to approximately 45,000 citizens, the serene world known as Vesper is the breadbasket of the Shrouded Pass and is one of the most vital worlds in the Terminus region. Vesper orbits a burning yellow star (Minhar) at the ideal distance for comfortable settlement and productivity. Its atmosphere is breathable by humans without artificial assistance. Its complex ring systems are easily visible even in the daytime sky and positively beautiful at night.
Vesper is a "Garden World", consisting of several diverse biomes and home to an abundance of diverse flora and fauna. Wide blue oceans are home to a number of larger islands and archipelagos, whose primary business is fishing. The rolling grasslands are home to much of the planet's agriculture - from small family homesteads, to larger agribusinesses using advanced farming techniques. Rolling mountains separate this Great Prairie from vast tropical rainforests that are home to many seldom-seen and unusual species.
Citizens of Vesper value personal freedom and autonomy, and as a result the world suffers from ineffectual government authority. Despite this, most citizens abide by the tenets of the Covenant without the need for external interference. If there is any downside to this lack of centralized planetary authority, it lies in the potential risk of unscrupulous harvesting of the great rainforests by lumber concerns.
REDHAVEN (Coordinates H-15-1)
Redhaven is a deep space colony built within a massive, repurposed cargo vessel. It is home to approximately 7200 residents. It is governed by a localized guild of industrialists and engineers, known as the Crimson Consortium, and the work force consists largely of indentured servants. Most of the necessities of life must be imported from Vesper, and though water and air can be generated from ice mining within the system, the workers of Redhaven must still pay for use of these vital resources.
The station lies within the Mintaka system. The star is a smoldering red star. Only one habitable planet can be found in the system, a Desert world called Arrakoth. Though the atmosphere is breathable, the harsh temperatures and massive sandstorms make settlement an unappealing notion. As such, the planet has no permanent inhabitants. As the miners of Redhaven gather the great variety of minerals and ice from the system's asteroid belts, there is talk of expansion, to see what natural resources (if any) can be found upon Arrakoth.
AEGIS (Coordinates H-11-10)
AEGIS is an orbital station above a world called Boreas. The planet orbits Nodus, a smoldering red star, and as such does not receive a great amount of light or heat. Consequently, Boreas is a dim and icy world. Little else is known of Boreas, because of the significance of the station that orbits it.
The AEGIS station is the headquarters for the Keepers in the Shrouded Pass and adjacent sectors. It has a crew of around 900 Keepers and naturally is a bastion of unyielding authority. The purpose of the AEGIS station is solely one of defense and surveillance. Only limited starport services are made available to civilian travelers.
The system's proximity to Vesper is surely contributory to that world's serenity and abundance. While one might expect the vast and corrupt enterprise of Redhaven to attract more of the Keepers' attention, it is somewhat distant from AEGIS and technically operates within Covenant law - indenture is contractually entered into willingly, and systems are given great latitude in managing their free market economies.
NYX (Coordinates H-3-9)
If there is any settlement in the Shrouded Pass deserving of the Keepers' attention and response, the settlement known as Nyx would certainly be it. It is aptly named (meaning "nothing" in one of the dead pre-Exodus languages), for Nyx is a small, ramshackle station on the smallest moon of a Jovian world called Nimbus. The system is home only to Nimbus and a few smaller gas giants, as its parent star (Almach) is an unstable star showing signs of an impending supernova
Nyx is home to a transient population of somewhere between 20 and 30 inhabitants. As there are no easily obtained natural resources, the residents of Nyx survive by piracy and raiding. As cargo vessels pass through this part of the sector only infrequently, the inhabitants often survive at a level of mere subsistence, which is a factor in its small and impermanent population. Passage to Nyx is uncharted, and the station remains in operation only because of its small size and inaccessibility to Keepers.