System
the Sable Reach
Contested ground: rival powers, freebooters, the Veray, and the Ferren of Ostry. Compiled cross-reference — the FOUNDATION is authoritative.
Type
region (deep cluster / newly-reachable reach)
Position
Canon has not established a position
Description
A newly-opened reach charted via the Span. "Dark on the ledger" until a ship seeds nodes and makes first authenticated observations (§6 — "which is why you send a ship"). "Isn't empty and isn't safe" — contested by rival powers and freebooters, "at least one of whom hates the Earth flag on the hull" (Rade's Veray). Contains Ostry (the Ferren world), the Veray-held systems, and the Sable throat chokepoint where the Cairn sits.
Classification
A deep-space region / cluster (multiple systems), not a single body.
Wound state
The Sable corridor is the exemplar of the DISCOVERED cost-law: damage follows bottlenecks, not totals — a frontier hanging on "a handful of narrow corridors where the stress concentrates" (FOUNDATION §5). By S13 the reach's sky is the first humanity's own road visibly damaged.
Canon has not fixed this place in space, so the archive does not invent a coordinate for it. It appears in the gazetteer as unplaced rather than on the star map as a guess.
On the record
- ~2312 Opened and first-charted by the NV Dawnward; the road seeded; contact and conflict.
- ~2313–14 The Sable corridor licensed, industrial, "the artery both sides will now kill for"; Earth moving to militarise/ration/prioritise it after the finding.
- ~2316+ (S13, planned) The reach beyond the throat goes wound-riddled ("the road the Dawnward opens through the reach wounds the reach's sky across the following years" — the-cairn.md); the Cairn becomes the last stable junction before the wound complex.