The Vast

The Vast is a massive region of space where subspace is broken. Its borders shift, but its usual size is about 200 light years wide along the X axis of the galaxy, 60 light years along the Y axis, and about 100 light years thick along the Z axis. Its total volume is approximately 1.2 million light years, or 150 sectors as the Federation measures them.

Broken Subspace

To the naked eye, the Vast seems largely normal. Optical telescopes can see into it clearly. Impulse travel is unaffected.

Any technology that uses subspace is broken. The Vast is nearly impermeable to long range sensor readings, and even when readings can be gathered, they’re strange and often nonsensical.

Warp travel in the Vast is perilous. Warp engines may not work correctly, may break, and there have been multiple reports of them simply exploding.

Within the Vast, the strange subspace phenomena also seem to produce effects that leak into regular space. Effects reported from official and unofficial sources include, but are not limited to: time dilation and other temporal effects; random wormholes; disruption of psionics; and hallucations and other mental illnesses.

No one knows whether the Vast is a natural phenomena, a defense mechanism, the result of an accident, or anything else concerning its origin.

Routes in the Vast

It is claimed and there is evidence to support that there are routes through the Vast where warp travel works more or less normally. For example, the Rish-Natal traveled through the Vast regularly, and some civilian ships have been known to travel some distances within it.

However, all agree that these routes change and shift, much like the turbulent borders of the Vast, itself, and so, cannot be trusted.

Life in the Vast

There are apparently no warp-capable civilizations in the Vast. Therefore, barring any unusual phenomena leaking from the Vast into normal space, it is assumed life goes on as normal for the sentient species who exist within it.

To date, no confirmed contact with sentient species within the Vast has been made, although many are rumored to have taken place.