Located beyond the Radama Void, the Antei Nebula is the term given by the native inhabitants of Antei to a region of the Stygian Caldera, the large nebulosity that surrounds Sith Space, the region of the Outer Rim Territories that contained the worlds of the First Sith Empires. The Stygian Caldera acts as a hyperspatial breakwater, it is difficult to navigate, and once protected the Sith Empire from attack until it finally gave up its shelter in the Great Hyperspace War.
Nevertheless, even today the Caldera remains painstakingly hard to traverse, which may well explain why the local species failed to master interstellar travel, and hence why it was to the Antei system that the Dark Lord of the Sith Marka Ragnos chose to banish the renegade Sith Lord Okemi after his uprising in 5050 BBY. There, deep within the Caldera, Okemi was effectively trapped, imprisoned for the next eleven hundred years until the arrival of Tiamat and Ferran.
Following the Obscuration of 2950 BBY, the Antei system was drawn by the nearby star Antares into a new a binary star system. As Antares pulled Ante and her planets into orbit, there were collisions of various magnitudes. Scientists believe that both the Antei and Antares systems may have had up to ten more planets with numerous moons, but during the merger, some of these planets collided. The remains of those planets make up what we today refer to as the Shroud. The particles, rocks and other debris found orbit around the perimeter of the Antei system, serving as a strong barrier against entry.
While there may be other systems hidden throughout the Antei Nebula, one that is known for certain is Arx, located on the very edges of the Stygian Caldera. Arx was once a fortress world of the Sith Empire, believed to have been a watch post from which Ragnos could ensure Okemi remained confined to his prison world, though today it is little more than but another haunted wasteland of the old Sith Empire.
Known systems
Within the Antei Nebula
Antei
Antares
Outside the Nebula
Arx
Trivia
After the Shroud was first created back in 2003, for years confusion reigned over whether it was a localised phenomenon around the Antei system itself or an ordinary nebula cloud that encompassed numerous systems. In 2007, Raken at long last put an end to doubt by releasing the comprehensive history of Antei that has since formed the backbone of Brotherhood astrology. Nonetheless, some confusion remained over whether the "Antei Nebula" was part of the Shroud, whether there were two "Shrouds", or whether it was something completely different. Finally, in 2009, the release of the Essential Atlas saw the introduction of the Stygian Caldera on the outskirts of Sith Space, at long last providing a canon explanation for what the phrase "Antei Nebula" may in fact have referred to all along.