#i thought also maybe some of the more niche lore stuff like the aphelion but i actually don't want it. i want it to be a mystery forever

[thefirstknife]

Hi Bel! If YOU could make an expansion, what would you theme it around?

I've been thinking about this ask for 2 days and I still don't know, there are so many things I would want to go into it. It's impossible for me to choose. Possibly my biggest interest is exploring the universe in some way and uncovering its history.

Instead, I am asking all of YOU what would you theme an expansion around. Put it in the tags.

[thefirstknife]

Aphelion's Rest lost sector has always been intriguing to me as well because it seems obvious as a reference to the Aphelion, but there's nothing really specific about its design. At some points I thought, if Aphelion is a living creature, that the place could be some sort of a lair or maybe a place where it died. However, there's nothing to prove it either way.

The only thing that stands out in the place for me is that there's a lot of glimmer on the floor at the end around the chest, with a lot of random items like pots and statues:

It has the vibe of a burial, to me. Or maybe some place of importance (worship?) where you leave offerings. Honestly could be anything! It could also just be a name for the sake of a lore reference. The rest of the sector is just a cave with a small open space with some trees and a rock. It's a really small sector in general. I've always been interested in if and how it relates to Aphelion in general, but there's no real answer to this.

Also:

Same!! I often see people lamenting stuff that stays a mystery and isn't explored, usually with comments about how it's a wasted potential or something like that. And sometimes, sure. Sometimes there are things that were clearly meant to be explored and then never were for various reasons.

But stuff like this, when it's something niche and small, it adds so much to the feeling of the setting. It feels real. There are indescribable and unknown mysteries in the huge universe that can never be solved. Things that have been going on for possibly thousands of years, or more, turning into myths and legends. For me, one of the reasons why scifi is my favourite thing ever is that it's so grand in scale by design that it leaves these mysteries feeling natural. Like, of course we don't know so much about the universe. Of course there are incomprehensible things out there. I'm also a firm proponent of not overexplaining things.

I wouldn't be super opposed to this being explored ofc, but I would like some mysteries to remain. This falls into that category for me.

What’s the aphelion mystery?

The Aphelion is some sort of mysterious creature (?) that so far only the Awoken and Calus' people seemed to know about. There is no description of it, only that it's followed by intense radiation, the colour blue, and that it kills everything in sight. Sjur Eido, however, has been noted as having survived an attack which is wild. This lore tab shows it basically destroying an entire space station mysteriously. The lines here refer to it from the perspective of a Techeun.

Shuro Chi: The Techeuns you see here died while they were in trance together. Sometimes when you are in communion you cannot see what is coming close, like the Aphelion. Their last words were these "First it shimmered… then it crawled… then it screamed." Shuro Chi: These three Techeuns were victim to the Aphelion. I pray you never see it my friend, because no matter what gods you have killed, you will not survive it.

This is from Calus' fanfic so the information might be a little bit dubious, however, Aphelion is mentioned like this:

After the reclamation of the Athenaeum World X, which held in it the secrets of one of the most advanced predators in the system, the Aphelion, which had the power to devastate whole worlds in the blink of an eye, the Shadow was able to use this lost knowledge to rebuild the Loyalist fleet stronger and more magnificent than ever.

That's the entirety of the lore on it. It's possible that the lore tab for Star-Eater Scales possibly mentions a glimpse of it. It's about an Eliksni who clearly suffers from some sort of hallucination while in a space ship and sees "blue particulates" past his window, which completely disappear by the end. Blue is also associated with the Aphelion which, combined with radiation might be referring to this.

It makes me think that it may not be a creature at all, but a personified concept of radiation that exists in Awoken folklore. In the lore tab about a space station being destroyed, some of the inhabitants were yelling that it is the "Stalking Core." This is interesting because it's mentioned in Marasenna during the Distributary days:

Most beloved are the fissioneers, who vaulted us to power on a world without petrochemicals. May they forgive the many stories of horror we have told in their memory. May they in particular forgive the lurid stories of the molten lead reactor, and the twelve who were impaled to the ceiling by their control rods, and the Core That Stalked.

Whatever it is, this is all we know and it compels me. Either explanation is really cool to me and I genuinely wouldn't want to know more. It's much more intriguing like this where you can let your imagination fill in the gaps. Of course I would also really like to know and explore this concept, but I don't think it's necessary. It's one of those things in lore that just leave me with a proper feeling of wonder and awe.