Vltra

"Only the worst kind of people go to the Vltra. You don't go there because of murder, rape, or treason; we have Kordan for that. The Vltra is a whole other beast entirely, and if you go there, not even the Kordanians will accept you. Only the damned go to the Vltra."

- Vashan Madora

The Vltra is the deepest, darkest realm of the Ulteria, created by the Gods of Xyon to hold the most reviled members of the Novan race. Only the truly condemned of their people are sent to the Vltra, and are considered monsters without any chance of redemption. Those sent to suffer in the horrors of the Vltra are typically driven insane by the things they see and suffer. The interior of the Vltra is likened to Hell by many of the Numen, and the tortures beyond mortal comprehension, surpassing both human and Novan thought.

The Novus who inhabit the realm are known as the Maradhi upon entering it, a stigma that haunts them even after the Numen gods fancy the thought of granting lenancy to those that cross their vast minds. They are no longer considered Novans, and never accepted into mainstream society after their release, though some may make an appeal to the Numen for mercy. As it is known, the Vltra has been escaped by a number of Novus, and an unusually large army managed to escape the realm by way of unknown means, and has been attacking Xyon for centuries.

The truth hidden from most of the Novus and their allies, is that the Vltra is in fact a prison built to hold Novus influenced by the extragalactic being known as the Atanka. It has been conquering the minds of unsuspecting Novans, and turning them against their people in preparation for a war that it has planned on waging for untold millennia. Managed by the organization known as the Distaff, the Vltra has served as the only known means of keeping the armies of the Atanka at bay long enough for the Numen to develop a way to counter it. Time, however, is running out.

History
"To this very day, even the most dangerous and evil of our society thank the gods for their creation of the Vltra. With the likes of the Maradhi running around, there is little one could find fault with."

- Kumori Ishikawa

Early History
The creation of the Vltra was and still remains a very controversial matter in Novan society, large because of the reasons behind it and the people (or animals as many put it) it was designed to hold. The Vltra's history stretches back to 1,715 AE, with the convening of the Numen gods at the Xai capital city of Oxida Nova. The Numen had recieved disturbing reports of several crimes commited across the lands of the planet. Many Novus had been mutilated and brutalized post mortem, and signs carved into the remains of the bodies. Investigations had been launched to discover the culprits and the meanings behind the signs. The Numen, suspected something more, something influencing their children from beyond the Ulteria.

To the horror of the Numen and the Novus lieutenants, a deviant cult had developed in the underbelly of many Novus cities, and had been drawing many of the Novus into its fold. This cult had no name, but their "god" did. Known as the Atanka, or "horror" to the cultists, this beast had been on its way to the Milky Way Galaxy for some centuries, and the Arcan had long since known of its coming. As it turned out, the Arcan had originally planned for the Numen and their forseen Novus children to wage a war against the Atanka, and hopefully defeat and destroy the best. Their plan, however, had been foiled by their inability to share information with the Numen, allowing the latter to resent and later destroy their civilization, unaware of their true fate.

According the reports given to the Numen and the aides, one out of every ten million Novus was out of tune with their connection to the Gods of Xyon. This caused their mind to break as they were never created with the ability to survive alone outside of contact with the Numen. While the average Novus was perfectly in-sync with their parents, these abnormalities had been born with no connection to the world around them, and were for all intents and purposes, psychopathic murderers in waiting. The signs themselves were in fact symbols to a being the Numen had never known existed, and as it turned out, the Arcan had planned to use them as weapons against this creature, leading armies against the beast that was on its way to their galaxy.

Final Solution
As the information on these savages grew, as well as the unknown creature influencing them, the danger presented by them did as well. The Novus had discovered that the Maradhi, or disease, as Sadaka Icharia had named them, were "converting" or infecting others they encountered in preparation for the arrival of their unseen master. The cult-like organization created by these Maradhi was something akin to a hive-mind, a connection created by the members to the Atanka beyond Xyon's space. As this collective grew stronger, so too did its power over the minds of others. The Maradhi, though having purpose, were not merely content with preparing for their master's arrival. The Maradhi defiled the remains of the dead and the slain, as a tribute to their new master, commiting acts that even for the hardy Numen and the Novus were beyond imagination.

To keep these monsters from expanding, the Numen developed a solution to the problem. They would creation a realm so deep within the Ulteria, so far beyond the Aedis, that nothing could escape it, not even the most powerful of the Novus, all with the goal of weakening the growing army of traitors that were to prepare for a war in the distant future. With that concluded, the Numen personally went on a campaign along with the Amari and the Sankari to hunt down and incarcirate the Maradhi in their entirety. This campaign lasted for a decade, much to the horror of the Numen themselves. As Miyako Ishikawa had discovered, there were millions of Maradhi roaming the planet, largely due to the extent of which the Numen had been unaware of the problem.

These "lost ones" had been hiding in plain sight on Xyon, influencing Novus within society to join their numbers. With time against them, the Gods waged an all-out secret war to contain the Maradhi. In time, the loin's share of the Maradhi had locked up within the Vltra of the course of a century, and the Numen washed their hands of the matter and proceding on to other "issues of importance". However, this would not be the last they would see of their forsaken children. The Maradhi plague was spreading across the planet of Xyon, infecting the unborn and attacking the minds of the weak. The need to contain the problem led to a simple solution to the matter. Using the unique auras of the Novus, those with no aura as was the case with the Maradhi, would be sent to the Vltra regardless of age, standing, or connections. There was to be no quarter given.

The Hunt
While this was unpopular with the Novus to see members of their friends and family abducted, the belief that a unknown force was seeking to usurp power from the Numen gods was enough to placate the Novans desire to know why their loved ones were being sent away. Given the danger of letting the truth of this knowledge loose into the public, no one outside of the Gods and their trusted confidants were told of the situtation. A special organization known as the Distaff was formed to hunt down the Maradhi and send them to the Vltra. Named after a textile device, the Distaff likewise spun a strong web around the Maradhi and enclosed them within the confines of the Vltra.

With an all-species task force developed to contain the Maradhi threat, the Vltra's "population" grew exponitionally, with tens of thousands of Maradhi thrown within the realm's tight confines. There, the minds and hearts of the Maradhi rotted and twisted more so than they had in realspace, and a special type of hatred developed for their parents who had torn them from their "new father" and prevented them from giving Xyon to the creature. The Vltra would not prove to be secure as the Numen would later discovered. As the Numen would later discover, the Atanka had managed to rip a hole into the Vltra, albeit a small one, and allowed the Maradhi to escape onto Xyon in their new twisted form. However, this was not to be for some 13,000 years.

Description
The Vltra is often called "the realm within a realm within a realm", given that it resides within the Aedis, which in turn resides within the Ulteria. It is the ultimate prison or criminals who have commited the ultimate crimes, and are sentenced to spend the rest of existance within the pocket universe. While to humans and other non-Novans, the Vltra may seem either to be a place of ease or void of justice as the criminal is free of paying the price for their deeds. However, to the Novus, it isn't the carrying out or absence of punishment, but the sheer isolation and insanity that takes over. Spending hundreds even thousands of years alone in a dark universe surrounded by other equally violent Novus who cannot be killed, but temporarily "put to sleep" as the saying goes, one cannot help but to lose their mind and cry out for a way of escape.