Visuban Cluster

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The Visuban Cluster was a patch of a thousand stars at the outer edge of an Elliptical Galaxy, charted by one of Gudersnipe Foundation’s earliest deep-space probes in the Second Age.

Incident

The Visuban Incident, popularly so called, occurred in the Fourth Age, when an over-worked, under-appreciated student completing a correlative update of G.S. star charts erased the Visuban Cluster from records because it ‘seemed funny at the time’. The student was later diagnosed with clinical psychosis and treated with a swift kick in the rear, followed by a long vacation. Because the student was working on a correlative update, when the job was finally completed it triggered a subroutine in the main computer that erased that cluster—and all related information—from the School’s central database. Since the entire Foundation used the school’s database, the Visuban Cluster was effectively removed from all knowledge.

The mistake was eventually discovered and remedied, late in the Fifth Age. To this day, residents of the cluster remain bitter toward the Gudersnipe Foundation, and the Visuban Ambassador to the Alliance Council in Arindell shoots out the light on the front porch of the Foundation Embassy every Heritage Festival: one of the principal Alliance Holidays. Because the Heritage Festival began during the Kamian Succession Wars, as a way for war refugees to celebrate and continue their customs and cultures, and Visuban's were erased for several thousand years, they consider that day an insult.

This practice began as an act of rage and retribution which the Foundation agreed was ‘well and truly justified’ and did not press charges. As the years passed, it became a tradition, and now hundreds of spectators in Kevlar gather each year around the Gudersnipe Foundation’s Embassy gates in Arindell and cheer as a black, unmarked car with the headlights off drives up, rolls down the window, issues a single shot, and speeds away. Very few spectators are injured annually.