Template:!Nebula InfoboxThe Spider Nebula is a very large star-forming region in Florathel, most likely the largest in the local universe. The nebula contains many large clusters of high-mass stars, including the most massive star known to the Florathel Subcluster Nations, Alnert A.
The Spider Nebula is the center of the Republic of the Spider Nebula, a large nation based around the Archas System, which is currently at war with the Kormin Empire and Union of Narenna. As such, the nebula is utterly ravaged by war, with a vastly depleted population and ruined megastructures everywhere. A failed peace talk also took place in the nebula between the four warring nations of the region in 97443 CE, until it devolved into a brawl and collapsed.
The Spider Nebula is home to one of the most luminous stars in the Florathel Subcluster, Alnert, a binary between two Wolf-Rayet stars. This star system has recently been recaptured by the RSN from the Kormin Empire, and its dyson swarm is being rebuilt, so that it can become the energy hub it once was before the war. Both stars burn at roughly 3.87 million standard stellar luminosities, and is extremely bright visually with a combined absolute magnitude of -8.46 in visible light, though in all frequencies combined they would have an absolute magnitude -12.39, brighter by over a factor of 37. A civilization using all of this energy would be a Kardashev 2.7 all by itself. Alnert is embedded in a giant cluster of massive stars at the center of the nebula, which is composed of many extremely bright stars, some even brighter than Alnert.
The cluster, which is also the main ionising source of the nebula, is one of, if not the largest and brightest cluster in the universe. It weighs 258,000 solar masses and shines at approximately 610 million solar luminosities. It contains over 300 stars which shine over a million solar luminosities, and 62 Wolf-Rayet stars, both h-free and h-rich, and over 500 stars with masses over 100 solar masses. However, due to the incredible amount of dust in the outer regions of the Spider Nebula, this cluster is barely visible from regions just outside the nebula and completely invisible to most of Florathel.
Being so gigantic, the Spider Nebula contains many smaller nebulae, including the Spyhole Nebula, the Mountains of Creation, and others. There are also many, many tiny dust clouds surrounding newly formed stars, known as proplyds. These hide these stars from view, and the diffuse heat spread within them means that it is easy to hide even a large base within one, at least before they dissipate. This means that there are hundreds of thousands of population centers hidden away from the war, each one migrating to a new proplyd every so often.
