The Veil

The Urt-Malak, commonly translated as the Veil and sometimes as the Tarnkappe, is a device developed by the during the  as one of their many attempts to stop the spread of the Flood. Designed to conceal planets and systems from the outside, it would eventually be overcome by the Flood after one of the system's AIs succumbed to the and permitted Flood forces through it. The system would remain inert for several hundred thousand years before a large portion of it was reactivated by xenoarchaeologists on the human colony of Valhalla in November of 2558, inadvertently and opportunely closing itself and several other systems off from the new threat of the.