The scientist who chose to stay. The only person in the sector who fully understands what she's sitting on.
Mid-40s. Five months of voluntary isolation have left her calm in a way that reads as either peace or resignation. She wears the same Hegemony research coat every day, meticulously cleaned. She has not asked for extraction. She will not.
Beneath the Hegemony xenoarchaeology station on Nightfall is one of the five lattice nodes — the Anchor. It is not dormant. It is active and suppressed, which is far more unstable than simply dormant. Nen has been running daily Way-attuned suppression rituals for five months. She doesn't know why it's active. She knows that if it stops being suppressed, the resulting resonance wave would be felt across two systems.
Nen has figured out that the node is responding to signal activity elsewhere in the sector. Every time another artifact is disturbed — the Carrier in The Silent Cargo, the Mirror at the Wedding — the Anchor pulses harder. She doesn't know about the other artifacts. She just knows it's getting worse.
If the crew extracts her (against her will or with her agreement), the Anchor's suppression lapses. The signal strengthens sector-wide. This is felt by every Way-sensitive being in Procyon as a sudden, disorienting opening. If the crew helps her find a permanent solution instead, this is an Act 2 downtime project with significant campaign consequences.