I'm midway through my first replay of Into the Nexus after almost 5 years now, and a showerthought occurred to me.

What if planet Tabora in the Bogon Galaxy was the spot of some form of Netherverse activity?

The point which forms the basis of the theory would have to be about desert crystals. Not only do they emanate the pinkish hue that's associated with the Nether dimension, but these crystals also have the ability the empower its user to perform "magic" - as both the New Age Mystic and Vendra Prog displayed. The former was able to reconstruct a destroyed ship, while the latter could do something similar in reactivating the maintenance/security robots aboard the prison transport ship she was held in.

Another reason why this is plausible is because the Desert Dune Monster looks strikingly similar to the Nether Leader. Isn't it odd that Mr. Eye is the only one in his race that happens to possess only a single eye? He's the "biggest and the proudest" of the Nethers, but why aren't there many more that look like him? It's safe to say that there may be other similarly vision-constrained ones in their dimension, and they just may not have turned up on Yerek when the Progs opened the portal. Maybe whatever activity happened on Tabora led to the migration of such a species into the planet, following which they spent the next several decades or centuries adapting to the planet's desert environment, gaining the appearance that we know them to have today. Another point that supports is that they are able to manipulate the pink Nether energy in the form of lasers from their single eyes.

As for what activity happened, one could infer that MegaCorp attempted to harness the telekinetic energy of the Nether crystals (which they were mining) for their own purposes, and inadvertently ended opening portals on the planet, which were ended up being unstable to the point that they imploded on themselves, creating a radioactive aftermath that eliminated all fauna and flora (those formerly vast jungles?) on the planet. The dune crawlers and dune monsters were formed by mutating with the native species of the Netherverse, and the crystals were the energy remnants around which rocks crystallized.

And the Mystic? He was probably just the lead scientist behind the project, driven to the brink of insanity from the madness that he unleashed. Ever wonder why he also just happened to be on Grelbin at almost the same time as he was on Tabora? He's mutated to the point that he interdimensional travel enables him to travel across any point in the main dimension's space, in no time, like the Nether brutes are also able to do. Oh and, he was also simultaneously on the Aranos if the Thugs-4-Less informercial is to be believed.

I don't think that Insomniac or TJ Fixman intended for any of this, and this is just a fun theory that I came up with. I think it's a line that the story for a future game could follow, if they want to follow up with the Lombax, Nether, and Angela's disappearance storylines. :)