New Year, New Direction

It's a new year, now 2020.   Fall was one of the most depressing times of my life.

We are now living in the almost, but-not-quite cyberpunk future that I envisioned as a child.

I'm back at it after taking many intellectual side-trips sinceAugust, 2019.

I have reinstalled Scrivener and my mapping software (Cosmographer by Profantasy) and have organized my workroom.

I have invested a few hundred dollars in self-published science fiction themed covers of novels for the future series.

I fear, with the impeachment failure, that America is on a dangerous path with no guardrail.

I'll catch up with the details of the setting very soon.

More working on Communications routes, the Sector Grows

Re-directing the routes of the large passenger liners, and trade ships in the expansion outward from the Core Worlds.

I keep having flashes of recall to ideas I had as a kid 40 years ago before I was so influenced by the science fiction of the 80s. 

How wide open that feeling was.  I had no basis for what could be, except for the best novels I had read.

Now, detailing these maps, I feel that all of this detail will be overlooked, but I will notice, so I put it in there, and keep a good record of what the setting is to make it a standard, and not just filling in backstory as I write.

I am looking for a sense of time and place.  I want fans to escape in their imagination to this Space Opera Setting.

I envision large Bulk Freighters, traveling through the Obai Sector, from world to world, bringing exotic goods with strange names. 

The crews are a mixed lot, from many varied worlds, not all speaking a common language. 

Pirate ships lie in wait in asteroid belts, and hidden in the atmospheres of Gas Giants, waiting for the opportunity to strike.

Noble houses war with each other for territory, fighting over resource extraction worlds.

As I look at the maps I am doing now, they fit my ideas better, with each fresh change.

There are now visible projections of Republic corporate expansion along the Spinward- Rimward line of march.




Lots of lines shifting now, as I see the enormous picture for the Sector of the Aurin Cluster.

Late nights, ports shifting around

Working on clearing out all of the communications lanes in the Rimward sectors.

Moving the larger starports.

Once I get a feel for what is what, I will straighten out the jump connection lanes for a layout that seems to make sense, given the setting.

Lots of minor detail work with numbers today. Tiring after a long week.

More work on the old routes to Rimward

I thought a lot about this last night, as I was going to sleep.

The Varala Drift seems like an area that is an unexplored frontier, yet surrounded by systems to Rimward that have multiple settled colonies and major worlds?

How could this be?

So I came to the idea that in the initial push to the Rim, worlds that were prime colonization sites, clean atmosphere, water, etc, got larger populations, and huge starports. Other worlds had native populations.

I have the idea that those non-human worlds that invented their own interstellar travel technology pushed out from their own homeworlds, settling those stars around their origin worlds.

I am reworking my maps with that alien expansion in mind.

Subsector C - The Lor Worlds

The Lor worlds will be the Main Corridor to the Varala Drift.

Looking at the Subsector map, the random generation has led to major communications routes in the lines Rimward of the frontier.

I take a visual survey of the map, and move and shift a lot of the larger port worlds to Coreward, with an eye to having communication route to most worlds at the edge of the Republic with some backwater areas.... and Rimward of the Republic border, a side route to the old major port of Basa Haula, in the Varala Drift. But major shipping lines into the area stop at Varala. 

I think about having a polity that still retains the flavor in name and culture, Coreward of Basa Haula.  So that takes more shifts and changes.

Moving things around, making sure it all seems like it is fits the setting.

Continuing Development, Step-by-step D'Zuli's World is a Flagstone.

I arranged data for all the worlds of the Aurin Cluster into their Subsector data.   From there, arranging the Jump routes continues.

I had my morning instant coffee, and a banana for breakfast, with a small bag of peanuts. It makes me wonder, what kind of food would an alien writer on another world have for breakfast?

1. It all starts in Subsector D, to Coreward and Trailing of the Aurin Cluster, at the edge of the Orion Republic, (the large off-screen, off-map polity).

We are now looking at the beginning of the active settlement of the Ree Expanse Subsector.  A stellar gap is here, somewhere, difficult to cross without very advanced Drive technology.

This World, D'Zuli's World, becomes the entrance to the Aurin Cluster from the "Dorai Crossing" Sector, on an average Agroworld Starport, administered by House Tubatiir, where Body pistols are permitted, as is travel on the world, but Starship landings are only permitted at the Gole Starport, or Hendu Spaceport. 

High Tech level items are prohibited, but items up to Basic Interstellar are allowed (and desired).

Notable features of the world include:
The Shattered Plains, to the east of the Downport
The Trading market at the abandoned Bani Industrial Complex at the crumbling (but still usable) Hendu Spaceport
The Downport at the Crystalline City of Gole
The Aetherium Mines
The Wreckage of the Starship Adrego
The Airship Port at Darenga Station, for local on-world travel. There are not a lot of people here, most of the world is wilderness / unsettled.

I begin to imagine these named places in my mind.

"D'Zuli's World" is a Trading Hub. Not large, but well connected.

It will seek potential interstellar Trade connections with:
Agricultural, Garden, Hi Tech, High Population, Industrial, Rich, and Water Worlds.

So, in summary, a decent jumping-off point for further exploration, as civilization moves Spinward, and Rimward.

Ree Expanse - 1st Draft Map, finally

I have finally finished recalculating populations, Tech Levels, Trade codes, and Bases for the Ree Expanse.

Port Classes are nearly directly based on Population.

The worlds are now very different. I took a long stroll through the names to make them evocative. No real method, just some sounded "like what they should be, or I imagined them to be in print."

Many hours later, the Trade routes of the Ree Expanse are complete. A fun time, but painstaking. Almost all are connected, and interlinked.

This is the final first draft map:

Ree Expanse - Draft Map, 19 June 2019

Ree Space starts at 3006, "A'Rie".
Coreward of that is Republic Space.
I plan to do more detail in a few days, adding a lot of depth to the Subsector.