Star Map of the Known Galaxy
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Steven-Vincent
13th Oct 2016, 4:50 PM
This map is awesome. I have said it before, your world-building is the biggest strength of this story.
DizzasterJuice
14th Oct 2016, 7:11 AM
Thanks! I have lots more of this stuff that I may put up at a later date.
xpacetrue
14th Oct 2016, 5:06 AM
Nice map! Though, the story suggests that intelligent life is rare and they tend to wipe themselves out. So, I'm wondering how many light years separate Earth from the homeworlds of the Khreleans and Kyaar. If they're relatively close (on a galactic scale), then that seems statistically improbable.
On the other hand, readers know that sentient life on Celebus was the result of an experiment by the Ancients. And it seems safe to say that humans are closely related to the Ancients. (They looked almost identical.) Do all other races also owe their existence to being "seeded" or the result of their experiments?
I'm also wondering how close Celebus is to Earth. From the map, it looks rather close. How can sentient life on Celebus remain unknown to galactic civilization? Even without FTL, systems close to Earth are tempting targets to send probes to. I think human leaders would consider it worth the investment and waiting decades to get such probe data.
DizzasterJuice
14th Oct 2016, 7:05 AM
Intelligent life is quite common up until they reach the "Great Filter(s)", then they wipe themselves out. Filters such as atomic weapons, artificial intelligence, and exhausting their natural resources. Advanced intelligent life (extraterrestrial colonization) is rare.
Celebus is extremely close in the scale of the galaxy, and humans like Eloma's parents have been there many times before the DSA gates became stable. But, Celebus has only one small continent that is already inhabited by several indigenous species. Humans don't have a "prime directive" in this story but they were not going to commit the same atrocities that our ancestors did here on Earth with our indigenous people. So once the route to Gliese 667 was finished they decided to leave them in peace and stopped going there. They may decide to come back to it in the future with some sort of aquatic colony though.
Out of the three ships in orbit, the Acheron and Magellan are war ships designed to use the gates and not for space exploration so without a gate, they would never see home in their lifetime. But the Demetrius is a deep space exploration ship so it's their best chance to get home.
As for the real science of Gliese 832, it is 16 ly from our sun and is considered the closest potentially habitable Earth-mass-range exoplanet to the Solar System. It is 9.5 billion years old, more than twice as old as our sun. If there is intelligent life there, they would likely be far more advanced then us, unless they had some cosmic event like a collision with "The Traveler".
Chi Draconis is a binary system 26 ly from Sol. The two stars are approximately a billion years older than our sun.
Gamma Leporis is a star about 1.2 times the size of our sun and about 29 ly away. It is considered a high-priority target for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder mission.
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