Lit The Essential Atlas and Galactic Cartography: Official Discussion

Which would all be Legends by now.

And as long a Jason Fry doesn't mention the barrier in the continuation of "his" mapping-project ... . Come to think of it, what is the status of that?

 

Non-canon.

Ilum was part of the Unknown Regions in the Legends continuity, but now it's no longer mentioned in the context of any region. That's the canonical status so far. We have the Core, the Inner, Mid and Outer Rim Territories, the Expansion Region, Hutt Space and Wild Space. Those are the only regions mentioned in the films or in the tv show.

 

John Jackson Miller had a great quote recently: "I really think it's a mistake for people to play the canon/non-canon parlor game." I have no privileged information, so this is just a hunch, but I suspect the maps will prove fairly resilient.

To put it another way, if I really thought the only things that would survive from the maps were movie/TV planets and region names, there's no way in any non-canon Corellian Hell that I'd invest dozens and dozens more hours finding placements for Dark Horse planets and mapping the Inner Rim. I'm obsessive, but not totally nuts.

The new canon/Legends things is an experiment in many ways, and right now we all need more data.

 

So, were nearly a year since the EU was Order 66'd (not really, but you know what I mean).

Where does the Atlas stand?

From reading A New Dawn, it sounds like the basic structure of the galaxy is being upheld. Given the John Jackson Miller quote that Jason posted, however, I'm a bit concerned. How much detailed oversight is the Lucasfilm Story Group giving. Did we just disestablish the old EU in order to create something that was no more coherent than what came before?

For what it's worth, The Essential Atlas is still my no. 1 source for understanding the galaxy of SW. I've just got too much headcanon invested in it to let it be overwritten.

 

Same here. Too much fondness and personal sentiment from the "Legends" Real EU to be accepting of it all being overwritten. It is still a great honor to have been mentioned among the crowd-sourcing contributors in the Atlas. (Thanks again, Jason!!! )

That being said, the Order 66 analogy is becoming more and more spot-on- just as survivors of Order 66 and the Purge kept turning up in the Real EU, so too are surviving elements of the "Legends" EU that are already turning up in the newer "Canon", and will continue to do so, in addition to the the "Legends" EU being continued...

 

Continued in the sense of existing works still being sold, but not in the sense of new works, featuring Characters like Jag, Jaina, Kyp, Kyle, Jaden, Allana and Anji being added.

 

Sorry, firm believer in not sharing anything LFL hasn't vetted. Perhaps it's the chip in my head.

The update will come. Hey I keep saying that -- eventually it will be true!

 

Completely understood. If we want to have hope of your work being adopted, then you have to play nice with the curia. As I said earlier, I'm a big fan of your work and want to see it picked (back) up officially and canonically. I had a lot of time invested in pouring over your maps and even coming up with my nav computer based on it.

As a nerdly worry-wart I just fear that they will want to steer clear of such mapping in order to give their creators (JJ, Filoni, Luceno, Miller, etc.) maximum latitude. My hope is that I'm wrong, and the Lucasfilm Story Group is authentically hoping to create a more internally coherent IP rather than the wild west that we once knew.

 

There's definitely more of a reluctance to define things absolutely because they don't want to box in the storytelling. As a storyteller I absolutely understand and appreciate that, even as the OCD world-builder part of me can chafe at it.

Maybe it's just that I'm getting old, but more and more I take the long view of such things. Season 2 of Rebels, the premiere of TFA etc. seem a long ways off, but blink your eyes a few times and we'll be weighing newer projects against their legacies. And by then there will be a lot more data around SG and its new integrated approach, and SG itself will have seen what works and what doesn't and adjusted accordingly.

We'll see, but I'd be surprised if all this results in major changes to the geography. Bookmark this post and we'll check in, say, a year from now.

 

I don't think that it really HAS resulted in any major changes so far. Does anyone know of any outright contradictions or changes?

It would be worthwhile to assemble a list of everything that has stayed the same and everything that has been changed to date. I'm thinking the former list will be WAY longer than the latter.

 

I think Scipio is in the Outer Rim, rather than the Core Worlds.

 

As always, "if in doubt, it's in the Outer Rim".

 

I figure that Lothal is near Kessel.

 

Yeah, there have been surprisingly few changes so far. Heck, if Luceno writes a few more novels in the style of Tarkin we'll probably have half the old map back in place.

 

But, per Tarkin, hyperspace travel is a lot messier (not necessarily slower) in the "present" than it was in the old EU, right?

 

In what way?

 

Hyperspace beacons are supposed to be essential for moving around in the Outer Rim in Imperial times, whereas the EU generally treated them as a thing of the past. Which is good, because it makes the Outer Rim back into a wild frontier without need for a startrekkian "hyperspace barrier" creating the Unknown Regions.

 

Yes!

My enjoyment comes from trying to understand the structure of a gameworld. Violations of the structure drive me insane. So, my Achilles heel is that I'm blind to the necessities of good story-telling.

Story tellers, especially the ones with the weight of the world on their shoulders to tell one of the most epic stories ever, have only limited time to make sure it all coheres. But don't they have aides who can puzzle this stuff out for them and suggest existing names that would make it all fit?

 

Yay, it's here! Terribly sorry if this is a stupid question, but where's the link for the updated appendix? The one I clicked took me to the older version.

 

Fixed. Slight weapons malfunction and all that. Sorry about the mess.