Lit The Essential Atlas and Galactic Cartography: Official Discussion

And yeah, Hosnian does seem to be just a jump down the Trade Spine from Corellia and Duro, so I'd imagine it's a fairly major trading partner of theirs if nothing else.

 

Yes, though its location is already known.

I have to say that's not a term I ever expected to hear in a Star Wars movie.

 

It's very close to Ilum and has kyber crystals. Only it's much smaller in size. The old school way of dealing with that situation?

Ilum Minor. Do it.

 

When was it established that it has kyber crystals? Also, how do you mean it is close? Going by the map I have seen so could it just as far away from Ilum as our system is to the nearest star system.

 

The TFA Visual Dictionary makes it clear that the planet on which Starkiller Base was built was specifically selected, after decades of searching for a planet in the Unknown Regions with very exacting qualifications, because it was rammed with unique energy-transmitting crystal deposits. The TFA Cross-Sections book states that the First Order harvested kyber focusing crystals from a secret source deep in the Unknown Regions, which they install in the turbolasers of their starships. Given how rare these crystals have been described as to date, in both TCW and Rebels, the First Order wouldn't be spreading them around for something as simple as turbolaser emplacements if they hadn't hit the mother lode of them. I put two and two together from there.

 

The nearest star system is absurdly close if you have FTL. 4 light years is nothing when you can cross galactic distances. But that's not the point; the point is that the supplementary material clearly set out to associate Starkiller Base with Ilum.

 

Clearly as day. And it made perfect sense too, geographically and thematically: the First Order corrupts and defiles a Jedi sacred site and transforms it into a weapon of mass destruction. So, what, they decide now to make it a planet that LOOKS like Ilum, FEELS like Ilum, has all the important properties of Ilum - but it's not, it's one system over that way? Unless you want to believe that that part of the Unknown Regions is just packed with ice planets bearing kyber crystal deposits, that's called chickening out. And that's lame by any standard.

 

Oh, so that's why Ben deleted Ilum from the New Jedi Order Archive before he left...

I think Disney will remain vague on the issue unless a story forces them to address it.

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It would have to be in the same system to make sense. The Earth has materials found on other planets in the Solar System because they came out of the same "womb". The nebula out of which the Ilum system coalesced would similarly have been full of the elements that, when cooled, make kyber crystals. And since Ilum is much larger than Starkiller Base, it would make sense to terraform the smaller object to use as a weapon, not the larger one.

 

One of the things I've been noticing (with a reread of the Thrawn Trilogy and using the Wookieepedia versions of these maps) is that the distances are much higher than Zahn originally envisaged.

So - Jomark - 4 days travel by Skipray from Wistril - is about 40,000 light years away. Sluis Van is 50,000 light years from Coruscant - 6 days travel on the Falcon (not pushing it). Abregado-rae is nearly 30,000 light years away from Endor and only 22 hours journey away at "point five" ,

These result in speeds of much more than the 127 light years per hour given in Dark Force Rising for "point five" - more like 10 times this - with slower vessels like the Skipray still being on the order of over 400 light years per hour speed.

 

Yep. Dan and I spent innumerable hours with the Thrawn books trying to square their highly specific descriptions of travel time, speed, etc. with what had been established in other sources map-wise and needed to be abided by in the Atlas. There was no way to do it.

Which isn't to blame Tim. Just the hazards of multiple authors working, in this case literally, without a map.

 

For Point Five at least, "ten times faster" should work.

A more problematic issue is for movie events - it's pretty clear that Sidious's and Anakin's duels in TCW are taking place almost simultaneously - yet Mustafar is 50,000 light years or so from Coruscant. Just how long was Anakin waiting on that lava bank for Sidious to arrive?

 

According to some of the tie-in materials for ROTS, such as the young adult novelization, Sidious got there JUST as Obi-Wan was leaving. It must have been a shorter wait than we imagine.

But really, if your skin is sizzling, waiting slightly less time for help to arrive really doesn't sound like it matters much...

 

"Major Hyperlane travel is vastly faster than normal hyperspace travel" might fix it some - with Mustafar being on the Hydian Way. Sidious's ship could also be vastly faster than the Falcon.

 

Sidious is the Emperor of the galaxy, which means he can do whatever the hell he wants, rules be damned -- and let's not forget he has a secret base on Mustafar where he trained Maul and probably did the trip from Coruscant a thousand times before RotS. As long as you ignore the hyperdrive class given for his vessel in the sources and just accept that whatever transport Palpatine uses has an "Over 9000"-class hyperdrive, all the time he needs to get to Mustafar from Coruscant is basically as fast as Captain Kagi can haul ass to his shuttle and prepare it.

 

I've always thought that was part of the fun, though - trying to reconcile different sources (or sometimes even the same source). Steven Briggs' introduction to The Streets of Ankh-Morpork is illuminating on that score.

Of course, along some ways lie madness - I've seen Holmesian timelines that follow the dictum "Trust Watson and his dates", and end up trying to claim one case was Watson going insane and pretending to be Holmes because Doyle goofed and gave the story date within the Great Hiatus.

 

Your thoughts on the canon meanings of "Unknown Regions" and "Wild Space", Lord Fry?

 

[ugh sorry goofed up post]

 

Lord Fry, Good Lord.

Hadn't heard that before. Very interesting. It's almost like the definitions are reversed from the old EU ones.

First reaction: I like it.

The EU saw writers mix up the two terms a fair amount, probably because "Unknown Regions" was a kinda boring term for a cool concept and "Wild Space" was a cool term for a boring concept. In the EU, Wild Space originally meant "little pockets of space in the Known Galaxy that no one's bothered exploring," which a) didn't particularly make sense and b) wasn't very interesting storytelling-wise. Over time the term Wild Space got extended into also meaning an edge region beyond the governed sectors of the galaxy, which I imagine is where the confusion began. I haven't asked LFL directly, so don't take this as canon, but it seems like in new canon that ungoverned edge region either is the Outer Rim or includes a good chunk of it.

Second reaction: I like it a lot!

 

Lord Fry it shall be then

Seriously, please keep up your fantastic work.

 

Any word on the next atlas appendix update?

 

If they're startint to invert the names of the galactic regions, we're gonna need more than a new appendix.

 

We're gonna need a newer book..

 

The Star Wars galaxy according to Pablo Hidalgo

 

Your prayers have been heard.... or rather not


http://jedi-bibliothek.de/blog/2016/02/neuer-galaktischer-atlas-erscheint-im-november/