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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit The Essential Atlas and Galactic Cartography: Official Discussion

Discussion in 'Literature' started by CeiranHarmony, Oct 14, 2005.

  1. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013

    on the interactive map it is right behind Chiss Ascendancy space... pretty too close to it for my taste even.
     
  2. Ventrix

    Ventrix Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    May 28, 2014
    I’ve actually been making a website with my limited web design skills that lists all the worlds in canon by region: THE GALACTIC ARCHIVE.

    No maps yet but that’s something I’ve been mulling over. The site pretty much speaks for itself. I’m sure there’s a few worlds I’ve missed but I’ve been pretty damn thorough if I do say so myself. DM me or whatever if there’s any worlds missing or misplaced. There’s a New Systems and Sectors page that is *definitely* missing more than a few.

    I’ve spent most of my time trying to make it look pretty, which is about the only thing setting it apart from the “All Planets in Canon” page on the Wook. The home page is boring but I plan on adding more features later when I'm deep enough in my javascript class next semester. For example, a search bar would add 10 times more value to the site than in its current form ngl.

    I've been a quiet but loyal follower of this thread for a while now so I'm excited to see what you all think :)
     
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  3. bsmith7174

    bsmith7174 Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2015
    WOW! Looks like you definitely have more than just "limited" web design skills. Looks great! Keep it up!
     
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  4. Ventrix

    Ventrix Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    May 28, 2014
    Thank you! My web design skills are limited in that I haven't paid a great deal of attention in those classes and have to look things up A LOT lol. But I appreciate the sentiment and I definitely intend to keep it up
     
  5. KamNale

    KamNale Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Feb 11, 2012
    Does the Story Group have a database of the planets that have been introduced in canon and have stuff picked out about that planet, where they'll put it, etc?
     
  6. DarthJaceus

    DarthJaceus Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Dec 6, 2016
    Impressive... Most impressive. I'll definitely be taking a deep dive into that later!
     
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  7. jasonfry

    jasonfry VIP star 4 VIP

    Registered:
    Nov 11, 2003
    Essentially, yes.
     
  8. KamNale

    KamNale Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Feb 11, 2012
    Oh that's interesting!
     
  9. Noash_Retrac

    Noash_Retrac Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2006
    Was this introduced to avoid the Scipio issue?
     
  10. jasonfry

    jasonfry VIP star 4 VIP

    Registered:
    Nov 11, 2003
    It's far older than that.

    This is probably a lot more than anyone would want to know, but what the heck...

    I've maintained a database of star systems since the mid-1990s. It was used to create the "road atlas" appendix for The Essential Atlas (with Dan Wallace and I splitting the huge task of placements for systems that needed them), and then to make the online updates to that appendix.

    That database is still used today. I've logged the new-canon star systems as they've appeared -- we're coming up on 1,000 new entries, which is kind of mind-blowing. I've provisionally placed ~60% of them. I share that database with Story Group whenever it would be helpful, and weigh in with placement opinions if they ask. The actual placements are of course always up to LFL. I hope we'll update the Atlas appendix sometime fairly soon to include all the new-canon placements -- LFL uses the same map as in Legends, so there shouldn't be any reason to separate Legends and new canon. But I can't tell you when that update will happen, that it definitely will happen, or what form it will take. Always in motion is the future....

    So, Scipio. It got mapped for the Essential Atlas based on its first mention early in TCW. Dan and I didn't know it would get revisited later in the series, or that we'd see it and have a pretty good idea where in the galaxy it was based on that storyline. So the issue wasn't the lack of a database, but placing something when the storytelling around it was still in motion. Which, TBH, was a good lesson for me in being more careful about that.

    Even then, there will occasionally be overwritten placements, mistakes that need correcting, etc. That's showbiz! But obviously the idea is to keep those things to a minimum, and I think the GFFA's track record is pretty good there.
     
  11. KamNale

    KamNale Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Feb 11, 2012
    That's super interesting! I can't wait to see where Akiva is in the galaxy.
     
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  12. jSarek

    jSarek VIP star 4 VIP

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    Feb 18, 2005
    A bit of both. Authors can come up with new planets freely; the galaxy is a big place. Legends works estimated that it had roughly 1 billion inhabited stars, and we have no reason to think canon estimates differently. This means storytellers could make up a hundred inhabited systems a story, for a hundred stories a year, and it would still take 100,000 years of Star Wars storytelling to start running out of room for them. When you realize a single inhabited system can possess multiple inhabited planets ...

    That said, one of the Story Group's purposes is to help creators use existing Star Wars lore to tell their stories. So if the Group thinks an existing planet would serve a story well, they're likely to suggest it to the creator in question.
     
  13. Chrissonofpear2

    Chrissonofpear2 Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 25, 2020
    So, are the locations of Eadu, Batuu and Ahch-To now fully finalized? I noticed that Eadu's placement shifted a little, between visual guides. Ahch-To varies depending on if we go by the holographic map or the guides, and Batuu also seems a bit flexible, at the moment.
     
  14. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013
    They are all locked in place. Future updates can always shift or alter things though, as much as I hate that. It used to be the past is fixed, future stuff has to adhere. Now it is the opposite.
     
  15. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    Since TCW started, that is.

    I mean, even Kesh was moved.
     
  16. jasonfry

    jasonfry VIP star 4 VIP

    Registered:
    Nov 11, 2003
    Kesh was just the Scipio mistake all over again. I placed it while the storytelling was still in motion, which I now know to be more careful about. A later story in the ongoing tale placed it very specifically, invalidating the first, too hasty placement.

    Things do occasionally get moved for other reasons -- off the top of my head TCW moved Rodia and Anaxes -- but not very often, thank goodness.

    BTW, when Lucasfilm made its Legends decision, I raised the idea of rethinking the map entirely, eliminating the "briar patch" border with the Unknown Regions, making the Outer Rim more of a true frontier, etc. The powers that be thought that was crazy, deciding to keep the same map, and in retrospect I'm glad they did.

    Moral of the story, I suppose: Don't listen to me, ever.
     
  17. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013
    I just hope people would take more often into account how the map evolved inuniverse, with territories found and lost again, with hyperlanes established over centuries and millennia. Seems all treat it like everything was already in place all the time.
     
  18. jasonfry

    jasonfry VIP star 4 VIP

    Registered:
    Nov 11, 2003
    Yeah, Dan and I talked about this a lot when imagining/writing TEA. And you do see some efforts to take that into account -- most notably, trade routes from the ancient Core to the Colonies and Inner Rim disappear over time, reflecting new trade routes getting blazed and formerly important worlds becoming backwaters and "vanishing" from the map. (Uquine was a center of that dynamic, which was fitting because IIRC it's from early drafts of ANH.)

    A truly insane idea, which never got beyond the batting-around stage, was for the maps to reflect galactic rotation. So, say, Coruscant and Nal Hutta and Mon Cala might have been in fairly different locations thousands of years apart.

    It's an admittedly extreme case, but I think the reason we didn't do that highlights the reason we didn't do a lot of things, and so wound up with the situation Cole objects to. (An objection I agree with, BTW.) Storytellers want to use certain worlds, and it's neither reasonable nor practical to make them take a crash course in Star Wars geography before doing so, or to explain why using World X isn't possible. While TEA was taking shape, I wrote a lot of notes based on the Galactic Explorations map, explaining that World X or Y or Z shouldn't be used for a given project because it hadn't been discovered yet. Eventually all the exceptions granted made that map a colorful piece of Swiss cheese, and we just gave up and accepted that the maps would be more static over the eras than we'd originally hoped/imagined.

    But hey, perspective: When Dan and I started batting around the idea of a Star Wars atlas, perfectly sensible people told us it was impossible. Naaaaaaah. Just pretty hard.
     
  19. KamNale

    KamNale Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Feb 11, 2012
    Could you explain what you mean by Anaxes being moved? Cause as far as I know, it's still in the Core Worlds.
     
  20. Riv_Shiel

    Riv_Shiel Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 12, 2014
    Moral of the story: listen to you sometimes (maybe only when you can convince Dan Wallace).
     
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  21. jasonfry

    jasonfry VIP star 4 VIP

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    Nov 11, 2003
    Between the timing of the Anaxes arc, the dialogue about the Outer Rim Sieges, and the likely location of its remnant in Rebels, pretty clear it's in the ORT. Have accounted for that; hopefully there will be something showing the new proposed placement soon.
     
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  22. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    Well, rats. I was hoping for a "Little Kessel" solution to the Anaxes issue.
     
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  23. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013
    I would have loved something involving the rotation, and personally I expect rotation might be the reason the Unknown Regions barrier devolved from impenetrable to being able to break through here and there. But I can see the reasons speaking against it and agree. All in all rotation would be too slow to take effect even within known GFFA history.

    I once had the strange idea that the galaxy map looked like a giant Yin & Yang symbol, back when the Unknown Regions were larger and made up half of the galaxy of which a part is already explored in modern eras. Ilum a light dot in the dark Unknown, and another dark dot in the light known galaxy (Cloak of the Sith region near Roon or maybe Mustafar)? Galactic rotation and the ever cyclical dark vs. light conflict may then shift the centers and borders clockwise to Korriban and Ach-To or else. Though I never came to try it on an actual map.


    Regarding Anaxes I think we could save the original in the Core if TCW one is something like ORD Anaxes or likewise named for it. But if doing that to on screen Anaxes is not possible, I propose another twist:

    Coreworld Anaxes has another name and got renamed in honor of the destroyed Outer Rim Anaxes of TCW. It might have some historic ties to the Rim Anaxes. If named Anaxes during the Empire in its honor, or because it took on Anaxes population after its destruction it may work. Still the Defender of the Core. And if we need a Korriban/Moraband situation, it could be the ancient Core Anaxes that got renamed in modern times and returns to its old name after Rim Anaxes is destroyed.
     
  24. Chrissonofpear2

    Chrissonofpear2 Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 25, 2020
    Do sort of wish Pablo had put Ajan Kloss and Kijimi on same side of the galaxy as Endor, in some ways. It would have alleviated... some issues, with hyperspace transit times, maybe.
     
  25. jasonfry

    jasonfry VIP star 4 VIP

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    Nov 11, 2003
    I've got a plan. Nothing in-universe -- Little Anaxes, Anaxes Minor, etc. got kiboshed -- but something I can live with.