The World Builder Society NEW CHALLENGE 2/26/08!!! "Middle'o'Nowhere in a GFFA!"

NEW TOPIC 11/17

I have a bit of a god-complex. -- oqidaun

You are the Force, and you are about to create a new planet that meets your every expectation about how a perfect planet should be. What are the most important details you take into consideration when you create a new planet? Additionally, describe in however much detail you choose your perfect planet, including as many details as you see fit to bring it to life. We're trying to satisfy a very large god-complex here, so make it good!

(Hopefully oqi doesn't mind me using her name for this one - viva la OC revolucion!)

And just as a reminder, you can always drop by whenever you want to add new planets and systems (or in some cases, sectors) to the database.

And since I have to pay royalties just to use...her name, if you are the one person who has not yet visited this thread, I highly recommend you do so ASAP! You'll thank me.

 

Wow, all of you put so much thought onto your planets! I applaud you. cool thread, JediMindTrick000!

 

This is the greatest title I have ever seen!!!

Use my name all you want.
Meanwhile I have some mountains to move into place.

 

Just stepped into the thread and I'm already loving it. Since I'm a maniac for saga-length stories, I sometimes need to create playgrounds of my own, in which to play undisturbed.


Planet: Cyliis VII

System: Faerys

Location: The Faerys Star-System is located very close to the Sanctuary Pipeline, facing toward the Outer Rim. The closest inhabited planet is Riflor, located almost seven parsecs away from the System's edge.

Details: As its name suggests, Cyliis VII is the seventh and last planet in the Faerys System. It is the only inhabited one, seeing as the others are home to a variety of extreme climats and the first three, who are closest to the sun, are constantly bombarded with radiation, emanating from the very active pulsar star.

Climate: Cyliis VII has a very arid, dry climate. While it is not a desert planet, in the truest sense of the word, large sections of it are nothing than flat, salty, dry dustbeds. It has a two distinct seasons, a wet one and a dry one. (the wet one lasting a quarter of a revolution around the sun and the dry one, three quarters of a revolution)

Population: The planet has a very small number of inhabitants (around a figure 120.000 souls), most of them living in the clustered capital city of Tasuuan, which was built between two rocky mesas, for protection against the raging winds. A few brave people have built small mining outposts, across the planet, but they depend on Tasuuan for their survival, as the capital has the only existibg space-port.

Main Industry: In the Mid-Rim, there is a running joke that the only thing you can find in the Faerys System are bare rocks. That is true, to a certain extent, Cyliis VII's main (and only) industry being the mining of iron ore, which is shipped to Nubia or Coruscant, in order to be refined.

Context in which the planet appears: Thousands of years after the collapse of the Galactic Empire, the New Republic's historians are in a frezy to unearth all of the details that were permanently buried during that harrowing time. Their biggest dilemma remains the existance of the Jedi-Emperor, an unnamed monarch who ruled the Galaxy, during the Empire's most glorious days. As a consequence, Andrra Wrenn, one of the Republic's most succesful prospectors, along with her husband, Quar Wrenn, and Nisadora Renuo, the daughter of a friend, set out for Cyliis VII, where the trail of the mysterious Emperor appears to end, not knowing the tragedy that would unfold on the planet's dry surface...



Planet: Seterria

System: Seterr

Location: The Seterr System is located in the Expansion region, between the Inner and Mid Rims, five parsecs from the Brak Sector, toward the Core.

Details: Seterria is the only planet in the Setter System. Due to its proximity to the Corellian Run, the planet has been inhabited since the discovery of hyperspace travel.

Climate: Seterria is a temperate world, with some extreme tendencies (the winters are usually very cold, while the summers tend to get very hot).

Population: as stated above, Seterria has been populated ever since the birth of the Republic. Still, it is not very crowded, due to the sometimes extreme temperature changes. Most of the population is made of humans (78%), while the other 22% are Grans, Duros and Weekways.

Main Industry: Setteria, just like Nubia and Corellia, has invested a great deal in the manufacture of spaceships. However, the models are less reliable than their Corellian counterparts, so they were only marketed in the Mid and Outer Rims.

Context in which the planet appears: even though its sships are not on par with the Core and Inner Rim ones, Seterria was targeted by the Separatists, during the Clone Wars. A large showdown, between the Republic and the Confederacy took place in the System, with the republic as the victor. During the batlle, general Obi-Wan Kenobi was gravely wounded and had to be rushed to a med-center on the

 

Cool idea for a topic. Also, I'm stealing Lady_Cora's writeup format.

Planet: Angharad

System: Uhh . . . it doesn't have a name.

TARKIN: You would prefer another target? A military target? Then name the system!

ME: I told you, it doesn't have a name! Freaking slipper-wearing psycho!!

TARKIN: ::flings slipper::

ME: Aiiigh!!

Um . . . yeah. Actually, the Republic probably calls it by a number. Anghara civilization is about 95% pre-spaceflight, so they just think of it as "home." It doesn't need a name.

Location: Waaaay out on the Outer Rim, or even more "far, far away" than usual.

Details: Angharad was probably colonized by a generation ship millenia ago, before the invention of hyperspace travel. Its indigenous residents are all human, and are most likely all descended from the same 100 or so people who landed ages ago. They have not been eager to jump back into outer space again, and have lived as an essentially pre-spaceflight culture until relatively recent contact with the Republic. The planet has two moons, one larger and white, and the other smaller and red. Neither is nearly as big as Earth's moon. The larger one looks about as big as a pencil eraser when it's full. The smaller one looks like a really nice, bright Earth-view of Mars.

Climate: Variable. Much of Angharad's major continent is tropical or sub-tropical, and it has a dry season and a monsoon season. Tropical lowlands ring the seashore, but these give way to grassland-like foothills as you move further north. The majority of Angharad's population lives in small cities and villages along the many rivers that run through the foothills. Most of these rivers become tributaries to the mighty Omolac River, which winds Amazon-like through the southern rain forest and empties out into the Bay of Basham. Angharad's capitol, Kohana, is located in the Omolac river delta.

North of the foothills, the Akitlán Mountains--a series of massive, Himalaya-like peaks--cut the continent in two. The lower slopes of the mountains are lush cloud forest, called "the Spirit Country" by residents, who consider the land holy. Above the treeline there is only low scrub, and then nothing but bare rock and ice. During the monsoon season, warm, moist air comes north from the Bay of Basham, but the icy air of the Akitlán peaks wrings all the water vapor out before any moisture can reach the north face of the range. As a result, the northern part of the continent is desert--an unusual montaine desert called the Honovi. This desert flattens out into barren plains across the planet's temperate zones, and then freezes into rocky tundra near the polar region. The sharp climate change along the line of the mountains is visible from space, and is quite striking.

Population: There are fewer than a billion native Anghara on the planet. Most live in the warm, southern area of the main continent, especially in and around Kohana, but there are people who live high in the mountains, people who live in the northern wastes of the Honovi, people in various archipelagos stretching out into the ocean, and people who live in nomadic boat communities on the sea.

For the last 99 years, there have also been workers from the Coridani Mineral Company (CMC) mining stretches of the Honovi for irridium, a semi-organic compound used in starships' heat shielding.

Main Industry: See above. CMC has traditionally paid the government in Kohana for the right to mine its land. Once the company's 99-year exclusive charter ends, this could change, however . . .

Other than mining and an increasing amount of offworld trade, Angharad generally has an industrial/service economy in the large urban areas, and an agricultural one--mostly subsistance farming--elsewhere on the planet.

Context in which the planet appears: Angharad is the site of an ugly power grab by the Trade Federation in the years leading up to the Clone Wars. The planet is self-

 

Does fleshing out planets for which we only have a name 'count'?

 

I had totally forgotten about my name being enshrined in the title of this thread!
JMT is away, busy keeping the world safe from all sorts of nasty characters and playing with nuclear missiles.
How about we get this happy place up to speed in his absence.

So, what is the most important consideration that you have when developing a planet?

I personally go for physical geography. Cultures often times develop as a response to the geographic conditions in which they are forced to exist. Think about various earth cultures and the types of places that they inhabit. Here's the twist that I like to use in worldbuilding that combines those physical and cultural geography elements--I like to stick people on planets where the physical geography is against them. It's the classic "man against nature" conflict.

Therefore if I'm building the perfect planet, it's going to be a less than ideal place to live. I'll use the example of Shoda the principle planet in my story The Keeper of Secrets. I've modelled it off of where I grew up in West Texas. It's flat, windy, dry and flammable. I'm a big fan of the Old West and I fell for the concept behind Firefly/Serenity big time. Shoda's a boring terraformed world built on a budget. It's underpopulated and lacks 90% of the amenities and comforts that the rest of Galaxy takes for granted. It's out of the loop and most people don't even know it's there. This is where the average working class space person ends up getting stuck. There are no palaces or fancy waterfalls, it's just a bunch of prefabricated buildings and dirt roads. To me that kind of setting is most fun to write in, it's the perfect place for the poodoo to hit the fan. Additionally, as I essentially grew up on Shoda, I have an edge in writing the setting and atmosphere for the story.

What about the rest of you?

 

So, what is the most important consideration that you have when developing a planet

The most important? That its large enough to support an atmosphere.

Other considerations are that I start with a scene or joke, and then design the planet round it.
With A Holocron in Sherwood, I had two ISB agents on an interdimensional round trip from New Cov to the crossover universe of Robin of Sherwood, and they planned to return to go staight back to their starting point.
At the last minute, I decided that that would be boring, and had them materialise on what looked like a big beach, so they could say "Which way to the beach."

On starting Tokapi Overload, I'm starting from the description at the end of the last story: a lot of rock and sand; no sea in sight. Also, my people aren't dead.

So we know the place has gravity and atmosphere, and is not an ice planet, waterworld, or barely formed volcanic place.

Everything else was made up at the keyboard. No Slartibartfast-style planetary construction.

 

I love this thread! It's a much needed one, in my humble opinion. What a topic! I hope to have time for this challenge, but if not, I have assigned this to a few padawans.

 

Then you must not have very nice fjords.

 

I'm one of Zonoma's padawans who got this as an assignment but this was actually lots of fun.


Planet: Bathari (pronounced ba-TAR-ee)

System: Bathari

Location: Bathari is located in the mid rim. The nearest planet is Sullust which is approximately seven parsecs away.

Details: Bathari is the third of seven planets in a system sharing its name. Due to extreme climates on the other planets, it is the only inhabited world in the system.

Terrain: Mostly forest with several mountain ranges. There are three seas and multiple large lakes and rivers scattered throughout.

Climate: Moderate

Weather: Moderate

Population: Bathari is sparcely populated. Around one million sentient beings in all. Most of them live in the capital city, Oratoo, set in the Kein valley. The rest live either in cliff cities - set in the mountains - or in coastal towns.

Flora and Fauna: The planet is mostly covered in a forest of Otari trees. 10 meter tall trees that have adapted to grow very close together, sometimes no more than 20 cm between two plants. These forests are almost impossible to travel through by foot and force the local population to use air speeders to go above them. Because of the Otaris? close proximity to each other, no light is able to reach to reach the forest floor leaving it barren of all other plants, though the forest canopy is a riotous ecology with many plants feeding their roots into the Otari themselves. Some varieties of seasonal flowering shrubs grow at the base of the mountains where the forests thin out.

Wildlife: Small, six legged climbing mammals that thrive in the Otari forests are most prominent. Their natural predator is a large bird of prey which nests in the mountain cliffs.

Days: 18 hours

Years: 315 Days

Major imports: Fresh water

Major exports: precious gems and metals mined in the mountains.

 

Ooo. It's got a hard 'th'. Hmm. Interesting. Word of advice: never trust the hard 'th's. They're dangerous. Nothing good can ever come of hard sound that regularly disguises itself as a soft one. Believe me.


So: my most important consideration when creating a planet. Well Durcust came about from me asking myself "Now, what kind of place would consider my riding drill deathtraps an everyday sight?" The rest was history.
But that only sorta answers the question.
Most important consideration. Hmmm...
It isn't location or politics.
Definitely not culture.
Usually not the weather. Hell, I came up with Phindar's storm season on a whim.
Probably not geography.
...Maybe wildlife? Not really. Nearly every GFFA nonsentient can breath air.

I think its 'do I need something to happen that is especially desastrous or destructive? Like, planet-wide destructive?' Yeah.
That's usually it.

 

Oh, I almost forgot about this thread. Glad to see it's back up!

So, what is the most important consideration that you have when developing a planet

Definitely it's location in the galaxy, and it's location within it's system.

It's location within it's system will determine what type of climate it's going to have, thus determining what type of life it's going to be able to support, thus determining what type of culture they will have which will affect your characters and the story they're telling. It's location in the galaxy will determine how your planets people look upon the rest of the galaxy and how galactic events affect them. A world closer to the outer rim with not that much contact with the larger world will not be affected as much as a world in the mid rim or core.

[Edit] I goofed on the markup!

 

Galactic location would be a very important consideration to take. While it's possible to circumvent the galactic disk, space travel is still a major thing, and no easy task. So where you decide to place your newly created planet should be a major question.

Conversely, location in the solar system is not quite as important as you think. At least when considering a planet's climate. Note: Neptune is hotter than Mars. Earth's nothern hemisphere experiences winter when its orbit is closest to the sun. More imporant when deciding climate is axis tilt and atmosphere - both its thickness and its contents. A general rule of thumb - the thicker it is, the hotter it is. Venus, for instance, is the hottest solid planet in our solar system, not Mercury. Because venus has an extremely heavy atmosphere, while Mercury's is almost nonexistant.

Of course, any planet as far away as Pluto is going to be inhospitably cold. and any planet as close as Mercury is going to be inhospitably hot.

 

So where you decide to place your newly created planet should be a major question.

Exactly my point.

At least when considering a planet's climate. Note: Neptune is hotter than Mars. Earth's nothern hemisphere experiences winter when its orbit is closest to the sun. More imporant when deciding climate is axis tilt and atmosphere - both its thickness and its contents. A general rule of thumb - the thicker it is, the hotter it is.

I guess you're right about that. It makes a lot of sense.

 

Planet: Mistan Four (can be called Mistan 4 or Mistan IV, but is usually spelled out)

System: Mistan

Location: The Mistan system is in the Mid-Rim, between the Hydian and Perlemian Trade Routes (closer to the Hydian).

Details: Mistan Four is one of five planets in the system, and one of two inhabitable planets. (Well, it's only barely habitable now, but that's a long story that will be described below.) It was mostly forest and grassland with a single large mountain range in the northern hemisphere. The natural water supply, which includes small rivers and creeks through the forested areas, is mildly metallic.

Climate: The climate of Mistan Four in its heydey - up to 50 ABY - was temperate and pleasant, with only minimal shifts through the seasons.

Population History: There was no natural sentient population on Mistan Four. It was first settled in approximately 100 BBY and maintained a small population, never rising above 5,000; competition with spaceports closer to the main spacelanes kept it quiet, and most who would go out there were malcontents and criminals who needed a place for secret dealings. In 13 BBY, the Galactic Empire took over, but never used the planet as anything more than a minor military outpost. The station was abandoned in 5 ABY, and once more the planet became a haven for shady characters. One late settler, believed to have arrived in the early 20s ABY, was Darth Korosia, the rogue apprentice of an unknown master. (Rumor is that she was apprenticed to Lady Lumiya, but this remains unverified.) The remnants of the Zeran Sith Order - Darth Inferna and Darth Vexon - claimed the abandoned Imperial station in 25 ABY. Sithstrike ending: Korosia was killed in a dispute with Inferna, who then left Mistan Four in the care of Vexon to pursue other interests. Vexon began mining operations in 45 ABY. He allowed criminals to remain on the planet until 48 ABY, when he declared the planet a military holding of his own. From here he based the Guerrica Empire, and built factories to build battle droids. The Guerrican Sith Wars were fought from 48 ABY to 50 ABY, when the other major factions of the galaxy (including the Chiss Ascendancy, Hapes Consortium, and others) banded together and invaded Mistan Four, planning to knock out its fleet and droid factories and force a surrender. The Droid Empress ending: Vexon and his heir both died during the invasion, and the Empire was partially disbanded, with an interim ruler over the remainder. However, so much debris from the battle fell into the atmosphere of Mistan Four, with plenty of toxic spills, that the sun's rays are completely blocked out, and Mistan Four has been plunged into an ice age with toxic water wherever it melts. Mistan Three, the hot ocean planet, suffered a similar fate. With proper equipment, one could still survive on it, but it would take a rather desperate adventurer to seek refuge in the Mistan system following the end of the Guerrican Sith Wars.

Main Industry: Various metal ores, which were mined out and depleted by 50 ABY, and special battle droids, for which production ceased also in 50 ABY.

 

I've a little two person realm over on lj where I toss out the occasional worldbuilding thought. Here's something I posted called the ABC's of Culture. Now don't give me too much credit for it, as I stole it originally from an ancillary (sp? I never taught 'spelling')textbook, you see in a past life I used to teach AP Human/Cultural Geography to a herd of miscreants. This is a format for sorting out different elements of culture and really gets your noodle aimed in the "write" direction on creative projects. I'm going to post it here so that I can share with the lot of you and I like seeing my ol'buddy JMT's thread on page one of the Resource Boards.

Art
Buildings
Communication
Dress
Economy
Family Structure / Gender Roles
Government
History
Icon (visual or emblematic elements immediately associated with this culture)
Jobs
Knowledge
Language
Movements & Migration
Nationalism, Nationalist Mythology
Organizations
Population (demographic stuff including majority and minority populations)
Quality of Life (health, life expectancy, comforts, problems)
Religion (includes organized and unorganized, superstitions, mythologies)
Status (hierachies and class structures)
Taboos
Urban and/or Rural Population
Vaction and Recreation
Ways of Every Day Life
X-Marks the Spot (catch all for how the culture has adapted to and responds to the physical geography)
Yum (food)
Ztuff (stereotypes good and bad connected to the culture)

It's not a perfect list nor is it written in stone, but it gets you thinking in terms of a dynamic culture. Also the ABCs of Culture (having taught with this thing during my three year stint in public ed) organizes cultural elements in such a way that you see and (for our purposes) craft related cultural responses and interactions.

Hope someone around here finds this helpful.

 

WTH oqi!
Actually that's a cool idea, I'm savin' it for future reference....

 

Whoa, now that's some list! I'me definitely saving it!

Actually, it really got me thinking of a way to apply it to the Hekaryans (my own creation, the people of Hekarya - it's a long story...). I've been working on them for almost two years and this will definitely help me polish them up even better.

 

Simple, yet elegant, Oqi. Like an Einsteinian algorithm... but with less devastating protonic acceleration.

Some of those categories you gave are so obvious, I wonder how I even forget them. Yet, there I am, forgetting them.
For instance, I rarely consider taboos and nationalist mythologies. But who can blame me? Johnny Appleseed was a boring story.

Though, by sheer coincidence, I have recently been thinking about the taboos of the GFFA. I figured with all the "K" bombs my characters drop, I may as well find out what they kriffin' mean. But that's off topic, damn it.



ON Topic,
I tend to have this problem where I see a world someone has created and think it's awesome. And I know that if I asked, the creator would most likely be perfectly fine with allowing me to use it. But I just can't get past the feeling that each world we create is a personal thing, and outside use should be hands-off (though I would never practice such a philosophy). I don't know if anyone else feels that way, but I get the impression.

What I think we should do is start a communal World Building project. Nobody will feel weird about using a communal world once it's finished, because it would be essentially an open source planet. In fact, it would be pretty damn cool to see a totally fabricated world used in several unrelated fanfics. In fact, though this is getting ahead of myself, the planet would never be truly finished as long as it is being used on the boards. And how sweet would it be to see something that happened in one of your stories get referenced in a completely unrelated story by a totally different author, simply by virtue of having it happen on this planet? Pretty darned sweet, I'd say. Frankly, the possibilities are endless. But more substancially, it would draw people who would otherwise not be interested into the idea of world building, simply by virtue of it being a neat project.

The details on how exactly we'd go about this are still fuzzy in my head (like everything else in there). I figured it would be worth putting this on the table anyway, just to see if there's any interest. But with Oqi's list as a springboard, and the prevalence of extremely crafty minds floating about this forum, I have little doubt that such a project would be doable.

 

I like Yods thinking re: the "community" planet; it would almost be like it's own "Tales From...", because like he said it would be continously used by different authors.

The only down side that I could see, if you would call it one; is that it would have to be a "melting pot" a la Coruscant, Nar Shadda, or Tatooine. Otherwise there may be too big of a restriction on what an author can and can't do. Things like religion, social classification, taboos and demographics might be overly "mixed". In instances like that it runs the risk of being un-original.

But I'm so high on that idea, that I'm sure kinks like that could and would be worked out. I don't know what I could contribute, being as there are bigger experts on social structures and histories; but double-hockey sticks; it's too ORIGINAL to pass up without serious consideration. Pure genius Yodimus...well at least mutt genius.

 

What we'll probably have to do is make it more diverse, economically, politically, and geographically, than most Star Wars planets. Something akin to a series of Territories, or Countries, or Houses that envelope specific relms of the planet. That way writers will have a choice where to go when they decide to add it into their story.

That could get rid of some headaches. It also has the potential to induce a lot more. So who knows.

 

I like your thinking, Yod! Remember we were all kind of tossing around the OC RP disguised as BYOOC-RR in the Anony thread. I like the idea of a immigrant world--that's kind of what I do with the Dakari Territories in my fic. Shoda is one of those places where I can bring some mildly diverse cultures (at least amongst the Dakari) together. It would work on a big scale.

I think getting together and collaboratively building a happy little world from the ground up and then getting to drop some of our OC immigrants off on it would be great fun. I'm definitely on board if you guys want to give it a whirl, although it'd take some organization.

Glad you liked the ABCs of Culture.

 

I would just like to put in my two cents and say I love this idea. And the ABCs of Culture will be very useful if I ever decide to make a completely original planet with original culture (and also in original non-SW fics). I kind of cheat by making my locations largely uninhabited, so that culture is borrowed from wherever people come from, and this is an area that I could use some improvement in.

 

Coolness! Well, I guess there's nothing to do but wait to see if other people are in.