Thursday, April 20, 2017

NW Domain

I've talked about sectors and subsectors, but there's another division that Traveller mapping uses; the domain.  Domains are in between; they are a square, 2x2, of subsectors.  There are four subsectors in a domain, and four domains in a sector.

Using this tool, I generated the placement of star systems for I-2, II-1 and II-2 (I ignored everything except for the "yes, there's a system in this hex" or "no there's not" data from the generator) and color-coded them for political affiliation.  I'm a little surprised, looking at the bigger sector map in miniature, that so far my Cilindarean Arm doesn't look as densely green as I expected.  In part, this is because there are holes in the mapping, of course—blank spots without any systems—but also because I sprinkled even the Cilindarean Arm with a allied rather than incorporated worlds (most likely some of these will be Janissary worlds), a few independents here and there, one or two Monarchy-aligned worlds, and of course, as per my post yesterday, I had to put Phobetor in sector II-2, thus paving the way for Seraean Empire allied worlds to come into close contact with some of the others.  I also have a handful of multiworld, yet small petty kingdoms that have resisted the expansion efforts of any of these powers, and remain native realms.

Using the tool to generate placement rather than rolling the dice and correlating my die rolls by hand to hexes is a major time-saver, so it took much less time than I thought.  Of course, the same would be true if I used the tool for everything else too, but honestly, I don't really know the UPP very well, and my own truncated, simplified, and less jargony system generation (including my own hand-crafted percentages of types of worlds) doesn't really work for it.  I also dislike the names that Traveller name generators come up with.  Especially the Vilani names, but even the Solomani names, which should be more familiar, end up being really weird.  I'd have to rework that data so much that it would be easier just to generate it on my own.

Anyway, real quick; let's see what I've got.  Here's I-2, to the immediate galactic east of I-1 which I did yesterday.  Keep in mind that I-1 was a little less dense than I expected, only 22 systems.


I-2 came out more dense; 30 systems.  The average of the two is 26, almost exactly the theoretical average of 26.6667 that the ⅓ density should have.  So that's cool.  I have more Bern worlds here, and less Cilindarean.  A significant petty kingdom sites there in the ivory or pale yellow area, although one far-flung "duchy" of the petty kingdom is somewhat separated from it and it cannot be reached without either doing a risky 4-hex jump, or passing through someone else's territory.  I guess you can think of it as a separated territory like Alaska.

II-1, on the other hand, is much more Cilindarean, but features a relatively big empty space kinda right smack in the middle of the map.


In spite of that, two systems have thrown in their lot with the Monarchy—possibly because they want political and military backing in case Cilindare gets expansionist or belligerent.  A couple of other systems are willing to go it alone.  The light-green are probably Janissary worlds, although maybe not.  Janissaries don't necessarily just live on their own worlds (although many do) but are also integrated to at least some degree in Cilindarean society, so many Janissaries can be expected to be seen on the darker green worlds too.  There are 28 worlds here—only slightly above theoretical average—and with these three subsectors, my domain average is so far is exactly 26.6667.  Curious.  I have 80 worlds in three subsectors, and with a ⅓ density, I got exactly the theoretical average!

According to my noodling yesterday, I decided that Cilindare itself is in this subsector, and I imagine that it is one of those worlds located in the dark green band at the lower right hand corner.

II-2 is the last of the subsectors I just did, and makes up the final piece of the NW domain.


While still strongly Cilindarean in flavor, there's a small native petty kingdom, and a few independent worlds.  One more world has thrown in with the Monarchy.  I wonder if they are looking for advantage against the Cilindareans, or against the petty kingdom which they actually border?  Phobetor is down there in the corner, the leading frontier of Seraean influence, although as you may recall, I suggested that the Outremer region could be not far from here to the immediate southwest.  I expect that the Old Ones have been there a long time, since before the rise of the current polities, in fact, and this may in fact be the edge of a "petty kingdom" of their own, although most Old One cults and their settlements will be allied, if not actively integrated, with Seraean polities.

There are 24 systems here, which brings my average down a small amount, but as you can see, I'm getting very much within the margins of error that I'm expecting for system density.  The variable that you need to put in for this is "scattered" rather than "standard" but I'm considering scattered to be standard for my purposes here.

Just for the heckuvit, here's what I've got so far on my big sector map, so you can see the spread of the political affiliations and the potential for conflict and intrigue that are already starting to take shape.  When we start to get to Republic and Imperial systems in the NE Domain, which I'll do next, you'll really see a lot of that.


As an aside, although my earlier subsector maps used orange to indicate alliance with but not incorporation into the Monarchy, but I've switched to pinkish, which looks more like faded red than orange does, which was easy to confuse with the yellowish independents.  You can see much of this dynamic in the years immediately prior to the Gallic Wars, where there were client kingdoms (of the Romans), non-client kingdoms and allied kingdoms within Gaul.  And there were ethnic differences within Gaul too; both Caesar and Strabo note the Aquitanian, Celtic and Belgic Gauls, and both talk significantly about the cultural and linguistic differences, especially of the Aquitanians (who were probably related to the Basques, actually.)

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