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southpaw
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 23 Aug 2011
Posts: 115
Location: South. Waaaaaay south.
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 Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2011 7:14 pm Post subject: The Malicrux Sector |
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Been working on and off on this for years, so I figured I'd start sharing it round. I'll upload more in bits and pieces.
CLICK HERE FOR WIDE IMAGE
THE MALICRUX SECTOR
The Malicrux Sector is a small region of space limited to the confines of the Malicrux Nebula. Located on the fringe of Hutt Space in the Mid Rim Region, the Nebula has been slow to relinquish its wealth and many planetary systems lie hidden and unreachable deep within the interstellar clouds of the everchanging maelstrom.
The Nebula is the remnant of a colossal supernova that occurred tens of thousands of years ago, and has inexorably spread to its current girth and even today continues to expand. Scholars believe the Djakarshi void anomaly is all that remains of the original star, and the cataclysm utterly destroyed the fledgling Malicrux Empire that spanned a number of star systems that now lie in the heart of the Nebula. Little remains of the ancient Malicrux, consumed by the Djakarshi void or seared from the surrounding worlds in the fires of the interstellar explosion. These fires still smolder today, in great swathes of starburn that make navigating the Malicrux Nebula a very difficult and dangerous feat. The more turbulent regions of the Nebula still utilize ancient jump beacons � vast satellites that constantly scan the surrounding area for changes in the Nebula's starburn drifts then broadcast adjusted hyperspace co-ordinates for all to use.
Despite its comparatively small size and the challenges of traveling in the Nebula, the Malicrux Sector is blessed with a surprisingly high density of inhabited worlds. Over the millennia the Nebula has shielded its star systems from the much of rapacious hunger of the galactic corporations or the depredations of the neighboring Hutt clans; the Starburn Trade Run links only the most accessible star systems in the outer reaches of the Nebula, and few hyperspace routes have been plotted into the Nebula's deeper regions. It is widely believed that various select individuals and organisations know secret routes that cut right through the heart of the Malicrux; only fools and the insane would attempt to jump into the Nebula without meticulously calculated jump co-ordinates. Many are the stories of ships simply vanishing into the veils of the Nebula, and a number of pirate raiders plague the sector.
The Sector was controlled by a Council of Noble Houses, each with vested interests in one or more star systems. The Council would meet regularly at the Sector Capital of Sapphirica. Corporations and other mercantile organisations were required to negotiate with the Houses to enter the Sector's markets. During the days of the Old Republic a Senator was elected from the Council to represent the Sector's interest in the Galactic Senate; under the reign of the Emperor the Senator now liaises with the Imperial Governor Moff Kyreiken, based in the new Imperial City on Ravenholt. The relationship between the Sapphirican Council and the Imperial Governor is complicated, being at times obsequious, fractious, and occasionally deadly; ultimately the Council is slowly losing control to the rising power of the Empire.
Last edited by southpaw on Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:03 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Guardian_A
Commodore
Joined: 24 May 2011
Posts: 1654
Location: South Dakota, USA
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| Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2011 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Love the map! I'm looking forward to seeing more! |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10297
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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Raven Redstar
Rear Admiral
Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 2648
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 1:02 am Post subject: |
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| Very nice map! |
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ZzaphodD
Rear Admiral
Joined: 28 Nov 2009
Posts: 2426
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| Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 10:06 am Post subject: |
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I just noticed that the supernova should have happened millions of years ago given the fact that it has expanded over such a large area..
Other than that, super nice map! Dont like the 'english' names though 'Ravenholt'. I would also increase travel time within the nebula, just to make it really clear that its slow going..
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
Posts: 3868
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:41 pm Post subject: |
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Visually stunning!  |
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 809
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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Impressive; most impressive!
I'm noticing four exit points to the sector. Where are those supposed to lead?
| ZzaphodD wrote: | | I would also increase travel time within the nebula, just to make it really clear that its slow going.. |
I agree. The travel times you list are extremely short; the sort you only see for very close systems, or systems along very major trade routes with few obstacles. Is this supposed to reflect the jump beacons? |
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southpaw
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 23 Aug 2011
Posts: 115
Location: South. Waaaaaay south.
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| Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | | I just noticed that the supernova should have happened millions of years ago given the fact that it has expanded over such a large area. I would also increase travel time within the nebula, just to make it really clear that its slow going. |
| Mikael Hasselstein wrote: | | I agree. The travel times you list are extremely short; the sort you only see for very close systems, or systems along very major trade routes with few obstacles. Is this supposed to reflect the jump beacons? |
It's a stellar cluster akin to a star nursery; I really wanted a bunch of very close stars so that travel times weren't long just to eliminate prolonged downtime in game. If there wasn't a nebula these distances would be in tens of minutes. So by keeping it close and tight knit the nebula could only be tens of thousand of years old, predating the Old Republic... the Malicrux Empire may have co-existed with the Rakata (though my EU knowledge is quite hazy so I could be wrong)?
Also: nebulas are cool.
| Mikael Hasselstein wrote: | | I'm noticing four exit points to the sector. Where are those supposed to lead? |
I had a look at the Star Wars Atlas and thought that locating it somewhere in R11 not far from Tol Amn and Runaway Prince, just on the border of Hutt Space; there's nothing much there. The Hutts have begun making an expansionist play for the Malicrux and have legitimate possession of Vorzheva (never stake a planet when gambling with a Hutt). So the Sapphrician route leads to Deysum, the Trax Sector captial; Vorzheva to the shadowport at Kwenn, and Gwyer Krom to.... Runaway Prince, Tol Amn, or direct to Toydaria.
As for Ravenholt? Player named it. I always liked player contributions to my settings, helps them get involved (and lighten my workload). And why can't there be an English-inspired name anyhoo? Galaxy's pretty big place. Boudn to turn up somewhere:) |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10297
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 11:25 pm Post subject: The Whills Nebula |
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| southpaw wrote: | Been working on and off on this for years, so I figured I'd start sharing it round. I'll upload more in bits and pieces...
THE MALICRUX SECTOR
The Malicrux Sector is a small region of space limited to the confines of the Malicrux Nebula. |
I not only love the map - I'm also very interested in your ideas. Nebulae are cool! I really like what I'm reading so far, and I'm very much looking forward to more as you share it with us! And please allow me to bounce some of my Star Wars "nebula-related" ideas off of you (for compare/contrast or just for the helluvit), and perhaps we'll both benefit.
| southpaw wrote: | The Nebula is the remnant of a colossal supernova that occurred tens of thousands of years ago, and has inexorably spread to its current girth and even today continues to expand...
Despite its comparatively small size and the challenges of traveling in the Nebula, the Malicrux Sector is blessed with a surprisingly high density of inhabited worlds. |
For years I have been developing an original setting for my next campaign (+), called "The Whills Nebula", part of a larger region of space called "The Whills Nebulae Cluster" or "The Whills Galaxy", in a near orbit of the primary Star Wars galaxy (galactosynchronous to Calamari Space) and outside the realm of the Republic and the Empire (at the start of the campaign).
The nebulae cluster is very "nebulous" indeed. The region has some characteristics of a satellite galaxy, but its status as a satellite is not uniformly accepted by the galactic cosmological community due to its anomolous gavitational relationship to the primary galaxy. Most of the nebulae in the cluster appear to behave like normal nebulae, but most studies have been done from a distance due to travel within most of them being extremely difficult and dangerous.
The Whills Nebula itself (from which the entire nebulae cluster gets its name) is the exception. It has some characteristics of a normal nebula, but it also has some other mysterious qualities that haven't fully been explained, even in light of direct study. Poorly understood and thus very unpredictable energy/matter surges move through the Whills Nebula, causing interstellar "cosmic storms". Many ships have become lost in interstellar space of the nebula, never to be heard from again.
Hyperdrive travel within the Whills Nebula would be nearly impossible if it weren't for a unique "spice" found only on the central world. Inspired by Dune, astrogators must take the narcotic into their system to effect interstellar travel. No, this spice doesn't allow them to "fold space" or anything like that, but it does enhance their perception to achieve the required state of consciousness necessary to intuitively interface with the navicomputer to plot a safe course through the ever-flowing Nebula (like the Force powers but not requiring Force-sensativity). This spice is somehow linked to the Nebula itself, and confers absolutely no navigational abilites outside of the Nebula. Also, the spice only works for certain species: the Nebula's indiginous species and most of the two dozen alien species from the primary galaxy that have colonized the Nebula. Of course spice usage can become addicting and have other detrimental side effects, like many drugs.
The Whills Nebula was colonized from the primary galaxy only a few hundred years ago, and now has a loose confederation of 6 major systems with several minor systems as well. There were five (currently known) sentient species indigenous the Nebula all having midieval to pre-FTL space civilizations when discovered by the colonial explorers, but are now integrated into Nebula society. A Navigation Guild manages the distribution of the spice and the licensinig of navigators. The powerful Navigation Guild is ran by a clan of Hutts that were long ago cast out from Hutt society. And oddly, this Hutt clan is generally viewed as benevolent by Nebula society!
The Nebula has a generally friendly relationship with the relatively nearby Calamari Space, but otherwise they are generally isolationist from galactic civilization and declined membership in the Republic. Some factions within the Nebula supported the Separatists in the Clone Wars, but mostly to serve their own purposes of ensuring the Republic stayed out of their affairs.
Although humans do inhabit in the Nebula, they are a distict minority to non-humans. Humans are not one of the species the spice works for. This is partially why the Empire has not invaded Whills Nebula (before the campaign) - The humancentric Imperial military would have to depend on aliens to navigate their ships. And only Hutts have the capacity to take enough spice into their bodies to navigate the largest capital ships (such as Calamarian star cruisers or Imperial star destroyers) through the Nebula. The Empire has been naturally resistent to the idea of even having a Hutt on board their captial ships, let alone having to depend on them for control of the Nebula (and their very lives).
The very colorful and dynamic Whills Nebula is at least older than the Rebublic, but its exact age has been impossible to determine. The Mon Calamari are known to have had ancient astronomical records of the Nebula appearing in their night skies, and the Nebula is at times currently visible from star systems on that side of the primary galaxy over 25,000 light-years away.
Another large part of the mystery of the Whills Nebula is that the major star systems seem uneffected by the Nebula directly. The major star systems (and planets therein) are conclusively billions of years old as expected for systems of their development. That makes them much older than the Nebula would seem to be, but there is no evidence to suggest that the major system's evolution was effected as would normally be expected by the remnants of a nearby supernova. And conversly, if the major star systems were created by a much older supernova explosion, that model doesn't explain why the Nebula wouldn't have long ago been disipated as its matter was incorporated into the forming systems. Regardless, the major systems seem to be islands within the ocean of the nebula, and the ever-changing narrow paths through hyperspace between the systems seem to even be somewhat protected from completely closing by some unseen force or quality of the Nebula. And regardless of how old the Nebula is, it is still producing new protostars as a typical nebula would (around and in the midst of the more developed major systems).
There are many wildly varying theories that attempt to explain the Whills Nebula. Some say that the Nebula's unique qualities could only be explained by it being an extra-galactic phenomenon (possibly even a remnant of the Big Bang or primordial universe) that was gravitationally pulled into a relationship with the primary galaxy. Others say that the Nebula itself is not a natural phenomena at all, being created either intentionally by extremely powerful and advanced beings, or accidently by an ancient FTL technology that went extremely wrong and damaged the space-time continuum. (Variations of all of these theories include scenarios in which the major systems existed before the Nebula, and also in which the Nebula is much older and produced the major star systems or at least came into being simultaneously with the systems.)
The night skies of the inhabited planets of the major systems appear very alien to many new visitors to the Nebula. The unusually dense material composition of the Nebula blocks the direct light from most of the Nebula's stars, but at the same time the Nebula refracts the starlight and its own radiation to have the effect of a dimly colorful panarama that gives off about the same total amount of light in Earth's night sky. Even more mysteriously, the other major system's stars are the only stars visible from a major system. Since the paths through the Nebula are never direct and always changing, that means that the starlight itself is continually warped as it travels to the other major systems.
Perhaps even more mysterious than the Whills Nebula itself is the fact that all 6 of the major systems have ruins of previous nebula-wide civilization that seems to have very suddenly ceased to exist about 1000 years ago. The civilization was composed a single species which appear to be human or near-human from the minimal artwork left behind. No remains of their deceased have even been found, but there are remains of buildings, fragmented documents, pottery, etc. The modern indiginous species of the Nebula all have (somewhat conflicting) legends about the missing people, but they seem to have intentionally avoided direct contact with anyone other then themselves. What is most baffling is that by all available evidence the vanished people of the Nebula somehow had an interstellar civilization while only posessing a technology level equivalent to ancient Earth. There are also legends that their homeworld is hidden in the Nebula and it holds the key to explaining their interstellar civilization and their sudden disappearance. Perhaps the race still survives somewhere deep within the Nebula.
The vanished people were a spiritual people. The focus of their religions are where the Nebula gets its name: ancient mythological energy beings known as the Whills that were and still are worships as deities by many. Inexplicably, cults devoted to the Whills cropped up in various systems all over the galaxy a few hundreds years ago, and the exploration and colonization of the Whills Nebula began as spritual pilgrimages. New species revitalized the abandoned temples of the Whills Nebula and in some cases the religions of the modern indiginous species, and the organization of the current Nebula confederation is even based on the governments of the vanished people. Some of the religions include prophecies of an ancient evil returning to the Whills Nebula to spark an epic battle, and many believe that the vanished people will return at that time to aid the faithful.
In addition to the uncovering mysteries of the Nebula itself, the spice, the Whills, the ancient evil, the vanished race, their undiscovered homeworld, and the Calamari connection... throw in legends of powerful primordial artifacts, the Celestials and Rakata, ancient superweapons components, spice dragons, several other undiscovered indiginous sentient species, the secret to Sith immortality, rival left-over non-Banian Sith orders (yes orders [i]plural), other secret societies, the Journal fo the Whills, the Shaman of the Whills, the origin and development of Force powers to become a Force Ghost and more.
And did I mention that the campaign I am planning to be centered in the Whills Nebula will start out as cynical smugglers just trying to scratch out a living in the universe? Over the course it will evolve into much, much more! 
I captured a gorgeous Hubble image of the Orion Nebula that I plan to use to make my map of the Whills Nebula. (I'll probably mirror-flip it to not be too instantly recognizable). I always imagined the Whills Nebula to have a rainbow of colors, but of course in-universe it looks that way to the naked eye. Southpaw, when I get to that point, maybe I can make a rough draft and you can make it cool-looking like yours. 
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Esoomian
High Admiral
Joined: 29 Oct 2003
Posts: 6207
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
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| Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 12:02 am Post subject: |
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Hmmmm I wonder if a Hutt navigator would be a viable PC choice in a campaign like that 8)
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10297
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 9:21 am Post subject: |
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| Esoomian wrote: | | Hmmmm I wonder if a Hutt navigator would be a viable PC choice in a campaign like that 8) |
There's about 20 other species who can spice-navigate light transports, so Hutts wouldn't be needed for that. And the next largest species that can spice-navigate are Herglics and I was thinking they could maybe do medium transports, or at least a little more than the rest of the species, so there is a playable PC race that can navigate somewhat bigger ships. But PCs can't navigate capital ships in my campaign because they would be too in demand and not have to work as a lowly tramp.
The Hutt clan in the Whills Nebula are mostly all upper level officials in the Navigation Guild and considered nobility, so they probably wouldn't get their hands dirty by doing menial Tramp freighter work.
Jabba the Hutt is one of my favorite Star Wars characters, and I just love the Hutt species, but as villains. Hutts have never been an allowable PC race in my game. By default, Hutts are pure evil. And you may have noticed I had stated above that the Hutt clan in the Whills Nebula is generally viewed as benevolent (which doesn't necessarily mean that they are truly benevolent). 8)
But I have to admit that while I was typing my Whills Nebula post above, I actually did ponder the possibilty of a Hutt PC. They would have to be extremely young (say age 150) to be a manageable size and also not be too powerful for a PC, and maybe it is only the oldest Hutts that can spice-nagivate the largest ships. Maybe the Hutt youth in the Nebula are sent out to work as lowly freighter navigators to gain experience before they can move up the ranks of the guild. Or maybe a PC could be the rare Hutt that wllingly left the family business to go out on his own. Maybe at a young age they are not yet egotistical meglomaniacs? A scoundrel, sure. But not evil. Hmm....
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