Just a quick public service announcement: The white paper on the history and composition of The Verse has been updated. Version 1.1 takes care of a couple of typos (most courtesy of Yours Truly), adds orbital periods to the primary stars and the black rock moon, Ita, to Whittier. Click here to download the pdf.
Enjoy!
link doesn’t work. You’ve got http// twice in the url.
D’oh!
Fixed. Thanks for the heads-up, Keelhauler!
Wow, I know what I’m doing the rest of the day.
well, here goes another tree.
Hello Chris,
I want to say that you have done a truly fantastic job with your white paper. I have loved reading it and studying it like I was really in the Advanced Astrogation and Stellar Mapping III course at the University of Osiris! The only thing I have a question about isn’t in the part about the terrestial bodies themselves, but in the timeline. You have the date of the birth of the Alliance at 2060, but if you look at the “Serenity Official Visual Companion” on page 13 in the article written by Joss entitled “A Brief History of the Universe circa 2507 AD”, you will notice the following quote:
“Even among these (the central) planets, conflicts over resources, trade and political influence strained the relations of sister nations. In an effort to unite and quell this conflict, the Central Planets formed the ALLIANCE …”
From studying your timeline and looking at what Joss himself has written, I would think the Alliance was formed in the 2430’s. Of course, this is your white paper and you can put the date anywhere you like and I’m not trying to boss you. I love your work, I just wanted to give you a little helpful hint. Thanks for all that you do to make the ‘verse a shiner place!
Hi there Bob – thought I’d respond for Chris seeing as that particular item was my doing:
It’s true that Joss put that in the Companion, but in a Q&A sometime later, he was asked whether it made sense that the Alliance would spring up *after* the exodus, seeing as it would have required previously unknown cooperation between the two superpowers to make the exodus even possible. Joss reportedly responded (reportedly because I wasn’t there personally to hear it) that the Alliance as it existed in the Verse probably sprung from some previously-existing body, like a United Nations, that was responsible for organizing the Exodus. I liked that explanation, which is why we inserted that tidbit in the timeline
Of course, having said that, it is *all* speculation. So feel free to go with whatever version of the timeline works for you!
Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t know that Joss had mentioned that about the Alliance, but it does make sense.
Once again, I just want to say what a great job everyone at QMX did on the Official Map of the Verse and on the White Paper. I look forward to all of the other shiny products that are going to come our way from QMX. I am especially looking forward to the planet Atlases. They should be another wonderful companion to the map! (No pun intended. We know all companions, like Inara, ARE wonderful!)
Okay, I’ve officially wasted too many hours studying the White Paper and a question has come up about Shadow. The White Paper lists Shadow’s population as 13,300, but the Serenity Roleplaying Game says the following…
“Shadow was aggressively bombed during the war in an attempt to break the Browncoats & teach them a lesson; it had the opposite effect.
Today, Shadow is a ghost planet. No one lives there. No one can.”
As Margaret Weis Productions has worked with QMx on several projects, I was surprised by the contradiction. Is this foreshadowing of some change in the history of Mal’s home world? No pun intended.
Hey there William. Of course we discussed this with both MWP and among ourselves, and the conclusion we came to is while Shadow was wiped out during the war, all these years later there’s no way the Alliance would leave such valuable real estate in such an advantageous location unoccupied forever. The token population you see listed there is basically the terraforming crew.
More on Shadow in The Atlas of The Verse.
Excellent. Thank you for the update. I was wondering if few die hards had simply chosen to live in the hellish place, despite the conditions. Stubborn Browncoats.
Were did it go?
The link just redirects to the Quantummechanix home page! What happened?
Sorry, folks, just doing some server maintenance. The link should work again. Thanks for your patience.