The Wargs/Wolves/Gvazda have been under-appreciated except in passing, so I should probably think about them a little more, especially if I'm setting up the possibility of a war with them.
I can't remember if I've named the Wolf homeworld, but according to the map it's Ousatir. It probably has several competing names anyway. Per the random generation, despite being a high-population world it is merely a Type E starport, which checks out in that it obviously had a Type A at one point but, well, you know.
So here's a very tentative timeline:
Discovering (or being discovered by) the Zhdez resulted in the end of a long-running civil war. The Zhdez were sure they had brought peace, but in fact they had just inspired the rise of a Llarrgzakh, or High Warlord.
Gue Gvuklo Ae, Llarrg of Ogar, set up an impressive long con, going so far as to arrange an apparent coup (risky, since Gvazdan uelnae, or fealty, cannot really be faked - Gue knew she had to legitimately give up support, and trust that she would earn it back). The (unwitting) puppet regime was pro-Zhdez, bound by uelnae to a (somewhat uncomfortable about it) Zhdez ambassador.
When the Zhdez had bought the ruse long enough to share (or at least leave unattended) the technology for jump-3, Gue made her move. Launching a suicide attack on the orbital shipyards at Ousatir with stolen Zhdez ships, her agents made it look like the Zhdez were attempting to suppress the advancement while simultaneously removing the only competition for Ogari shipyards.
After a brief conflict, in which the confused Zhdez withdrew immediately, past the Kharen/Zdeklia Obrr jump-3 barrier, Gue's agents came forward with the not-actually-lost J-3 technology. The ruse was revealed, Gue resumed power, and the Ogar shipyards began producing J-3 drives as fast as possible.
The Gvazda kept the Zhdez in the dark as long as possible, which of course wasn't very long, and the Zhdez were faced with the possibility of hostile polities at two of the paths out of their territory. They began an extensive carrot-and-stick campaign, arming their ships (which they had previously not done) and establishing a blockade at Chtidrezh but a mixed-species colony at Zdeklia Obrr, attempting a cultural (and technological) exchange to court more community-minded Gvazdans.
It wasn't until Gue Gvuklo Ae's death (at the hands of one of her lieutenants) that peace was fully achieved, if "a return to no unified government above system level, and no organized navy beyond individual corsairs" can be considered peaceful. Being anti-carceral, the Zhdez began lowering their blockade when it became apparent the state of affairs was going to continue.
All the Gvazdan ships that can come down the Corridor are by definition jump-3, and some have had good success trading in the Ring. Most have a mixed crew of Gvazda and Zhdez, or occasionally Inukari. It is reasonably well accepted that the Gvazda involved are intelligence agents, anthropologists, or a combination of the two. The crews have very stable uelnae relationships, even when the non-Gvazda crew changes, and they return up the Corridor every couple of standard years, ostensibly for ship maintenance. The Zhdez assessment is that they have family members held hostage against their good behavior, though that's not exactly clear in Gvazdan society.
Individual Gvazda have traveled down the Corridor seeking their fortune, taking passage on whatever Gvazdan or Zhdez ship will take them. These are almost always young, and the Gvazdan ship crews sneer at them for "going native" among humans. The Gvazda of the Ring have developed their own societies, influenced by humans but still firmly rooted in Gvazdan psychology.
False star range
Update: There is now a wiki entry for jumpdrives, which supercedes this.
I've been thinking about what exactly it takes to upgrade from jump-3 to jump-4 given my technology decisions so far, and I realized: no change in jump technology will change what navigators can see out the windows of a starship. If there is a gate J-4 away, either a J-2 ship can still see its "starlight" even though it can't get there in time, or a J-4 ship is piloting by other "stars" until it gets into range.
And if that's how it's done, then how do you navigate out of Dessonia, which doesn't have any gates closer than J-4? Nope, you can definitely see at least J-4 away. So the Wolves of Ogar have been able to see the hinterlands of the Inukari Union, and vice versa, for instance. I think J-4 is the limit, though longer jumps are demonstrably possible by Ancient ships. And maybe some pilots with really good vision/sensitivity can see further?
That means the "frontiers" have probably actually been mapped. Hmm.
Ship scales, military edition
According to the Trav wiki, military ships can go up to 1 megaton. That's a little larger than my 5 kiloton max!
What if:
Auxiliary Class: (under 2500 in Trav) 100-500 dton
Battle Class: (2500-250000 Trav) 500-1250
Capital Class: (100000-1000000 Trav) 1000-5000
Fleet Class: (250000-1000000 Trav) 1250-5000
I also think I'm going to go with "projectiles last a short period of time outside of jump bubbles before they lose the field charge and go pfft."
This also means that if a ship's jump bubble collapses, there is a tiny window in which it can be reestablished without the ship going pfft.
So this allows for some battles on the high seas: you have to get close enough to the other guy, and beam weapons don't work, and boarding actions are possible.
Zhdezi gift-giving
The Zhdez economic system is approximately capitalistic, but in keeping with zhdi ab vopl, has not tended toward inequality in the way the Terran version tends to. Part of that is that Zhdez practice zhavria, or "gifting." Similar to the Terran potlatch, practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, it is a demonstration of wealth and power... by giving away the wealth.
As with zhdi, it is an inherent trait rather than a cultural practice: the only time a Zhdez seeks to accumulate wealth beyond that necessary to live (sometimes very) comfortably, it is part of a hoarding disorder. But cultural practices have grown up around gifting: Sele'zdem Zhavria, or Midwinter Gifting, is a tradition across many Zhdez cultures, particularly those further from the equator.
At the winter solstice, when everyone had settled in for deep winter, households took stock of their supplies and gave gifts to their neighbors, often collecting in large celebrations to perform the exchange. Households would keep almost nothing they had produced, and the rest of the winter's food was that produced by others. The "richest" household was the one whose stored food was eaten by the most other townsfolk, and thus received the most Hayaeyi Lael: "winter remembering."
Modern Zhdez give gifts year-round, in shared occasions or "just because," but still reserve a time around the solstice to meet and celebrate. The discovery of Terran Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and in particular Boxing Day seemed to confirm a sort of interstellar kinship, and Terran symbols became a fashion for Sele'zdem Zhavria. (The reverse was also true, though the fashion died out in the Terran systems as the Zhdez became perceived as an enemy.) Santa Claus, however, has not really caught on, since Zhdez can't figure out the appeal of hiding behind a mythical figure to give out your gifts.
The Zhdez homeworld has a more balanced north/south hemisphere, so Sele'zdem Zhavria was not skewed toward one or the other even when a worldwide calendar was standardized: each celebrated it at the time the other celebrated Zhdenyialia Zhavria, the lesser Midsummer Gifting. So it has been natural for each world to localize its time period, and for starfaring Zhdez to not favor either hemisphere of the homeworld... by adopting the Terran northern-hemisphere solstice, December 25. (Close enough, evidently.)
The Inukari adoption of Zhdez "religion," in turn, has led even some Inukari to celebrate Christmas, albeit in an almost unrecognizable form after passing through Zhdezi inerpretation.
The net effect is that in almost any starport lobby in charted space, there's a chance you may encounter a wreath, menorah, or kinara when it is December on distant Earth.
Merry Christmas!
Calendars
I've mentioned "Capital years" in the Daka Ai article, so I guess I should contemplate them.
The four known homeworlds were chosen for their similarity, so that will extend to their year length, axial tilt, and maybe moon status. So the standard calendars of each polity are fairly similar, though of course not exact. As each homeworld's people spread to the stars, they kept some things synchronized with the homeworld (mostly religious holidays), and others adapted to their system's local rhythms.
I am not sure what direction Mecca would be when you're in a different universe; I suspect Muslims would use whatever rules apply when you can't know the direction. It's certainly going to complicate Ramadan if you can't end the fast until you get word from Terra, so even purists will have to use the calculated lunar phases.
Observant Jews will have similar issues synchronizing things; honoring the Sabbath locally every seventh sundown seems pretty straightforward, until you try to match holy days to the Earth calendar. I can't begin to guess how that would get worked out, but I bet various SF authors have worked on it.
Protestants seem less likely to have trouble figuring out the calendar: again, every seventh day is a day of rest, and let the Earth holidays fall where they may. Catholics and other high-church types are a little more formal about their calendars; there may be schisms over how things get adapted.
Starships can, of course, keep whatever time they want. For legal reasons they probably keep records in Earth/Capital/Zhdezhe'chievr standard time, just as airlines operate on GMT regardless of where they are. (Except on passenger tickets,that is.)
I write these entries as they pop into my head, meaning sometimes I have a large buffer and other times I'm working day-to-day. Currently I have a buffer, so while it's mid-December on my planet, it's Christmas Eve wherever this is getting posted. To all a good night!
NoNoWriNo
I mentioned having tried out a little scene-writing to get a feel for things, and then being tempted to try turning it into a novella. It's time for an update on the word count:
0
I mean, I have a lot of words, but they've all ended up being stuffed in the "Scraps" directory, because every time I try to put together an actual plot, it negates something (or everything) that happened in the scene. It's fun though, and eventually I'll get a scene that leads someplace worthwhile. Probably. Maybe.
High and Low Inukari
Unlike the Zhdez, the Inukari have brought two major languages to space with them. Confusingly, the preference for which one to use has flipped since the Inukari encountered outsiders.
The term "Inukari" comes from what is usually referred to as "High Inukari," a language originally restricted to the upper class on the then-dominent Inukari continent. "Low Inukari," or more accurantely "Brancian," was the lingua franca for the world at the time. It was generally used to name planets, on the theory that commoners should not even use (High) Inukari names.
The Brancian Enlightenment, in which Inukari classism began to fall out of fashion (in hindsight, improbable and probably the result of Ancient or even Precursor meddling), ironically led to the decline and near disappearance of Brancian in the public sphere. All classes began learning Inukari as children, in order to read texts previously restricted to higher classes but also to remove the class marker of being unable to speak the unaccented High Language.
Brancian now exists in a strange limbo: most citizens of the Union learn both, but starfaring Inukari generally treat it as a children's language. Higher-class Inukari will have only learned it in school and generally lose fluency, while middle- and lower-class Inukari use it within their household, though all written material, except a few children's books, will be in the high language.
It is sometimes used as a code language around non-Inukari, who are less likely to know it than High Inukari, but this is not always secure.
Yes, I did make up a whole backstory to avoid changing the map names, which were generated under the "Pocket Empires" setting rather than "Vilani." I'll still have to change the Zhdez and Wolf system names, and some of the Terran ones, but I hadn't put any of those in the SVG yet.
