Archive for 2026 week 16
- So many questions - 13 Apr 2026
- I forgot a change - 14 Apr 2026
- Following the migration - 15 Apr 2026
- The right spacewhale - 16 Apr 2026
- A possible solution - 17 Apr 2026
- Other possibilities - 18 Apr 2026
- Wiki worky - 19 Apr 2026
I realized the last week of entries have all been questions and that's kinda where I am, I guess: waiting for things to coalesce for me. Yesterday's is probably the big one, since it will determine the focus of the setting. Probably. But then I find myself asking: would that first contact really affect everything the way some of the other changes could? It feels more regional, especially since the area I have set aside for that is past the Wolf Worlds.
The whale migration. Well, misremembered a change: the Terran invasion wasn't conquest, it was desperation.
If the whales are disappearing from the lefthand side of the current map), then it's natural for the Terrans to chase them through the Union and the Zhdez to chase them up the corridor into the Wolf Worlds, mostly. That'll impact who conflicts with whom (and maybe lead to Zhdez encountering the lionfolk).
The right whale (Terran) is so named because it's the right whale to hunt (and that's why it's nearly extinct, which is probably also relevant). The spacewhale version of that is the one that "beaches" itself in realspace now and then, and is why realspace species have figured out how to get to jumpspace.
If some whales have discrete exoplasm storage, maybe it's possible to harvest cells without killing the whale? I feel like the Zhdez would be the ones most invested in nonlethal exoplasm acquisition, and also most likely to share the technique with other polities. Complicated if it involves psychic bonding with the whales or something, though.
There are clearly other possibilities for getting into jumpspace, since Ancients don't harvest whales.
It's been a little while since I updated the wiki, so I did some of that by way of brainstorming. Bertania has a minimal entry, along with the Bertania Cluster and a passenger liner that serves it (that has a strangehold on intra-cluster passenger service, in fact).