Re: Just how big is "known space"?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Spelljammer Setting Discussion [mailto:SPELLJAMMER-
> L@??????.???????.com] On Behalf Of David Shepheard
> Sent: November 3, 2007 4:12 PM
> To: SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com
> Subject: [SPELLJAMMER] Just how big is "known space"?
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> With my Internet connection going down *every* evening for the last month,
> I've had time to do a bit of offline reading.
> 
> Part of this has been looking at old SJML postings. Last year Ben Wafer
> was
> saying how the big three spheres (Greyspace, Krynnspace and Realmspace)
> should be "spelljamming suburbs" to explain the lack of knowledge about
> spelljamming on Oerth, Krynn and Toril.

[Ben Wafer] OK, don't tell me you're actually paying attention to anything I
said... That's a certain route to madness!
 
> More recently someone was talking about Practical Planetology. 
*snip*
> The Geonomicon we have today* is
> something that is expanding and *currently* at approximately 80 worlds.
*snip*
> You may be wondering where Ben's comments come in to this topic, 

[Ben Wafer] Frankly, I'm always wondering where my comments come in to any
topic....

> but here
> is
> where they combined with Practical Planetology to made me think of
> something:
> 
> If the Radiant Triangle is made up of three crystal spheres where the
> largest worlds have no knowledge of spelljamming *and* "known space" only
> has 80 planets that have been explored enough to appear in the Geonomicon
> and  then maybe Spelljammer *isn't* the impossibly big campaign setting
> that
> we *think* it is. Maybe Spelljammer is a setting that only covers one or
> two
> dozen crystal spheres. Maybe the rest of the spheres are unexplored.

[Ben Wafer] I tend to agree with your assessment. 

> Lets have a look at the "....space" books to see if we can work out some
> sort of average number of worlds per sphere. Remember that the quote from
> the sidebar specifies that these are "explored" worlds, so voidworlds
> shouldn't really be included in this list of 80 planets. I'm also going to
> discount suns. I know that fireworlds are included in Practical
> Planetology,
> but I'm trying to be conservative and boost the number of possible crystal
> spheres. 

[Ben Wafer] Yes, fireworlds were included in Practical Planetology, but
you're absolutely right that suns shouldn't be included in the 80-world
count of the Geonomicon. I was actually just re-reading PP yesterday (before
I got your email... weird coincidence), and I noticed a line that I hadn't
noticed before. On page 20 under the introduction to fire bodies it says
"For the purposes of this discussion, however, we will disregard 'suns' -
that is, fire bodies that are the primaries of their systems - and
concentrate on those rare fire worlds that orbit another primary." I take
this to mean that the 80 worlds of the Geonomicon wouldn't include suns,
although they would include a few fireworlds.

> This gives us between 3 and 5 planets in Greyspace that would definately
> be
> in the Geonomicon.

[Ben Wafer] Hmm, I actually think you're ignoring more of the worlds than
you should. Most of the worlds in PP are actually worlds which are virtually
(or completely) unaware of spelljamming, and some of them have only been
cursorily explored. I'm actually leaning towards the worlds in the
Geonomicon being worlds that are rarely visited by spelljammers. I'm sort of
thinking that the most commonly-visited worlds would be in a different sort
of guidebook, since it seems like the Geonomicon is geared more towards
explorers than traders. In that way, I tend to think that most of the worlds
in the Geonomicon would be worlds on the fringes of Known Space, although
many of them would also be well within Known Space, and would simply be
worlds that were infrequently visited.
 
> In total I'm counting between 10 and 14 worlds for these three spheres.
> The
> lower number suggests that the Geonomicon needs about 24 spheres and the
> higher number suggests that it only needs about 17 or 18 spheres.
> 
> This is all guesswork, of course, and there could be lots of spheres, with
> only one useful planet. But even if all crystal spheres only had one
> world,
> we could infer that there would be less than 80 crystal spheres in "known
> space".

 [Ben Wafer] My own estimate of the number of spheres in Known Space would
be fairly close to yours. I've always considered that the following spheres
would be included in Known Space:
Realmspace
Krynnspace
Greyspace
Spiralspace/Bralspace/Casaspace (depending on which name you prefer for this
sphere)
Herospace
Greatspace
Refuge
Pirtel
Darnannon
Clusterspace
Heartspace
Korvspace
Pathspace
Redeye
Winterspace
IMO the Arcane Inner Flow should be considered to be a part of Known Space
(Refuge, Pirtel, and Darnannon are all part of the Arcane Inner Flow - the
other 9 spheres of the Arcane Inner Flow may or may not include some of the
other spheres in the above list).

I'm leaning towards also including the spheres from Hackjammer in Known
Space, and possibly fleshing out Fungo (the example of sphere creation from
the Concordance of Arcane Space) and including it as well.

There are a couple of published spheres that I'm undecided about whether or
not they should be included in Known Space:
Faeriespace (could be a frontier of Known Space, or could be just outside of
Known Space)
Shadowspace (ditto)
Glowrings (don't really know enough about it to say)
Herdspace (I don't remember enough about it - I'll have to re-read
Maelstrom's Eye)
Primespace (don't know enough about it to say)
Vistaspace (don't know enough about it to say)
Wayspace (don't know enough about it to say)

There are also a number of published spheres that I feel should definitely
be considered to be outside of Known Space:
The entire Vodoni Empire (until Vulkaran's invasion of Known Space, all of
these spheres were unknown)
Darkspace (as presented, I just think that it should be beyond the frontier)
The Dead Shell (nobody seems to know about it)
Dukagsh (definitely far outside of Known Space)
Kreenspace (only mentioned in Thri-Kreen of Athas, and described as
'legendary' so it should be outside of Known Space)
Moragspace (it's mentioned that nothing is known of Moragspace, so it must
not be considered to be part of Known Space)
Nexspace (as a forbidden sphere I don't see it being part of Known Space)
Solspace (if used at all, the Space: 1889 sphere is 'recently discovered')
Pyrespace/Spiderspace (definitely far outside Known Space)
Steel Star (definitely outside of Known Space, but probably just beyond the
frontier)
Truespace (its physics would prevent most spelljamming traffic)
IMO the entire Arcane Outer Flow should be considered to be outside of Known
Space, since there aren't any known connections from it to the Arcane Inner
Flow (except for those known by the Arcane).

Anyway, that's my take on what should be considered Known Space (aided
greatly by Paul Westermeyer's recently compiled An "official" Spelljammer
Guide to the Spheres, which is a truly invaluable resource). Oh, and there
are a couple of fan-created spheres that I would also include in Known Space
- notably Grommspace (Adam Miller's version based on Paul Westermeyer's
original).

-Ben

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