Re: Known Space

--- David Shepheard <david_shepheard@???????.com>
wrote:

> This is all good historical information, but doesn't
> give much information on humans, dwarves, gnomes
> and halflings.

Well it wasn't very specific, just broad swaths of
time.


> We know that almost all wilspace gnomes are Tinker
> Gnomes (or Krynnish Gnomes). That takes care of
> that. We can work from the mention of Gnome ships
> in Beyond the Moons, to work out a possible space
> colonisation date. (Given that date was a *long*
> time ago, I'd suggest waves of colonisation + 
> secondary colonisation from Reorx = tertiary
> colonisation from planets in other crystal spheres.)

The tinker gnomes' ventures into wildspace were
probably much like that of Shou Lung: waves of ships
with long lulls in between.


> The write up of dwarves mostly takes care of them,
> as they are implied to be sphere bound in the
> description.

Dwarves have a long history of migration, usually a
leader in search of a motherlode.  A number of clans
could migrate into space, and have been there ever
since.  


> Spacefaring halflings seem very underdeveloped to
> me. Apart from the agressive Anadian halflings, I'm
> not really sure how to pitch their history.

Colonies founded by individual heroes & their
followers, perhaps?  Each colony would have a
different personality, due to the influences of their
founder.


> Humans (now) form the main focus for civilisation,
> so I really need to wind time back for *them* and
> see how *they* got into wildspace.

Netheril got there around -2.5k years ago, but
Greatspace was still planet-bound until about -700
years ago or so.  Seems to me humans sporadically went
into space over the course of the last three thousand
years, and only in the last 500 or so years have their
colonies "gelled" enough into something resembling an
far-flung, yet tangibly common culture.


> I don't think that information about the elves helps
> us, because I'm sure the elves would have kept
> everyone else out of wildspace, if they could have 
> gotten away with it.

Yes and no.  I think their primary goal is keeping
enemy races from spreading, not an unreasonable goal. 
I also sorta view it as their "fleet" was thin, almost
unknown, prior to UWI.  During the -20k to -5k
timeframe, they may have had only a few ships in all
of Known Space, perhaps even centuries where there was
none at all.  Its only been in the last 5,000 years or
so that they've taken an interest in the area &
started seriously colonizing local planets.

Just IMHO, of course :)

Adam

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