Forum:Problematic: Lore, the Scale of the Galaxy

Lore
''Lore, simply put, is established information that exists within your universe. It is exclusively objective, and is made up of cold, hard facts. Technically, "lore" falls under "story", but it is such a broad topic that it deserves its own category. It is the single most important element to any fantastical setting, because it is what will suspend your audiance's disbelief. Provided enough detail is given via the lore, literally anything can happen in the story, and the audiance will willingly suspend their disbelief.''

Bad: Scale of the Galaxy
The Milky Way Galaxy is absurdly big, 100,000 light years in diameter. Even with Faster Than Light (FTL) travel, the simple act of going from point A to point B is problematic. Here, we meet an impasse. We want this story to be Mass Effect-style:  zipping across the galaxy like space cowboys, dealing with problems and restoring the peace. Unfortunately, this is impractical with the gritty, realistic tone we're going for.

Going to each of the race's homeworlds is illogical simply because of the time it would take to do so. To put the scale in to perspective, let's look at Keerat and Deruk, the taik and kexs homeworlds respectively, and the two closest homeworlds on our galaxy map. The distance from one to the other is about 1/3 the diamater of the galaxy, and so is 33,000 light years. Even if we travel at 100x the speed of light, the trip would take us 330 years. Travelling from Deruk to Earth would take us 1000 years travelling at 100x the speed of light, and that's assuming we go straight through the galactic core.

The fix
Sadly, if we want this story to follow any sense of logic, we have to choose just one alien homeworld to follow, and leave the rest to backstory. The story starts out on the Junk Planet, which can be anywhere we want it to be. That said, once we stick with a quadrant on the galaxy map, we are committed. If you want to know where each homeworld resides, go here.

There is no simple fix to this problem.

What needs to change
We can go one of three ways, as far as I can tell:
 * 1) We put the Junk Planet in the same quadrant as Keerat and Deruk.  This gives us the most options, because we have two homeworlds at our disposal.  However, we CANNOT visit the other homeworlds unless we use enormous jumps in time (potentially thousands of years), but they can still be a part of the backstory (ex. through flashbacks).  Other planets will have to be explored in future expanded universe stories.
 * 2) We invent unobtainium.  I understand the general dislike towards this particular trope, but if we want to move across the galaxy, we need to bit the bullet and just use unobtainium.  Moving across the galaxy in a matter of hours or even days requires a near-infinite supply of energy, which cannot exist in the real world.  If unobtainium is the way we go, then it opens up many possibilities, albiet at the expense of immersion.  It needs to be appropriately added to the lore and must become a plot-integral element.
 * 3) We bunch all of the homeworlds into a very small area, and leave the rest of the galaxy either uninhabited or a mystery.  Obviously this is both good and bad.  It's good because it allows us to be far more expansive in our 3 volumes.  We can explore diverse locations, characters, etc.  Unfortunately, it's also a bit too convenient, and may harm the audiance's suspension of disbelief (remember, the audiance accepts the impossible, but not the improbable).  There is one element that to this that is VERY beneficial, however:  The mysteries of the galaxy; it opens up a plethora of possibilites.

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Actual discussions go here
Yo JrH154 (talk) 18:33, March 26, 2013 (UTC)