What do we 'know' about these worlds? by Lindley

Regina is where the train job occurred... Don't know much about the others.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2009 5:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Briglad:
This should answer a bunch of questions for you....

http://www.quantummechanix.com/The_Verse_in_Numbers_v1.1.pdf

Brian

Edit: Yellowjacket beat me to it!

It's a shame I've already designed my universe, that would have been useful.

I just need planet descriptions for the above. Unfortunately there's no way I'm going to be making any more major changes to the layout. I'm using the 1 big, 4 medium, 3 small star layout seen in some drawings.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2009 5:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Regina is where the train job occurred... Don't know much about the others.

I was under the impression The Train Job occurred on Georgia.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2009 5:56 PM

Georgia is a system, as far as I know. Regina is in it.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2009 9:27 PM

SPACEANJL

Muir is a moon off of Dyton, and Badger's actual homeworld. (Can't remember where I read that, but it was somewhere 'official'.)

In the absence of anything definite, go with what the names suggest to you. Deadwood always sounded like Jayne's homeworld to me, so I wrote it that way. Looking at the pictures in the Serenity OVC, you can get a good idea of which worlds might have a decent climate, and which ones are scary little rocks.

edit: Holy Cr*P. I just read that maths guys take on the 'Verse.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 4:19 AM

I found an error in the Verse in Numbers FAQ. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, the Serenity Blue Ray Disk special features says that Persephone, Hera, and Shadow were the three major Independence supporting planets.

Ha, one of the moons around Three Hills is called "Bob." Titan A.E. reference?

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 6:55 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

re: Three Hills- it's not cannonical, but I recently asked about Kaylee's origin. According to the replies, the consensus on another fan board is that Three Hills is the town/moon/planet that Kaylee came from, where the scenes with Bester from OOG were set. Place also had a Chinese name that I forget.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 11:03 AM

Kowlonshi!

It's on the Serenity Blue Ray extras. :)

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 12:01 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

A bit OT, but as for all these worlds, I just don't see how any one could be over crowded, as has been brought up in other discussions. Even w/ massive Arks, humans, animals, and such, could only have been in a very limited #, and in the short time ( 500 yrs - time it takes to terraform a planet/moon - travel time between Earth that was to the new systems - reproductive rates....) , there's just not enough time to over populate ALL those moons and planets.

No ruttin' way.

The T.Rex they call JANE!

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 1:03 PM

I've said it before but I see Shadow (before being bombed to bits by the Alliance) as Central Texas up and down what is now the I-35 corridor from just north of San Antonio (the hill country) to just south of Dallas.

Long rolling hills, grassland, scrub trees with a few rivers and many creeks and streams. The sky is blue and the storms are quick and strong. You can also see forever if if you could get higher than a horses' back.

Large ranches and small family holdings knit together by cattle ranching and it's environs. Large close knit families with piles of children and many young men and women 3/4 grown up, getting ready to start their own families.

A few large towns to provide the neccesisties and nothing like a city. Most of the beef is sold off planet after being processed in the slaughterhouses in the towns.

Shadow is also dependent on the Core for all modern conveniences but there are few as the beef is sold mostly to middle men, who are the ones who make the profit reselling it to feed the Core. Some of the beef even makes it's way to the famous restaurants of Ariel but the inhabitants of Shadow rarely see the enormous profits of the middle men.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 3:12 PM

That would be more helpful if I'd ever been to Texas. Still, thanks. My current Shadow description, any suggestions?

-----Landing-----

Shadow was once home. Peaceful, happy, and quiet. The settlers here lived fulfilling, simple lives in the planet's sparsely scattered farm settlements. The war changed everything. Vast regions of the planet were blackened by Alliance punative strikes, and the remaining habitable areas are slowly withering under the constant umbrella of dust and broken dreams. This place is no longer home, nor could it ever be again. It is only a tangible memory, a shadow of the innocence of childhood long lost.

There is nothing more for you here.

-------Bar-------

Heavy plastic flaps in the entryway keep the worst of the blanketing dust at bay, making this one of the few bars you've seen to have better air than the outside. This valley is one of the few "clean zones" where chance and weather patterns conspired to keep some vegetation alive after the wartime devastation. Alliance personnel are unwelcome.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 4:31 PM

*sniff* That was good.

I saw Texas thanks to the US Army. My ex was in field artillery and we spent 3 years in Killeen, Texas at Ft. Hood.

Killeen is about 90 minutes north of Austin and 40 minutes west of Waco in the middle of the scrub and grassland area. There's still lots of wild land left, protected by the US Army.

We also drove down twice to San Antonio through the Hill Country, which was settled first by Southerners (who declared independence from Mexico and died at the Alamo and won independence at the Battle of San Jacinto) and then by German immigrants in the 1800's. And the location of the best beef barbecue in the world.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009 10:48 PM

SPACEANJL

I've always thought it was the bombing of Shadow that persuaded the Independents to surrender.

The place is a cinder in space. 'Burn the land, and Boil the sea' is a literal description. There is no atmosphere left, just drifts of ash under a scorched sky.

Edit: Check out archived thread 'Planetary Government' in Firefly Universe section.

PS I've provided snapshot descriptions of worlds for folks before, for game scenarios. I'm happy to do it again, if anyone would like to PM me. Just saying. Can't say they match anything from the RPG books, just what I see.

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 11:31 AM

I'd heard the "blackened cinder" description of Shadow before. Never thought it fit all that well with "Our Miss Reynolds", though.....

There are a number of aspects of the 'Verse that I wish had been sussed out 6 years ago when I first started developing this project. I may make a few changes to try and bring it in line with other sources a bit....but I'm not reworking it from scratch. Did that once already, more or less.

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 12:16 PM

It's suggested pretty strongly in Our Mrs. Reynolds that something bad happened to the the Reynolds family ranch before the series, if Mal's "most of them (the crew) know better (than to talk to me about it)" comment is anything to judge by.

Shadow's current uninhabitable-ness is covered in a number of sources, as well. I don't know if you consider the Serenity RPG manual canon, but it's in there for certain. I seem to recall there's a reference to this on the Serenity Blu-Ray extras. And I also think it's in the Visual Companions.

Buuut... If you have good reason for people still living on Shadow, or something that makes sense in context, I'll generally read your story.

SpaceAnjl, I've thought the exact same thing. It seems strange to me that Mal would be so chipper during those war scenes in the pilot and The Message if he knew his homeworld was destroyed (in other words, if it was early in the war). And Shadow being ruined and causing the surrender of the Independents would've really kicked Mal when he was down and made the bombardment in the pilot that much more poignant.

But, in descriptions of Shadow, I've read "Shadow's destruction, intended to demoralize the Independents, merely inspired them to fight harder." Which would suggest it happened before the war ended. :/ I don't really like it, because it doesn't make sense, but that's what I've read.

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 2:55 PM

The storyline doesn't revolve around Shadow at all, so it doesn't really matter. But if the player is Mal, and his home's been destroyed, it would be required to deal with it in some way when the player lands there......and I'm really not too keen on that. Hence the "mostly destroyed" description I chose.

Figuring out what to do with that is an open action item, really. It's already a lot darker than my original description back when I started the project.

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 3:43 PM

YELLOWJACKET

I mentioned this on another site, but it could stand repeating here.

When the Official Map of the Verse was released, it showed Shadow among the many other planets. I didn't think much of this, since I assumed the hulk of the planet would still exist, despite being lifeless. Later when the White Paper was released showing the populations of moons and planets of the Verse, I was surprised to see a very small population of 13,300 listed next to Shadow.

As I had spoken with the people at QMx before, I fired off an email asking them about this difference from the other sources on the subject.

They explained that a planet once terraformed, could be terraformed again, and with less effort than starting new. The Alliance would not leave a huge chunk of real estate floating around dead if anything might be done to recover it, so some time post war they began returning it to life, but only recently. All other planets in the terraforming process, according to the White Paper and Official Map of the Verse, have a population of about 5,000, so 13,300 is pretty small.

One can only imagine what a re-terraformed planet like Shadow must look like with her scarred and damaged surface and cities reduced to ruins. Daily life might contain part archeology, part human survival. A true post-apocalyptic setting. The Mad Max world of the Verse.

One of the early episodes of Firefly talks about the high death rate among terraformers, so a planet only recently terraformed, especially one once destroyed by war, might be a very harsh place to live.

Either way, the Shadow that Mal new would be an altogether different place than he would remember. Alive again or not, his Shadow was destroyed in the War.

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 4:00 PM

Oh. Oh, I *like* that! It's a really awesome idea, and it suggests some interesting stories to be told.

Hmm. But my story begins a mere six months after Serenity Valley. No way they'd be terraforming yet. Maybe in Part 2 or 3.....

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 4:10 PM

Hey, yeah, that IS a neat idea. :)

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 4:57 PM

Hmm, my take on the Battle of Sturges was that it was prematurely ended by orbital strikes as well (taking out soldiers from both sides in the process)....hope the one event doesn't overshadow the other.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure what would motivate the Alliance to wipe out an entire planet. What's the strategic value there? Is it just the A-Bomb effect?

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 5:09 PM

Probably. Shadow was a major source of support for the Independents. It would be a demoralizing loss and also they were probably hoping it would end the war sooner so less soldiers would die.

Although I've heard rumours based on some maps of Serenity Valley that Blue Sun had some vested interest in the outcome of the war...Maybe it benefitted them in some way?

Although, there isn't any way the Core worlds would have supported the destruction of Shadow, even if they were at war. Especially since the Alliance's official line is that they were doing this to help. I suspect the Alliance tried to say it was an accident.

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 5:39 PM

I would think that Shadow would have been blockaded by the Alliance once the war started. That would have wrecked havoc on a planet that depended on trade to survive, but could eak by on blockade runners and supply the Independents with food, be a way station for material and troops.

I grew up in Wilmington, NC the last Confederate ports and it took an amphibious invasion(the largest until D-day in WWII) by Federal forces to close it. Nuking would have been faster but wasn't available.

Also the destruction of Shadow could have been perceived much like the Alamo in Texas was. It was an enormous defeat and everyone (except some women and servants who were spared by Santa Ana) died, yet the rallying cry for the rest of the war was "Remember the Alamo". Revenge is a good motivator and best served cold.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Thursday, June 4, 2009 8:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Lindley:
A few of the worlds from the Serenity Visual Companion....what do we know about them?

Liann Juin
Highgate
Harvest
Regina
Whittier
Kerry
Salisbury
Three Hills
Deadwood
Muir

Obviously we've gotten next to nothing "officially" regarding these places, but I was wondering if any fan-fic type things had established anything about them, and if there was any effort to coordinate such things if so.

If you haven't yet, I also suggest reading the stuff in that link for the Verse in Numbers.
Regina has been mentioned as the site for The Train Job, but many consider Ezra to be the site of TTJ, largely based upon the fact the Niska orbits Ezra, and Regina is too far away to travel and coordinate from Ezra orbit, as depicted in the episode.
Georgia is a Sun, thus difficult to be on while alive. Also a System revolving around that Sun.
Kowlonshi is listed as Kaylee's birthplace, and it's not know if that has any bearing on the named "Kowlon Fed Base" mentioned in Safe script (not on screen) after getting Book fixed up.
Deadwood is one of the possible locations of The Training House, as well as the moons around Deadwood. This is discussed in the Map of the Verse Discussion thread under episode forum - ask if you need further explanation.
Another moon besides Bob is Conrad.
I conjured that Mal was chipper during the War as long as he was killing those who had destroyed his home world.
I don't think Shadow was "dependent upon Core worlds" - Hera and even Serenity Valley were locations for Blue Sun production plants - surely owned by Core businesses, but the facilities would have been located in the border worlds, saving transport costs for the corporations.

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Friday, June 5, 2009 12:28 PM

Bread Basket, huh? It's not really in the Core in my map, but it isn't too far out. Well, with nothing more to go on, this is what I've come up with then....

Landing:
Known as the "Bread Basket of the 'Verse," Harvest brings a significant boost to the economy of its immediate surroundings. Some experts have estimated that this one world's exports are responsible for 40% of the produce intake of the entire Core. The world was settle by an unusually organized group of farmers, and what began as frontier agriculture has, in places, developed into modern industrialized farming systems. The irrigation systems around the capital city of Landing are some of the most sophisticated in the 'verse.

Bar:
For anyone not taken by the joys of farming, there's precious little to do on this world....so it's a good thing bars like this are prevalent. The Fair Weather specializes in a local brew called Burkin's Beer, reputed to have been the invention of one of the original settlers.

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Friday, June 5, 2009 4:45 PM

TRAVELER

It has been years since I heard about Shadow, but I believe the main towns were attacked and this removed Shadow's support for the war. This does not mean the entire planet was destroyed. As has been stated, Mal worked on a ranch for his mother. This may support the fact that Shadow had a small population before the war. So the population would not have grown much after the war.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

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Saturday, June 6, 2009 6:25 AM

2BY2GINGERBLUE

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
A bit OT, but as for all these worlds, I just don't see how any one could be over crowded, as has been brought up in other discussions. Even w/ massive Arks, humans, animals, and such, could only have been in a very limited #, and in the short time ( 500 yrs - time it takes to terraform a planet/moon - travel time between Earth that was to the new systems - reproductive rates....) , there's just not enough time to over populate ALL those moons and planets.

No ruttin' way.

Maybe Blue Sun had it's finger in the test tube baby market in the beginning to create a larger work force to help develop all the worlds. Combined with natural births and possible Egg harvesting from all females(maybe mandatory) under the guise of saving the human race this could have created this on some planets.
Just a thought

The T.Rex they call JANE!

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Saturday, June 6, 2009 6:34 AM

Regina as the Train Job site is in the Serenity Blue Ray extras, the RPG manual, and likely in the Visual Companions.

Also, I see Mal during the War as not really motivated by revenge. He's motivated by the cause. I don't really believe when he prayed in that scene in the pilot episode that he was praying that he'd be able to kill the Alliance bomber. Success duck-hunting, maybe, which sounds similar, but I think phrasing matters. Killing was less important than winning the war.

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Saturday, June 6, 2009 8:49 PM

ANOTHERSKY

Raptor: I'm not a statistician, but somebody might want to look at the possibilities of actually managing to populate those planets, given a nudge in technology to get them there.

Settlers tend to have a lot of kids, for several reasons. And the growth of the overall human pop of earth is exponential, not a 1:1 curve.

This means that our exponentialrate now is exponentially higher than our exponential growth 500 years ago (aka 1500). Given that prediction, and starting with six billion + people outright on Earth-that-Was (ominous) seems possible to me.
Besides, what's an average planet population? They're not all core worlds jampacked with skivvers and richies.

Planet Bob, THE most disappointing planet name ever: Well, Whedon wrote for Titan AE, and I think somebody else from his team was also involved, so...maybe.

Anjl: I recall reading your planet descriptions and seeing how they compared with mine a while back. Are you still doing that?

------
"I've created my own planet, and it's called Triumph.
Unless we did a job there and I just forgot."

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Sunday, June 7, 2009 5:41 AM

I would think that the Core worlds would have a lot of "cublicle jockies". Middle class office drones that power the beaucracy of the government and the myriad companies based in the Core.

They live in high apartment towers in similar apartments and their kids go to the public schools. They pack the parks and green spaces on weekends and holidays and if they are lucky and save their credits they may go to a resort once or twice in their lives.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Sunday, June 7, 2009 10:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Regina as the Train Job site is in the Serenity Blue Ray extras, the RPG manual, and likely in the Visual Companions.

Not in the Visual Companions that I've found, but also have not yet seen that in the bluray. Is that in the Serenity verse worlds file? I though I got through all of those.

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Monday, June 8, 2009 5:05 AM

Yeah. I remember specifically that the Train Job is part of Regina's description, kind of like how Ariel is mentioned as the site of a hospital robbery suspected to be associated with the crew. But if I'm wrong in that the crew isn't mentioned, then Regina's description includes a mention about Bowden's Malady, which is a dead giveaway.

Regina and Ezra are in the same system, at least, I don't think it would take too long to get there and for Crow's group to have gotten back, assuming that Crow didn't get kicked into a turbine as he did.

And I've also read, because of tricks with the grav drive and screening, that while ships in the firefly verse don't do faster than light, they do get up to 1/3 of light speed. Or at least the Arcs that left Earth could, and I doubt they went BACKWARDS with space travel technology in 300-400 years. But then again, maybe grav screening let the Arcs have more thrusters while inertia dampening compensated for the excess mass... ANYWAY.

My figuring is, if ships in the firefly verse go about 1/3 lightspeed, that's why I figure a trip between nearby planets in a system only takes a couple of days, between systems a week or two, and across the verse a month or two.

Now, where did I read those? It was either in the Verse by Numbers/White Pages, or in the manual...

Off subject again. Regina isn't too far from Ezra, I'm pretty sure the Blu-Ray confirms it, I know for sure its in the RP manual, so I'm pretty sure it's canon.

Plus, in the War Stories shooting script, there's a scene where Inara goes to talk to that councilwoman, and it's revealed that Niska has the closest approximation of a government body over Ezra scared stiff. My impression is that Niska and his crime syndicate have just about full run of the entire planet, with a few minor independent criminal groups trying to eke out a living under Niska's nose. I don't think Niska would need to hire someone outside to steal any medicine on Ezra.

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Monday, June 8, 2009 9:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Yeah. I remember specifically that the Train Job is part of Regina's description, kind of like how Ariel is mentioned as the site of a hospital robbery suspected to be associated with the crew. But if I'm wrong in that the crew isn't mentioned, then Regina's description includes a mention about Bowden's Malady, which is a dead giveaway.

Regina and Ezra are in the same system, at least, I don't think it would take too long to get there and for Crow's group to have gotten back, assuming that Crow didn't get kicked into a turbine as he did.

And I've also read, because of tricks with the grav drive and screening, that while ships in the firefly verse don't do faster than light, they do get up to 1/3 of light speed. Or at least the Arcs that left Earth could, and I doubt they went BACKWARDS with space travel technology in 300-400 years. But then again, maybe grav screening let the Arcs have more thrusters while inertia dampening compensated for the excess mass... ANYWAY.

My figuring is, if ships in the firefly verse go about 1/3 lightspeed, that's why I figure a trip between nearby planets in a system only takes a couple of days, between systems a week or two, and across the verse a month or two.

Now, where did I read those? It was either in the Verse by Numbers/White Pages, or in the manual...

Off subject again. Regina isn't too far from Ezra, I'm pretty sure the Blu-Ray confirms it, I know for sure its in the RP manual, so I'm pretty sure it's canon.

Plus, in the War Stories shooting script, there's a scene where Inara goes to talk to that councilwoman, and it's revealed that Niska has the closest approximation of a government body over Ezra scared stiff. My impression is that Niska and his crime syndicate have just about full run of the entire planet, with a few minor independent criminal groups trying to eke out a living under Niska's nose. I don't think Niska would need to hire someone outside to steal any medicine on Ezra.

I looked all over my Serenity bluray dics today, didn't find anything about Regina, or TTJ.
I accept that Bowden's disease, being a mining malady, would be present both in a mining town like Paradiso, as well as mining areas of Regina. Does not mean this is the only place in the verse, or in the system, that it exists.
I have not heard that RPG is a canon source.
Ezra is the first orbital body in the Georgia system, and Regina is the second. They might also be on opposite sides of the Georgia Sun. According to Mao of the Verse, not in bluray extas.

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Tuesday, June 9, 2009 3:43 AM

Darn it. I don't have access right now to my own Blu-Ray to check, because I don't know where my Blu-ray player is right now. House is under a bit of rearrangement.

I'll check for myself when I can. Was the Bowden's malady note there?

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Tuesday, June 9, 2009 4:29 PM

Well... I feel like an ass.

Found my blue ray player, set it up, and JewelStaiteFan's right. Regina isn't mentioned anywhere on the database included on the Blu Ray.

So... It is still in the RPG manual, but as has been said, there are quite a few people who don't consider it canon. I'm not sure why, but yeah. I guess the site of the train job is up to you, and you can say Ezra or Regina... Or maybe even another one, probably so long as it's in the Georgia system.

I'm going to go hide my face for a while now.

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Tuesday, June 9, 2009 6:18 PM