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It occured to me that the Unknown Regions might not be what they are often assumed to be. Might it be that the UR has just as long and civilized history as the OR but that the lack of nagivable hyperspace routes meant that the two developed in partial isolation from each other? So the UR could have a united government, or several smaller government.

To use an analogy, the UR is like Europe and the Known Regions are like the North America. Separated by a navagable but incoveniant barrier who are not part of a unified government.

I am most likely wrong, so please feel free to respond.

Exthalion wrote:It occured to me that the Unknown Regions might not be what they are often assumed to be. Might it be that the UR has just as long and civilized history as the OR but that the lack of nagivable hyperspace routes meant that the two developed in partial isolation from each other? So the UR could have a united government, or several smaller government.

To use an analogy, the UR is like Europe and the Known Regions are like the North America. Separated by a navagable but incoveniant barrier who are not part of a unified government.

I am most likely wrong, so please feel free to respond.

The Unknown Regions AFAIK represents the galactic halo, where stellar density is very low. If this is true than the UR is like Micronesia. It is far away from everything. One can go there, though islands are scattered and most probably contain nothing remotely valuable.

In point of fact, Survivor's Quest explicitly states the Unknown Regions to be within the galactic halo, as the majority of the novel's action takes place within a globular cluster.

The actual civilizations within the Unknown Regions make the Micronesia/South Pacific analogy even apter. There are Pitcairn-like refuges for exiles such as Adumar, Tonga-esque conquering empires such as the Vagaari and Ssi-Ruuk, and a number of isolated, single-planet civilizations. The Unknown Regions also probably do not extend throughout the entire galactic halo, as the Jedi Archives indicate traffic between the main galaxy and its satellites, which is also supported by the Phantom Menace novelization stating Tatooine was an intergalactic port.

However, the existence of powers like the Silentium, who are generally equal to the Republics/Empire in shipbuilding and warfighting capability, suggests that the Unknown Regions also contains isolationist groups that remain hidden from galactic society as a whole. (The Aing-Tii would probably count as well). These groups remain relatively unknown, but their existence in general may be less of a secret, leading to spacers and galactic civilization avoiding their "stomping grounds" on general principle, thus leading to an unwillingness to really explore the areas.

EDIT: Of course, the presence of the "Empire of the Hand" post- Hand of Thrawn complicates this speculation/situation, but by the point that they become known to the galaxy at large, the Unknown Regions are likely more open as well. Are there any maps or mentions of the Unknown Regions, or Wild Space, in the Legacy comics?

The UR are somewhat misnamed. Even though the absolutely retarded idea of a significant portion of the galactic disk itself being unexplored still is part of canon, it's been somewhat amended over the years. The Essential Atlas basically describes several worlds deep within the region that either became part of Republic territory, traded with individual port worlds or who had spurious diplomatic relations with the known galaxy. The region is lightly travelled and difficult to navigate, but it's not as Unknown as the name implies. Just really non-interesting, civilization-wise. Apart from the Chiss.

They may be "unknown" in the sense that their remoteness and navigation conditions are bad enough that any given part of the area doesn't get visited for centuries at a time.

The Republic has a very long history, and it's not at all hard to believe that ancient records dating back thousands of years are patchy. Even though they certainly have the technology to keep records that long, they're going to have to deal with all the problems of things like incompatible file formatting, devices that lose their ability to store information over time, records that get destroyed in disasters or thrown out because no one can think of a use for it, and so on.

Thus, a region that was "known" and explored some time several thousand years ago might be "unknown" today, in the sense that no one has bothered to keep on top of the local political conditions or any minor changes in hyperspace conditions that might make travelling there... interesting.

At any one time, portions of the "Unknown Regions" are known; it's not an undifferentiated mass of unexplored territory like "Darkest Africa" was for Europeans in the mid-1800s. But the majority of that territory is not known in enough detail to compare to the easily available and very detailed information on systems in the Core and Rim.

Just to highlight issues of navigation, Indonesia launched a comprehensive mapping exercise a few years back after it lost its claim to an island to Malaysia. It discovered several hundred NEW islands in its territory.

Just because the Unknown regions may have been visited, colonised and even have trading links with civilised worlds does not mean that much of it cannot remain undiscovered.

PainRack wrote:Just to highlight issues of navigation, Indonesia launched a comprehensive mapping exercise a few years back after it lost its claim to an island to Malaysia. It discovered several hundred NEW islands in its territory.

OK, that's just hilarious.

Are we talking islands that were not known except to the local population, or islands that nobody lived on and nobody had any clue about? I find it difficult to imagine the latter.

Simon_Jester wrote:OK, that's just hilarious.

Are we talking islands that were not known except to the local population, or islands that nobody lived on and nobody had any clue about? I find it difficult to imagine the latter.

Sort of both. Apparently, shifting waterways can create the existence of new islets and disappear others, along with some mapping displays.

To be more important, the exercise was actually done so as to "enforce" effective occupation. Not sure what that means though.

Trying to find all the smugglers' coves, maybe?

How big are said islands? For all you know their "islands" could just few square metres in size.

The definition fo the unknown regions has always been open to definitions.. traditionally it wasnt one massive area on the edge of the galaxy - it was a basically patches of space that for some reason or other remained unknown to some people (but not necesarily to tohers) or the galaxy at large, and such regions were on the edge of space beyond Wild space.

Not that a two dimensional map neccesarily tells us anything. And there's god knows how many "rationaliations" now as it is what with the Atlas, and such.

At least in the New Essential Chronology a galactic map is provided in the back. According to this map, there is a wedge of the galaxy which is relatively unexplored. There are a few notable planets, such as those controlled by the Ssi-ruuk and the Chiss, as well as notable planets such as Rakata, but all in all, it has gone unexplored. This is likely due to ships *going missing* (such as the notable Outbound Flight project which brought Thrawn to the attention of Palpatine), as well as the fact that there has been so much war, that those who would explore would follow the easy trade routes, and branch off from there. Given that the Hydian Way, Correllian Run, and other such large trade routes all have been established going through 2/3 of the galaxy, it is no surprise that it would be *that* portion of the galaxy that has been explored the most, given that a given explorer doesn't have to go much out of their way. Afterall, the Outer Rim hasn't been nearly flushed out in its entirety, and that is considered "known space".

Further, the Hutts and other non-Republic powers (including the Hapes Consortium, the Corporate Sector, etc) that have played into the common history all stem from the *known* direction of the Outer Rim, meaning that the very forces that will likely hire fringers to explore are most likely going to hire them to explore the areas that could profit *them*, not areas across the galaxy.

As if that weren't enough, Star Wars is aptly named. All the major eras are marked by which war is occuring and when. During war, attentions are drawn inward. Would be explorers get drafted as either refugee or relief aid shippers for humanitarian pilots, or either smugglers or slavers on the flip side. Especially when you consider that there has been mentioned that the SW galaxy is *bigger* than ours, you get far more than the almost 8 billion square lightyears that makes up the area of our galactic disk. Increase that by a factor of easily a hundred for thickness (being conservative here), and you get almost a trillion cubic lightyears of space. There is only so much space that can be searched by a even a million explorers during the mere 25 millenia of the Republic. And on top of that, explorers aren't always the most common, since it only rarely pays out.

Thraxis wrote:At least in the New Essential Chronology a galactic map is provided in the back. According to this map, there is a wedge of the galaxy which is relatively unexplored. There are a few notable planets, such as those controlled by the Ssi-ruuk and the Chiss, as well as notable planets such as Rakata, but all in all, it has gone unexplored. This is likely due to ships *going missing* (such as the notable Outbound Flight project which brought Thrawn to the attention of Palpatine), as well as the fact that there has been so much war, that those who would explore would follow the easy trade routes, and branch off from there. Given that the Hydian Way, Correllian Run, and other such large trade routes all have been established going through 2/3 of the galaxy, it is no surprise that it would be *that* portion of the galaxy that has been explored the most, given that a given explorer doesn't have to go much out of their way. Afterall, the Outer Rim hasn't been nearly flushed out in its entirety, and that is considered "known space".

Further, the Hutts and other non-Republic powers (including the Hapes Consortium, the Corporate Sector, etc) that have played into the common history all stem from the *known* direction of the Outer Rim, meaning that the very forces that will likely hire fringers to explore are most likely going to hire them to explore the areas that could profit *them*, not areas across the galaxy.

As if that weren't enough, Star Wars is aptly named. All the major eras are marked by which war is occuring and when. During war, attentions are drawn inward. Would be explorers get drafted as either refugee or relief aid shippers for humanitarian pilots, or either smugglers or slavers on the flip side. Especially when you consider that there has been mentioned that the SW galaxy is *bigger* than ours, you get far more than the almost 8 billion square lightyears that makes up the area of our galactic disk. Increase that by a factor of easily a hundred for thickness (being conservative here), and you get almost a trillion cubic lightyears of space. There is only so much space that can be searched by a even a million explorers during the mere 25 millenia of the Republic. And on top of that, explorers aren't always the most common, since it only rarely pays out.

On the other hand, sources like Survivor's Quest indicate the Chiss, (and the Vagaari and the Empire of the Hand) all reside in the galactic halo, rather than in the disk proper. Similarly, Truce at Bakura indicates similarly that Bakura and the Ssi-Ruuk reside "on the edge of the galaxy." The original definition of the Unknown Regions from WEG indicated that they included areas of space interdicted by the Empire and the Rebels.

Going to the movies themselves and their novelisations, the TPM novel mentions Tatooine as an intergalactic trading hub. AOTC indicates that not only has the entire galaxy been mapped, so too have its two satellite galaxies, which meshes well with the concept of the InterGalactic Banking Clan. In addition, Kamino is extragalactic, being south of the Rishi Maze satellite galaxy. Rishi itself was part of galactic society, as the smuggler chief Talon Karrde maintained an extensive facility there.

This is all material that challenges the conception of the UR as being a massive unexplored swathe of the galactic disk, without going to the logical problems with the presence of the Chiss and Adumari, or that Palpatine had contact with the Ssi-Ruuk, or the likelihood of a massive segment of the galaxy being unexplored when galactic colonization by humanity began approximately 500,000 years before ANH, or the long periods of peace within the Old Republic.

My preferred rationalization is to have it refer to the interdicted areas within the Empire and the area of the galactic halo opposite the two satellite galaxies, as well as the halos of the satellites themselves. This provides a reason why the Yevetha and the Koornacht Cluster were considered part of the Unknown Regions despite being on the fringe of the Deep Core.

Bakustra wrote:On the other hand, sources like Survivor's Quest indicate the Chiss, (and the Vagaari and the Empire of the Hand) all reside in the galactic halo, rather than in the disk proper. Similarly, Truce at Bakura indicates similarly that Bakura and the Ssi-Ruuk reside "on the edge of the galaxy." The original definition of the Unknown Regions from WEG indicated that they included areas of space interdicted by the Empire and the Rebels.

Going to the movies themselves and their novelisations, the TPM novel mentions Tatooine as an intergalactic trading hub. AOTC indicates that not only has the entire galaxy been mapped, so too have its two satellite galaxies, which meshes well with the concept of the InterGalactic Banking Clan. In addition, Kamino is extragalactic, being south of the Rishi Maze satellite galaxy. Rishi itself was part of galactic society, as the smuggler chief Talon Karrde maintained an extensive facility there.

This is all material that challenges the conception of the UR as being a massive unexplored swathe of the galactic disk, without going to the logical problems with the presence of the Chiss and Adumari, or that Palpatine had contact with the Ssi-Ruuk, or the likelihood of a massive segment of the galaxy being unexplored when galactic colonization by humanity began approximately 500,000 years before ANH, or the long periods of peace within the Old Republic.

My preferred rationalization is to have it refer to the interdicted areas within the Empire and the area of the galactic halo opposite the two satellite galaxies, as well as the halos of the satellites themselves. This provides a reason why the Yevetha and the Koornacht Cluster were considered part of the Unknown Regions despite being on the fringe of the Deep Core.

The only reason this is problematic is that if the galaxy is thoroughly explored, the Empire shouldn't be able to suppress astrographic information on the locations of stars or the major powers that exist on the Rim. That stuff would be a matter of public record, with data stretching back thousands of years; it would be like trying to hide the existence of Iceland from the public.

I think it more likely that there are simply large areas of the Outermost Rim (to describe it in terms other than "Unknown") which are poorly or infrequently explored. People go there once in a long while, but the danger of running into hostile natives and the lack of valuable resources means that most stars, planets, and even sector-sized regions in the Outermost Rim simply aren't well known. If you go looking through ancient catalogs, you'll find a reasonably accurate count of the stars and planets in the area, but any political information on what the inhabitants are capable of will be millenia out of date, because the last time anyone bothered to pay attention to the place was right before the Jedi Civil War.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Bakustra wrote:On the other hand, sources like Survivor's Quest indicate the Chiss, (and the Vagaari and the Empire of the Hand) all reside in the galactic halo, rather than in the disk proper. Similarly, Truce at Bakura indicates similarly that Bakura and the Ssi-Ruuk reside "on the edge of the galaxy." The original definition of the Unknown Regions from WEG indicated that they included areas of space interdicted by the Empire and the Rebels.

Going to the movies themselves and their novelisations, the TPM novel mentions Tatooine as an intergalactic trading hub. AOTC indicates that not only has the entire galaxy been mapped, so too have its two satellite galaxies, which meshes well with the concept of the InterGalactic Banking Clan. In addition, Kamino is extragalactic, being south of the Rishi Maze satellite galaxy. Rishi itself was part of galactic society, as the smuggler chief Talon Karrde maintained an extensive facility there.

This is all material that challenges the conception of the UR as being a massive unexplored swathe of the galactic disk, without going to the logical problems with the presence of the Chiss and Adumari, or that Palpatine had contact with the Ssi-Ruuk, or the likelihood of a massive segment of the galaxy being unexplored when galactic colonization by humanity began approximately 500,000 years before ANH, or the long periods of peace within the Old Republic.

My preferred rationalization is to have it refer to the interdicted areas within the Empire and the area of the galactic halo opposite the two satellite galaxies, as well as the halos of the satellites themselves. This provides a reason why the Yevetha and the Koornacht Cluster were considered part of the Unknown Regions despite being on the fringe of the Deep Core.

The only reason this is problematic is that if the galaxy is thoroughly explored, the Empire shouldn't be able to suppress astrographic information on the locations of stars or the major powers that exist on the Rim. That stuff would be a matter of public record, with data stretching back thousands of years; it would be like trying to hide the existence of Iceland from the public.

I think it more likely that there are simply large areas of the Outermost Rim (to describe it in terms other than "Unknown") which are poorly or infrequently explored. People go there once in a long while, but the danger of running into hostile natives and the lack of valuable resources means that most stars, planets, and even sector-sized regions in the Outermost Rim simply aren't well known. If you go looking through ancient catalogs, you'll find a reasonably accurate count of the stars and planets in the area, but any political information on what the inhabitants are capable of will be millenia out of date, because the last time anyone bothered to pay attention to the place was right before the Jedi Civil War.

The majority of these worlds are tiny, tiny places, and those are only the ones that are inhabited. It's really more along the lines of hiding the existence of Tristan da Cunha or the Andamans at the upper end, which could feasibly be done. At the lower end, it's like hiding Bugbox, Massachusetts, or Area 51 from the outside world. Nobody would likely care. Of course, if they reside in the galactic halo, then those areas will be resource-poor and fairly dispersed, resulting in diminishing returns for setting up a stable society. The few likely exceptions, like Adumar, are already inhabited. Again, though, the idea that a third of the galactic disk is unexplored, as shown in the Atlas and NJO maps, is completely ridiculous.

I really think that claim of ridiculousness depends on the definition of "unknown" or "unexplored."

For the "unknown" regions to be unknown in the sense of "where no man has gone before" is indeed ridiculous. But that sense of "unknown" is very different from "unknown" in the sense of "we haven't mapped the area thoroughly enough to know where all the navigational hazards are, so civilian traffic is advised to stay out." Which, in turn, is a far cry from "unknown" in the sense of "we have quite good maps of the region, but our information on local political conditions is several centuries out of date because no one gives a crap what happens out there."

But even in the last sense of the word "unknown", you can put a secret Area 51-equivalent out there and no one will notice, because galactic civilization as a whole has effectively no interest in the region as a whole, except for a few disconnected patches of it that happen to be unusually valuable to some interest group in the Rim.

Simon_Jester wrote:I really think that claim of ridiculousness depends on the definition of "unknown" or "unexplored."

For the "unknown" regions to be unknown in the sense of "where no man has gone before" is indeed ridiculous. But that sense of "unknown" is very different from "unknown" in the sense of "we haven't mapped the area thoroughly enough to know where all the navigational hazards are, so civilian traffic is advised to stay out." Which, in turn, is a far cry from "unknown" in the sense of "we have quite good maps of the region, but our information on local political conditions is several centuries out of date because no one gives a crap what happens out there."

But even in the last sense of the word "unknown", you can put a secret Area 51-equivalent out there and no one will notice, because galactic civilization as a whole has effectively no interest in the region as a whole, except for a few disconnected patches of it that happen to be unusually valuable to some interest group in the Rim.

The ludicrousness comes from the Essential Atlas' claim that the UR comprise between a third and a fourth of the disk. The problem does not lie with neglected/restricted areas, or densely packed areas such as globular clusters, but rather the idea that 25-33% of the disk is somehow out of touch with galactic civilization.

It seems from the maps that I've seen that the unknown regions pretty much make up an entire spiral arm in which no major trade routes extend - possibly due to poorly mapped navigational standards. It's probably a case where it's unknown, not because nobody's ever mapped it, but it's unknown to the general population because 1. most of the galaxy has no vested interest in that particular spiral arm and 2. Nobody has a reason to go there. I'm sure that there are probably plenty of south-pacific islands of decent size that I don't know about or am able to even find with a brief google search.

Transbot9 wrote:It seems from the maps that I've seen that the unknown regions pretty much make up an entire spiral arm in which no major trade routes extend - possibly due to poorly mapped navigational standards. It's probably a case where it's unknown, not because nobody's ever mapped it, but it's unknown to the general population because 1. most of the galaxy has no vested interest in that particular spiral arm and 2. Nobody has a reason to go there. I'm sure that there are probably plenty of south-pacific islands of decent size that I don't know about or am able to even find with a brief google search.

Why would an entire spiral arm be neglected, though? Further, what maps are these, -most interpretations of the Unknown Regions stretch across several arms, and range from about this size:
NJO Map
Which I eyeball to be about an eighth to a tenth of the disk, conservatively;
To this size:(second link in the post)
Essential Atlas Map
Which is between a third and a fourth of the disk in size by my estimate.
What other maps are there, out of curiosity?

In addition, we have Survivor's Quest, which indicates that the Chiss, one of the preeminent UR civilizations, center their society around a globular cluster, which are not part of the disk or spiral arms, as well as quotes from WEG sources and The Black Fleet Crisis indicating that the UR incorporate areas encompassed entirely by galactic society, (like the Koornacht Cluster) and can refer to areas interdicted by the Empire or the Rebellion.

Bakustra wrote:The ludicrousness comes from the Essential Atlas' claim that the UR comprise between a third and a fourth of the disk. The problem does not lie with neglected/restricted areas, or densely packed areas such as globular clusters, but rather the idea that 25-33% of the disk is somehow out of touch with galactic civilization.

For 1/3 to 1/4th the stars in the disk to be "unknown" is absurd. For 1/3rd to 1/4th the volume to be unknown? Maybe not. It depends heavily on the radial density distribution of stars in the Galaxy Far Far Away; the galaxy may have a visibly luminous "disk" of great area and very low density at the outer edge. With hyperdrive, building interstellar civilizations out there is still possible, but a lot less economical, depending on what fuel costs look like.

Simon_Jester wrote:the galaxy may have a visibly luminous "disk" of great area and very low density at the outer edge.

For a spiral galaxy, that really doesn't make much sense. For instance, look up most any real galaxy you care to name (M33, M51, and M101 are some examples off the top of my head that you can find good pictures of); it'll look very similar to the depictions we have of the SW galaxy. Real galaxies have a very uniform distribution of stars that does fade away, yes, but it doesn't do so especially quickly after you've left the bulge. By the time you hit very low-density regions like you're suggesting, you'd be far out of the region where the arms dominate the visible structure, while the Unknown Regions are always depicted as inside that region. And really, if you are outside the visible outward extent of the arms, you're in the halo, whether you are in the disk plane or not.

By the way, saying that the Chiss' home planet is in a globular cluster doesn't mean that they reside in the galactic halo at this time. The entire technological history of their race could very well have played out while the cluster was in the galactic plane (it's only a few million years tops, IIRC). However, I too feel that saying the Unknown Regions comprises a good portion of the disk, and saying that most of those regions remain unexplored and unexploited is utterly ridiculous.

Whoops, didn't catch the last post date .