Thanks to everybody who has read and commented on Star Wars: The Essential Atlas! Starting today, Jason and I are going to post our endnotes, which will explain our thinking, acknowledge our influences, and reveal some Easter Eggs. Look for futher installments over the coming week!

INTRODUCTION

JASON: The planet Manda is full of Baobabs - Mungo is briefly seen as a master of C-3PO and R2-D2 in the old Droids cartoon, which introduced Manda and the idea of the Baobabs as a clan of powerful merchants. Ebenn Q3 Baobab is the in-universe author of the Star Wars Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide, which we know as written by Ben Burtt.

This chapter was originally developed as part of a pitch for a Wizards of the Coast sourcebook about starhoppers and the galaxy; a lecture to apprentice freighter captains seemed like a logical way to discuss the structure of galaxies generally and the Star Wars galaxy specifically. Plus using a merchant clan avoided tying the introduction to any one era, which was part of our marching orders for the Atlas.

As mentioned in the Atlas acknowledgments, the science is a gloss on Ken Croswell's excellent book The Alchemy of the Heavens, while the mistakes are entirely mine. The Frank Drake-style equation for determining habitable systems in the galaxy and other measures of galactic settlement has been used before in Star Wars - see Daniel Keys Moran's "Empire Blues: The Devaronian's Tale," from the Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina anthology. I used Labria's numbers where I could in the Atlas's take on the question, though I found Labria's view of the galaxy a bit too optimistic about life within it, given the current thinking about star types and stellar populations in the real universe.

Speaking of numbers, the basic numbers for the Star Wars galaxy have wandered a bit too much over the years for the Atlas's take to satisfy everybody. A galaxy 100,000 light years across containing 400 billion stars became the baseline in the years before the Atlas - see, for instance, the New Essential Guide to Alien Species. The 2nd Edition Star Wars Roleplaying Book from West End Games is the most-specific source about the extent of civilization. It says that at its peak the Republic included "over a million member worlds, and countless more colonies, protectorates and governorships. Nearly 100 quadrillion beings pledged allegiance to the Republic in nearly 50 million systems." Shatterpoint is similarly specific, stating that the Republic has 1.2 million member worlds and the Confederacy of Independent Systems 1/10 of that number - which would be 1.32 million member worlds between them. But that's during a time in which Republic authorities has broken down in much of the Outer Rim and Hutt Space has swollen to include worlds as far coreward as Gyndine. The numbers used in the Atlas chapter were arrived at by postulating that the Empire reclaimed much of the lost Republic territory and incorporating the WEG portrayal of the Empire as having dramatically stepped up exploration and colonization.

The Atlas isn't an academic paper, but I'll show my work. Start with 400 billion stars. Stick with the controversial but long-established EU fact that Known Space accounts for 25% of the galaxy (a point to be discussed further in a bit) and we have 100 billion stars. Baobab says there are 180 million systems (a number derived from Croswell's real-universe work about systems with multiple stars), so we have 45 billion systems in the Known Galaxy. Use the star-types chart as a guide to habitability and we get 7.1 billion habitable stars in the Known Galaxy, in 3.2 billion star systems. Take the Roleplaying Book figures as representing the Republic at its peak, and the Shatterpoint figures as a snapshot of it during its decline. I made an assumption that 25% of Republic territory was lost during its pre-Clone Wars decline and reclaimed by the Empire, giving us 1.65 million Imperial member worlds. Assume more-aggressive colonization adds another 5% (remember we're talking major worlds, not all worlds), and we get 1.73 million Imperial member worlds.

Turning to the 50 million systems WEG gives us when we add in Republic colonies, protectorates and governorships, I assumed that colonization would continue even as the Republic foundered over the centuries and so added 25% for 62.5 million. Assume aggressive Imperial-era colonization efforts add another 10% and we get 68.75 million systems pledging allegiance to the Empire.

As mentioned above, I fudged Labria's numbers a bit when it came to life and intelligence. Those who want to preserve his assertion that there are more than 20 million intelligent species in the galaxy can do so through extrapolation: If Known Space is 25% of the galaxy, the five million figure the Atlas uses tracks Labria's tale.

As for the use of Crix, it always bothered me that so many Star Wars first names are unique - most of us have a friend or acquaintance who shares our name, yet you rarely meet another Han or Luke - and the latter's even an Earth name. So I've tried to do my part to make some of those one-off names more popular in a galaxy far, far away. (We'll find out why the name Arhul is so popular a little later.)

The galactic-coordinates system was introduced in Star Wars Gamer #9, in an article written by the two of us and our old pal Craig Carey.

THE POLITICAL GALAXY

JASON: Uueg Tching was introduced in West End Games's superb Imperial Sourcebook; he and Kitel Phard were further fleshed out in Star Wars Adventure Journal #14. He seemed like a logical starting point for a discussion of galactic politics, and seeing him brought to life by Chris Trevas was an enormous thrill.

This chapter was an attempt to tackle one of the biggest problems of Star Wars continuity: How to square the millions of sectors introduced by WEG with the 1,024 sectors introduced in the prequels. (OK, at least it was a big problem for geography geeks like us.) Putting together all the bits of senatorial information introduced over the years of the EU was a challenge, to put it mildly. Bits and pieces of real-world government were freely borrowed: Functional constituencies are a part of the political system in Hong Kong and Macau, for instance.

The idea that the Republic expanded before it was truly ready as part of its war with the Tion Cluster was introduced in my write-up for Desevro in Wizards' Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds and then fleshed out further by Dan in the New Essential Chronology.

GEOGRAPHY AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENATE

JASON: The right to petition the full Senate is a plot point in the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy, with Plat Mallar of Polneye doing just that. The Black Fleet Crisis is also the source of the bit about extraterritorial powers being accorded honorary representation: Molierre Cundertol is Bakura's senator in those books, contradicting the Corellian Trilogy's statement that Bakura never joined the New Republic. (The New Jedi Order followed the Black Fleet Crisis's version and brought back Cundertol; for Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, I said Bakura was part of Wild Space. Ack!)

The danger with retcons is that you lose 99% of the audience if a retcon takes more than a sentence or two, so I tried to make this one part of an interesting tradition that would fit into the larger narrative of how cumbersome the Senate was. The hope being that readers who didn't give a fig about Bakura's status would still find the discussion of Senate traditions intriguing.

SYSTEMS, SECTORS, OVERSECTORS AND REGIONS

JASON: The basics for this section were introduced by West End Games and is best described in the Imperial Sourcebook, though the confusion between moffs, Grand Moffs and regional governors goes back practically to the dawn of Star Wars. The treatment of governors is a bit all over the place in the EU - for instance, the governors take their seats during the Revenge of the Sith novelization, but in Cloak of Deception Tarkin is the lieutenant governor of the Seswenna sector. Hence the little retcon here about governor originally being a military title.

The prequels gave us a Senate of 1,024 sectors, but it was hard to imagine that being an immutable number in an ever-expanding galactic civilization; along the same lines, West End Games portrayed the Empire as having aggressively stepped up scouting and the expansion of civilized space. The discussion of freestanding subsectors, associated sectors, new regional sectors and the like was intended to address both the natural expansion expected in the millennium following the Ruusan Reformations and the politically motivated Imperial expansion.

Incidentally, this mess has real-world precedent of a sort. In the years before the American Revolution, good-sized British cities such as Manchester weren't represented in Parliament because they'd been settled after the drawing of parliamentary boundaries, which Parliament refused to redraw. Meanwhile, some older towns were still represented despite having lost all importance - one town had 15 residents but two members of Parliament. Parliament claimed none of this mattered because "virtual representation" required MPs to represent not only their direct constituents but all British subjects. Meet Thomas Jefferson, Separatist!

The idea of "moff" being an ancient title borrowed from pre-Republic satrapies was brainstormed by me, Dan and Abel Pena for the Holonet News article written by Dan and Pablo Hidalgo in Star Wars Insider #84. This eight-page feature is one of the gold mines of the EU, in that it addressed the transition from the Republic to the Empire, taking into account all the new information we learned with the release of Revenge of the Sith.

Oversectors date back to West End Games; the 20 sector armies seemed like a logical connection, as those armies' areas of operation would have to cross the borders of political sectors. Tying the Grand Moffs in with the 20 sector armies seemed like a nice additional layer, meshing the rise of figures such as Tarkin with the metamorphosis of the clone troopers into stormtroopers. Looking at the whole, I think you can imagine yourself as a Republic citizen who accepted an expanded military hierarchy as a wartime necessity, then watched helplessly as that hierarchy remained alongside a weakened political framework and then eliminated it.

The discussion of oversectors here dates back to the Yavin entry I wrote for Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, which tackled the continuity problem (originally from West End Games' superlative solo adventure Scoundrel's Luck) of how an Imperial governor could be responsible for both Ord Mantell and Yavin. Hardcore fans take note: Sector One (originally from the Black Fleet Crisis) is the same as Sector Zero from Wizards' Coruscant and the Core Worlds. Sector Zero should have been Sector One in that book, but I somehow screwed up the reference, and couldn't put it right until now.

Regarding regions, the Ollonir Boundaries are from Alliance Intelligence Reports, while the Botor Enclave is from the Dark Empire Sourcebook.

By the way, those up on the retcon high wire have a reassuring net when it comes to the politics of the galaxy: The Imperial Sourcebook says that the Emperor held power in part by deliberately creating webs of confusing and colliding titles and responsibilities. God bless Greg Gorden!

THE DEEP CORE

JASON: Most of the material for this section follows the lead of an April 2005 Planet Hoppers feature from Wizards of the Coast and the Dark Empire Sourcebook.

MAP: THE DEEP CORE

JASON: One thing we forgot until late was that the Byss Run really shouldn't exist on most maps - it doesn't exist until Palpatine's scouts use brute force to push trade routes through to it, and crumbles soon after Byss's destruction. Note that a close look at the final Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith maps foreshadows this route and reveals how travelers from the Core Worlds would reach Kalist. Without trying to be coy about it, we looked for places where the maps could tell stories or impart bits of information on their own, without the text.

The main galaxy map was simply too crowded for all the lesser trade routes, so they wound up on the region maps.

THE CORE WORLDS

DAN: Whenever you discuss the culture of a specific region, there are always some examples that don't fit. In the case of the Core Worlds that would include the miscellaneous alien homeworlds that fall within its borders. The Atlas notes the honored history of Duro, and contrasts that with New Plympto and Orootooru. New Plympto is the home of the Nosaurians, represented by Podracer Clegg Holdfast in The Phantom Menace. Jason and I have had fun fleshing out this species in the past: me in the (unpublished) Essential Guide to Episode I, he in the Star Wars Gamer article "The University of Sanbra Guide to Intelligent Life: The Nosaurians." New Plympto has recently, and memorably, appeared in the comic Star Wars: Dark Times.

The planet Orootooru was first referenced in the delightfully gross comic Jabba the Hutt: The Hunger of Princess Nampi.

A new name for the cradle of the early Republic is provided here: the Tetrahedron. Partly because I enjoy naming chunks of the early Republic (see also: the Arrowhead) and partly because I'm fascinated with the Platonic solids (did you know that Plato associated the tetrahedron with the element fire because its corners are sharp and pointed?) I threw this section in here for some color. The four vertices of the Tetrahedron are Coruscant, Alderaan, Corellia, and the "Ginn Jump," which throws a bone to the fact that we're talking about three-dimensional space even though it's a pretty sloppy tetrahedron (acknowledged as such in the text).

MAP: THE CORE WORLDS

JASON: A bare-bones forerunner of this map appeared in Coruscant and the Core Worlds. Obviously this map was a major challenge to illustrate, particularly in the areas around Coruscant.
It would be interesting to know what society is like on the western fringes of the Core, where the ancient, settled galaxy rapidly gives way to Wild Space and the terra incognito of the hyperspace eddies and whorls that have stymied navigation into the Unknown Regions for millennia. Is the "northern" Core frontier different than the apparently more civilized "southern" Core frontier? I'd love to know.

ASTROCARTOGRAPHY, NAVICOMPUTERS AND TRADE ROUTES

JASON: Whole lot of West End Games goodness here. The basics of hyperspace travel were set down by WEG more than 20 years ago now, with the introduction of the Star Wars roleplaying game. The discussion of jump beacons is from the Tales of the Jedi Companion, while Platt's Smugglers Guide covered the basics of the Imperial Space Ministry and how it works.

Those two familiar hyperspace scouts were based on a pair of authors as they appeared during a moment in the DK booth at Comic-Con in 2008. If you've got sharp eyes, you'll spot Chris Trevas a bit later in this book.

A SPACER'S LIFE: BoSS AND THE ImPeRe

JASON: Platt Okeefe, invented by Peter Schweighofer, is one of my favorite West End Games personalities, and it was enormous fun to give her a cameo in the Atlas. This material draws on Platt's Starport Guide.

MAP: THE COLONIES

JASON: The Shipwrights' Trace was one of the last of the "new" trade routes to get a name. Most of the new routes we placed were carefully designed to fit the often-brief descriptions of routes in various novels and EU sources - the Namadii Corridor or the Triellus Trade Route, for instance. A couple of others were placed because they seemed like logical connections between places poorly served by other routes, and these were marked as TK (that's publishing shorthand for "to come") until very late in the process. I noticed that we'd placed a number of worlds known for shipbuilding along one route leading rimward from Fondor, probably subconsciously thinking that route would make a logical base for explorations in the galaxy's early days. So that route got the name "The Shipwrights' Trace," an identification strengthened by adding a couple more shipbuilding systems that hadn't yet been given a placement.

THE GALAXY'S POPULATION

JASON: We rewrote this section fairly extensively - in the first draft, Dan described the blaze of various colors that would correspond to population rather beautifully, which led us to the same conclusion: Why not show that visually on a map and use this section to talk about something else? One the population map was in place, this chapter began to morph into a discussion of cultural regions.

DAN: The original "blaze of colors" mini-essay was something that I wrote for The Essential Guide to Episode I, a Del Rey book that was cancelled prior to publication. I tried to bring it back for a related project called The Ultimate Guide to Episode I, which was also cancelled. The Essential Atlas was the third place I tried to shoehorn it in, which explains why it took Jason so many attempts to patiently explain to me that I didn't need to take up half a page describing colors when there was a map directly opposite that actually showed colors. He's right, but RIP blaze of colors essay.

JASON: The Slice dates back to the early days of West End Games, and for years it was one of the few maps of the Star Wars galaxy. The Negs were my invention back when I was playing with the coordinates system, and made official by Dan in the New Essential Chronology.

The Borderlands are one of those concepts that date back to before there was a galaxy map - Timothy Zahn introduced them for the Thrawn trilogy. One of our earliest proposals in trying to hammer out the historical maps was that the Borderlands were more or less the region between the Perlemian and the Hydian, an area we gave the somewhat more-formal name of the Trans-Hydian.

The Trailing Sectors were invented as an effort to give some historical weight to galactic explorations, and the New Territories came about when we were brainstorming about the character of the Imperial Remnant. The D'Asta family was introduced in Crimson Empire; to give them a role commensurate with their apparent status in that series, we made them into galactic power brokers and cemented this by identifying them with Serenno, Count Dooku's homeworld.

The Nalroni are from Celanon, a prominent West End Games planet that never really got picked up for anything else in the EU, and hadn't been placed until the Atlas. The Planetary Pioneers date back to The Maverick Moon, a 1979 kids' book that was a favorite of my son's while we were writing the Atlas. We never did describe what Luke was doing on leave from the Rebellion, though, or find a place for Zukonium rays.

When it came time to map these cultural regions, we discovered that we'd only covered about half the galaxy. Enter the Northern Dependencies, the Southern Core (a.k.a. the Inner Core from The Clone Wars movie) and the Western Reaches.

MAP: GALACTIC POPULATION

JASON: This map terrified me, but it turned out to be relatively straightforward: I looked up the stats for all the placed worlds, colored them accordingly, and then extrapolated from there, keeping an eye on what we'd established about historical settlement patterns and the extent of the civilized galaxy.

We tied this map to the pre-New Jedi Order galaxy to get a snapshot of the familiar "Imperial" galaxy's population. A post-NJO one would be interesting, too.

THE INNER RIM

DAN: Not much ink was spilled on the Inner Rim here, though it's an interesting coincidence that both Thyferra (home of bacta) and Manaan (home of kolto, a bacta-like substitute from the game Knights of the Old Republic) are both located in the Inner Rim. As noted in the text the Inner Rim is the setting for the novel Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. It's fun to note that the premise of Mindor was built out of a minor line from The New Essential Chronology, which in turn lifted the line out of the wonderful early 1990s roleplaying sourcebook The Dark Empire Sourcebook.

MAP: THE INNER RIM

JASON: The systems in the "west" from Mindabaal to rimward were ooched slightly "east" in the book's final days - we never deliberately set out to define a western frontier, but found we'd effectively done that by making the various historical maps, and the planets near Mindabaal were the only ones slightly out of place. I'd call that the product of good planning if it hadn't been a subconscious process. Sometimes you get lucky.

THE EXPANSION REGION

JASON: The 77 Sectors were introduced but not explained in Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, and revised into subsectors for the Atlas. The Outer Expansion Zone, meanwhile, is a stray term from WEG's Galaxy Guide 10. We did a lot of work to tie together the narratives of the Alsakan Conflicts, the Trailing Sectors, the Kanz Disorders, the Outer Expansion Zone, the Expansion Region, the Corporate Sector and the New Territories in hopes that what emerged would give the galaxy a sense of depth and history underpinning geography - and so needless to say, we lived in fear of finding an obscure reference that would send all these dominoes tumbling out of alignment.

In this section you'll find a surprising reference to the Corporate Sector Authority at work in the Trailing Sectors. This is a rather odd retcon: West End Games's Twin Stars of Kira introduced Enarc, a system apparently fairly near the Corporate Sector, given the presence of CSA agents in one of the supplement's adventures. Wizards' Secrets of Naboo, though, made Enarc and Naboo practically neighbors - and Naboo is nowhere near the Corporate Sector. (Old Star Wars hands will note that the Corporate Sector itself moved around a bit before maps were established.)

MAP: THE EXPANSION REGION

JASON: The northern precincts of the Expansion Region are so thin that they cried out for an explanation, which we tried to supply elsewhere. That was one of the cool things about writing the Atlas around the realities of the established maps - just looking at them, you thought that there had to be a story about why the Expansion Region was very small in one place and very large in another. So what was it?

(click here for part 2)

Dan
(writing projects and current releases)