SuperPheemy

(Nov 21, 2001)

I have vague fragments of a dream rattling around in my head. Something about an Empress named Mari, and a reception planet. I know, I know, this all sounds very disjointed, welcome to a stream of consiousness.

That's what stuck, the reception planet. Apparantly in this wholly imagined star-empire, the ruling Empress Mari only receives visitors on this particular planet, rather than her homeworld/ capital. The reception planet is nice enough, from what I can recall from my dream, it had a breathable atmosphere, pleasent climate, drinkable water, etc... I remember having the impression that the homeworld was nearly paradise, but that was only rumor, since no one had ever actually been there. Only Empress Mari, and the fortunate individuals native to her homeworld.

I thought it to be a pretty interesting tangent for the universe Mossroot and I are creating for Outer Darkness. In the Outback (a large expanse of barely-explored space leading towards the galactic rim) colonies are grouped into "clusters" of worlds close enough to be reached by fairly slow FTL drives (30C to 100C). Clusters can be far apart from each other, thus requiring ships with powerful FTL drives (500C+) to maintain any sort of connection. This leads to "gateway" worlds for each cluster. A common port of call where the fast inter-cluster vessels drop off mail commodities and passengers to disseminate throughout the cluster. In other worlds, the reception world from my dream.

If the societies within the cluster are insular, explorers and tourists may never get beyond the gateway, and the interior of the cluster could become shrouded in mystery. It's like a port city on a newly explored continent. Hong Kong or Shanghai for example. Very colonial-European, but the door to the isolated, mysterious Orient.

I also had a brief (alarm-interrupted) dream about an advanced race guiding a rebellious and expansive human empire into the interstellar commmunity. But realized on waking that I was dreaming about Vulcans and Star Trek. Bleah!

Oddly enough, my Toddler woke up this morning and told me he had a dream about circles. Considering planets, stars, galaxies, and stellar clusters are roughly spherical, you could say I was dreaming about circles too.

Anyway, good luck making any sense of this entry, I can't.