What do we 'know' about these worlds?

POSTED BY: Lindley
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 04:18
VIEWED: 14172
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BYTEMITE

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 9:03 PM

Kowlonshi!

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

AURAPTOR

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 10:01 PM

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!

NCBROWNCOAT

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 11:03 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/

LINDLEY

Thursday, June 4, 2009 1:12 AM

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.

NCBROWNCOAT

Thursday, June 4, 2009 2:31 AM

*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/

SPACEANJL

Thursday, June 4, 2009 8:48 AM

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.

LINDLEY

Thursday, June 4, 2009 9:31 PM

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.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, June 4, 2009 10:16 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.

LINDLEY

Friday, June 5, 2009 12:55 AM

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.

YELLOWJACKET

Friday, June 5, 2009 1:43 AM

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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