Background Information

Listed here are a variety of universal galactographic aspects of the universe, both natural and artificial.

• Civil Periphery - the outer shell of civilized space.

• Outer Horizon - the mostly empty region of space beyond the civil periphery.

• Naming Conventions - standardizations established for ease of communication between isolated societies.

• Lagrange Points - stable points in space with important properties.

• Hill Sphere - the gravity well of celestial bodies.

• Shade Casters - the only known alien civilization.

• Uninet - a universal communication network that permits social connections between distant societies.

• Spacetime - the fabric of the universe, bent by mass and manipulated by warp drives.

• Warp Drive - the technology that permits faster-than-light travel.

• Subspace - the "space-between-space" that active warp drive bubbles occupy.

• Subspace Waves - ripples through spacetime created by subspace disturbances.

• Oblivion - the unknown region beyond subspace from which nothing has ever returned.

• Interplanetary Space - the not-so-empty space between star systems.