User talk:Shrike

Charted zone starts at ~16,300 light years from center, with a ring of 256 sectors radially.

Each sector ring has a radial thickness of ~410 ly.

Each sector nominally has a height 1/2 that of the galactic disk, though some are double-height.

Each sector is approximately the same volume and thus progressively more distant rings have more sectors.

There are ~39,000 sectors in 48 rings.

There are an estimated ~25 million habitable or potentially habitable worlds in the galaxy.

Sol is in the 94th sectors of the 28th ring, which has 432 sectors. This is conventionally written as R28.S94

The sector is 404 LY wide on its inside edge and 410 ly on the outer and has a volume of ~83 million cubic light years. This contains upwards of 250,000 stars and stellar objects, though rather less individual systems. It contains ~1350 habitable or potentially habitable worlds around reasonably Sun-like stars, with an uncertain additional number of potentially habitable worlds around M-type stars.

R28.S94 was the block of space provisionally assigned as the exclusion zone around a preindustrial sophont species circa 5,500 BC after a routine update (every ~9,000 Earth years) on the status of the provolved natives. Having undergone sampling and minor provolving approximately 70,000 years previously (mostly centered around a few targeted mutations to spur the development of complex language) it had been marked as a 'World of Interest' with a small exclusion zone. The official upgrade to preindustrial status expanded this exclusion area to the full sector, a motion that was passed with essentially no opposition due to the mostly fallow nature of the Inner Secondary Spur [Terran: Orion Arm, or simply Orion] District.

A number of other nearby sectors were also allocated as exclusion zones to emerging sophonts at this time, including the Seindar who made the official jump from Sophont of Interest (ie, pretechnological) directly to Candidate for Contact - it was in fact their spacefaring activities that led to the districtwide update. The Orion District reassignment led to a number of disputes and disagreements circa 5,000 BC, as the full extent of the fecundity of the fallow district was realized. Various provolves done in the mid kilopast were now either preindustrial or approaching that status and consequently various groups sought to seek aggressive provolve or uplift opportunities

Note: Provolving is done to pre-sentient entities with the intent of pushing them on a course towards intelligence over natural evolutionary time. Provolving generally takes the form of a few induced mutations to encourage intelligence, language or tool-using. It contrasts with Uplift, which is directly modifying a species to become tool-using intelligences over technological time. Provolving is generally seen as more 'elegant' and obviously much more natural in its end result but it is not uncommon for the faster, more reliable methods of uplift to be used, especially if local threats (climatic instability, small population, etc) exist. Sometimes particularly promising sentients are *both* provolved and uplifted, the latter typically being done to relocated populations. (see Neradi, Ocam Ora, Humans for recent examples)

The Seindar