Getting back to Foreven, the key to the whole sector is the Avalar Consulate. Whatever its size, it is the key independent that then sets the mood for the whole sector. I agree that it is too big, but it is what it is.
Daryen,
It is what an obscure, late-GDW, few issue, poorly disseminated, fanzine says it is and nothing more. We need to examine the context here.
There are differing levels of canonicity
within canonical products such as
A:4's jump torpedos or the early Library Data regarding Capital. There are also differing levels of canonicity
for entire products such as
T4's "First Survey" or
MT's "Fighting Ships of the Broken Imperium"(1). Just because a few issues of Imperiallines were published and just because GDW published them, it doesn't necessarily follow that Imperiallines is any good or should be regarded as canonical. We should note that Imperiallines is not mentioned in FFE's list of official canonical materials which can be found in any of the Reprints.
The information regarding the Avalar Consulate in Imperiallines fails on several levels. First, it violated what had almost entirely been a GM's preserve. That "preserve" status had been in place both prior to Imperiallines publication and was kept in place after it's publication. Sure, the Chamax
DA is set in Foreven and another Foreven world can be found in
Alien Realms, but the Imperiallines authors decided to
map the entire sector.
Second, the admitedly scanty information about Foreven Imperiallines chose to introduce violated canon in a
fundamental way. Not only is the Zhodani client state in Foreven too big not to have an influence on both the Darrians and Imperium, what we see of it in Foreven isn't
all of it. Even more Avalar territory extends coreward into the Beyond Sector.
In a certain way, Imperiallines' poorly thought out Foreven material presages the similar, larger, and later canonical catastrophe of
Behind the Claw. Both products introduced just enough new information to destroy or otherwise confuse pre-existing canon without also providing enough material to replace what had been wrecked.
The easiest solution here is to ignore the Imperiallines information is much the same manner we ignore
BtC. If an individual or a group wants to flesh out Foreven into a sector ripe with political intrigue, Zho-Imperial cultural fusions, and loads other interesting stuff, let them do so
for their own use only. Otherwise leave Foreven as it has always been, a preserve for GMs.
This continual and fervent desire to fill in each and every blank on the map may be fun for a few, but all it does is handcuff the majority.
Making many of the worlds poor or low population can mitigate a lot of that (maybe only the few "nice" worlds have decent populations).
It's four subsectors in Foreven alone. Besides, how many hi-pop worlds need there be for it to effect the Darrians? The Darrian Confederacy itself has only four hi-pop worlds and two of those have Class E starports.
The Avalar Consulate is too damn big and, like all of Imperiallines scanty Forven information, too poorly thought out. Better we should scrap the whole thing.
Have fun,
Bill
1 - Or "Broken Ships of the Fighting Imperium" or "What a Pile of Crap".