Spica Colonisation history (Solomani)

[Malenfant]

I've started this as a separate thread - this was on the Sector History thread before....

Originally posted by Paraquat Johnson:
Here are some suggested dates for the expansion of Solomani colonists in Spica:

200: Solomani colonies founded in Gamma Quadrant of Spica, moving into ss I in the cluster along hexes 0122-0125 via the J-2 routes from Alpha Crucis, and into ss M in the main along hexes 0135-0136 via the J-1 main from Alpha Crucis.

425: Solomani colonies founded in Alpha Quadrant of Spica, moving into ss E in the cluster occupying hexes 0217, 0315, 0317, 0415 and 0416 via the J-2 route from Alpha Crucis.

640-650: Solomani colonies push into ss J from ss I, and into ss N from ss M.

700: Solomani colonies move into ss A in the cluster occupying hexes 0106-0109, hexes 0208-0210, and hex 0309 via the J-2 routes from Alpha Crucis. This entire cluster is colonized by 870.

760: Solomani colonies push into ss F from ss E and ss J.

870: Solomani expansion into Spica reaches current border.

Paraquat - you've seen the Solomani Timeline thread, right? (don't post anything there until we've all agreed on things though).

As it stands, your suggestions don't seem to tally much with events know from the timeline. (the events are reasonable as they stand, but I think it'd be nicer if we can link them to Solomani events. For example, I was envisaging a big colonisation push after 704 when the Solomani Autonomous Region was created).

Plus it seems apparent to me from everything I've read that before 704 at least, there wasn't a single Solomani government - just several Rim States (ie pocket empires - 5 in the Solomani Rim sector as the 3I is founded, maybe 3 in the surrounding ones?). So I think it'd be good to have the main expansion into Spica coming from one or two of the Rim States in Alpha Crucis.

My own feeling is that the Solomani wouldn't really have gone into Spica till about 600. While the Alpha Crucis Rim States may have been content to sit there doing their thing til that period, I suspect they may have felt threatened by the incorporation of the states in the Solomani Rim by the Imperium around that time. Given that they may have been more insular than the Solomani Rim, that could have given them an impetus to expand further away from the Imperium.

So I'd shunt those dates down the timeline considerably. The Solomani would start spreading into Spica around 600 as part of a concerted "get away from the Imperium" drive from a couple of the Alpha Crucis states.

By the time the SAR is declared in 704, there's probably at least one Spican Rim State (probably in the region of subsector I and M). After that, I think there'd be a general ideological push to the frontier by the Solomani Movement to shore up the boundaries of the new region (which are defined as being in this sector anyway) - so you may have a case of old settlers having to cope with new idealist rookies.

By 871, Solomani has reached its current borders, perhaps with people starting to nibble along the edges of unaligned space there.

So officially, border contact between the Sollies and the Hivers only really began in the 700s in this scenario.

That's how I'd see it anyway... I think that makes more sense given the timeline.

Anyone else? Thoughts?

 

[RainOfSteel]

So, are we giving up on any colonization efforts earlier than that? I don't mind, really, as it forces down the age of Solomani space by a large margin.

 

[Malenfant]

Not so much that we're giving up on it... I just can't see much reason for it before then - the Sollies never really needed to expand outwards to spinward/trailing/rimward from the Solomani Rim sector before. They had the whole First Imperium to move into when they took that over. So I'm thinking the other directions were always frontiers and sparsely population and probably largely ignored until the SAR was declared and explicitly set aside the Solomani Sphere. After that, I think the Sollies would have focussed more on filling out that region, essentially because that's the first time they'd really looked at it properly.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Paraquat - you've seen the Solomani Timeline thread, right? (don't post anything there until we've all agreed on things though).

As it stands, your suggestions don't seem to tally much with events know from the timeline. (the events are reasonable as they stand, but I think it'd be nicer if we can link them to Solomani events. For example, I was envisaging a big colonisation push after 704 when the Solomani Autonomous Region was created).

Plus it seems apparent to me from everything I've read that before 704 at least, there wasn't a single Solomani government - just several Rim States (ie pocket empires - 5 in the Solomani Rim sector as the 3I is founded, maybe 3 in the surrounding ones?). So I think it'd be good to have the main expansion into Spica coming from one or two of the Rim States in Alpha Crucis.

My own feeling is that the Solomani wouldn't really have gone into Spica till about 600. While the Alpha Crucis Rim States may have been content to sit there doing their thing til that period, I suspect they may have felt threatened by the incorporation of the states in the Solomani Rim by the Imperium around that time. Given that they may have been more insular than the Solomani Rim, that could have given them an impetus to expand further away from the Imperium.

So I'd shunt those dates down the timeline considerably. The Solomani would start spreading into Spica around 600 as part of a concerted "get away from the Imperium" drive from a couple of the Alpha Crucis states.

By the time the SAR is declared in 704, there's probably at least one Spican Rim State (probably in the region of subsector I and M). After that, I think there'd be a general ideological push to the frontier by the Solomani Movement to shore up the boundaries of the new region (which are defined as being in this sector anyway) - so you may have a case of old settlers having to cope with new idealist rookies.

By 871, Solomani has reached its current borders, perhaps with people starting to nibble along the edges of unaligned space there.

So officially, border contact between the Sollies and the Hivers only really began in the 700s in this scenario.

That's how I'd see it anyway... I think that makes more sense given the timeline.

Anyone else? Thoughts?

Yes, I saw the other thread. I could never figure out if a date had been agreed upon as for when the Solomani colonies started expanding into Spica. Somewhere in either that thread or another someone had mentioned 200, so I used that as a starting date and used 871 as the end date since that was when the SCF was established, and the border doesn't seem to have pushed outward after that.

Using 600 as the start date for colonization is OK with me, but damn that's fast! Less than 275 years to push as far as they have into Spica -- of course, not every system lying in Sol territory has to be colonized. Yet. They could have just been grabbing up the choice systems, then established the border, then started spreading out behind that border.

However, I still feel there were probably some colonists of Solomani origin who arrived in Spica prior to the Long Night, as they did in the Gateway Domain. These colonies could be rediscovered during the more recent colonization period.

If we use 600 as the start date, here are some proposed revized dates:

600: Solomani colonies founded in Gamma Quadrant of Spica, moving into ss I in the cluster along hexes 0122-0125 via the J-2 routes from Alpha Crucis, and into ss M in the main along hexes 0135-0136 via the J-1 main from Alpha Crucis.

687: Solomani colonies founded in Alpha Quadrant of Spica, moving into ss E in the cluster occupying hexes 0217, 0315, 0317, 0415 and 0416 via the J-2 route from Alpha Crucis.

784: Solomani colonies push into ss J from ss I, and into ss N from ss M.

802: Solomani colonies move into ss A in the cluster occupying hexes 0106-0109, hexes 0208-0210, and hex 0309 via the J-2 routes from Alpha Crucis. This entire cluster is colonized by 870.

825: Solomani colonies push into ss F from ss E and ss J.

870: Solomani expansion into Spica reaches current border.