The Cathedral Galaxy

[jshoer]

For my next major personal project, I'm going to revisit an old setting of mine, called the Cathedral Galaxy! The original idea is that this galaxy contains a number of large-scale cultures at Kardashev Levels 0-1, but unbeknownst to them, they are actually the second set of sentient life to evolve in a much older Level 3 civilization's galaxy. The ancient, galaxy-spanning civilization left a network of wormholes and hulking artifacts all throughout the Cathedral Galaxy.

Here's my original map of this galaxy:


I have a fair amount of old lore and stories built up for this setting, including a few complete short stories. If anyone is interested:

• Between Wrecks, meant to be an introduction to the setting's concepts, about a salvage operator who runs into trouble
• In the Arena, a scene about an interplanetary gladiator
• Conference, my favorite of the bunch, about a researcher who is starting to piece together some of the Galaxy's mysteries

Let's see if I can do some font coloring correctly as a spoiler obfuscation. Select text to see: ||| There's a network of wormholes connecting the galaxy, but that network is really the "circulatory system" of the old civilization, which "uploaded" itself into a galaxy-spanning consciousness centered in the galaxy's highly irradiated and otherwise uninhabitable core. Through the series of stories, I was going to have the current civilizations discover this fact, and that the ancient civilization did this as a defense against some external threat - which is starting to crop up again, causing the galactic "organism" to become active again. ||| Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever get to writing more stories carrying through with that plot, but at least by sharing it here, I can put out some of the lore!

I've had a bit of a mental hurdle in doing sci-fi maps, in that I vastly prefer drawing by hand but sci-fi seems to call for digital tools. However, after seeing Francesca, Ilanthar, and others do amazing traditional pen drawing techniques for sci-fi settings, I've decided to just go ahead on a new version fo the Cathedral Galaxy. But I want to try some layering experiments: I want to draw the map in pen (black) on white paper and invert the image for the base map, then put some selected features back on top in non-inverted colors to make them look more like detail objects. I'm going to have to play with where the text layers will go, and how I indicate the wormhole network, but I think the result will be cool. I'll do a test run first and post it here for feedback!

If that doesn't pan out, I'll just do it all in black pen on white paper, and then figure out other ways to color it.

Here's my start in pencil...if you spot a few holes in the middle, I ran a needle and thread through the paper to make myself ellipses as a drawing guide.