The Galaxy is a big place...

[Lysimachus]

So, this post is my contribution to Liber Day, it's nothing particularly new or groundbreaking but is something that struck me recently regarding the scale of the Imperium.

I don't know about anybody else but occasionally I've struggled with the idea that the Imperium, spread out across the breadth of the galaxy and consisting of around a million worlds, still has room for all of our individual creations to be fitted in (and not to make the reader think 'well, why haven't I heard of them, then?').

However, I was doing some research after my 9 year old son asked me some questions about the stars, solar system, etc, and I happened to read on a bit further after those questions were answered. I was looking at the current (or as current as I could find, if anyone knows better feel free to correct me!) estimates for numbers of stars and planetary bodies in the Milky Way.

These estimates suggested a number of stars somewhere between 100 and 400 billion, with at least as many planetary objects. What does this mean for the 40k fluff? Well, let's assume the lowest estimate of 100 billion stars and 1 planetary body per star. So for every star with 1 of those million Imperial worlds, there are at least another 100,000 stars with worlds either controlled by alien empires, now-empty worlds long ago controlled by Mankind/Xenos, totally unexplored and never inhabited worlds, or - to be fair - lifeless balls of rock (though if we allow for the miraculously skilled terraformers of the DAoT, there might be less of those than you'd think). Just think about that - draw a dot on a piece of paper, then draw another 100,000 dots around it. That's how pitiful a proportion of the Galaxy mankind actually controls. Not to mention cases like the Terran system where there are multiple Imperial worlds around 1 star, thereby raising the proportion of non-Imperial systems around them even further!

When you think of the scale of the galaxy in these terms, it's much easier to see how what happens to the planets (and people) of the Imperium is so poorly recorded or even heard about. Planets and systems are constantly being discovered, conquered, lost, found and reconquered. Just finding an Imperial world out of the thousands is like picking a teeny, tiny needle out of a haystack! Huge crusades of countless millions of men go out into that vast nothingness and are lost, forgotten without even a footnote in the 10,000 year history of the Imperium.

So what does this random spiel mean for the average DIY creator? Well, like I said its nothing particularly new, but it really highlighted to me the truth of how the intro to the rulebook concludes:

"The universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed..."




Anyway, just a few things I found interesting and thought might be cool to throw out for discussion among the Liberites!

[Olis]

Scale is something often misinterpreted in galactic settings, regardless of the franchise. Every star you see in the night sky, in galactic terms, is in the same neighbourhood as us. Every star in every constellation visible from Terra, would not be visible at all in the night sky of Macragge, Cadia, Ultima Macharia, Baal or Badab. And the same goes for every world I mentioned in relation to the others, too. To your average human on an average world (outside of the Core Worlds), they could point to a random star and call it Terra - they'd never be right but I doubt they would be informed otherwise.  

 

But yes, scale. It's generally misinterpreted because it's difficult to visualise. And to a certain degree, so is time-scale. For us (westerners in general), in modern times, something is 'ancient' if it's a couple of thousand years old. Much has happened between the time of the Romans and our own slice of temporal reality. But for other civilisations (Egyptians, Chinese etc etc) two thousand years is a smaller chunk of a bigger picture. The same with the Imperium. A single contiguous way of doing things for ten thousand years is quite a feat. Hundreds of years is long enough for things to be discovered, forgotten and rediscovered. The Imperium likely magnifies this problem pretty badly with it's labyrinthine bureaucracy. And yet this can still be difficult to grasp because a time-scale larger than our own may be an alien concept.    

[paulJam]

then you have the necrons who already finished their civilization millions of years ago, and the nids who traveled from another galaxy (yep, two xenos reference straight out of the gate).

the point being the scale is quite awe inspiring as you said; as a kid i didn't think much of space but as an adult the actual scope of all of the above really impresses.

 

when i started working on my own fluff i built a couple of guesstimate calculators to try to make sure distances/times/speeds were (hopefully) not ridiculously over or understated. which created possibly a similar experience to your school project.

[Canadian_F_H]

A lot of this is actually talked about in the did overt the years.

 

The pilgrimage to terra. Reverts to how millions set outand only the children's children might get close enough to sol to even see is light with the naked eye. .. granted the are poor people who probably have to work for years to scrape up enough to afford the worst accommodations on a freighter that kind of a little bit brings them closer to earth. Chartist captains, Rouge traders and military personnel Travers the galaxy more regularly. Supposedly crossing the galaxy takes add little as months if no unnecessary stops or delays are made.

 

Speaking of rogue traders, they seek out human worlds to trade with and bring into the imperial fold, many of these worlds are between known systems.

 

I recall reading somewhere that whole human pocket empires exist between imperial worlds that don't even know that terra exists.

 

Heck of the black templar's only drive is to crusade for imperial compliance they would only be at the frome of the imperium unless this were true.

[TDF]

I remember the Battlefleet Gothic rulebook talked about star systems with a planet being few and far between, which I believe was the widely accepted view at the time. In the past decade or so research and observations of exoplanets have suggested that there are far more planets in our galaxy than we ever imagined. Even so, the sectors and subsectors of the Imperium are focused around densely populated specks with vast expanses of uncharted wilderness space in between in which anything could be living unnoticed and undisturbed by the great powers of the galaxy.

[Canadian_F_H]

Also I recall issues with the tides of the immaterium and it's noneuclidean geometry contributes to the "flyover" systems.