The 'Verse

The Verse (often written 'Verse) is a colloquialism for "the universe," all the region of outer space known to humankind. The official astronomical designation of the system is 34Tauri(2020) and it consists of a star cluster of five stars, and the brown dwarfs, planets, and moons colonized by those who left Earth-That-Was.
All the worlds that make up the 'Verse share two names, a Sino (Chinese) name and Anglo (English) name. The Sino names of the five stars are based on the old-world concept of the Five Chinese Constellations. The Anglo names are given by the actual temperature-spectral color of the sun, with the exception of two which are yellow, named Georgia and Kalidasa.
The five star system of 34Tauri(2020) is composed not only of five naturally occurring stars and hundreds of planets and moons, it has also been helioformed to convert super-Jupiter-sized "protostars" into small dwarf suns. These hundreds of planets and moons have been terraformed with artificial atmospheres, local gravity nets, and seeded with biological entities to turn them each into worlds of their own.

Geography

The Five Suns

The five primary, naturally occurring stars which make up the 'Verse are listed:

The Five Suns of the Verse (constant period version)

While much of the source data comes from The Complete and Official Map of the Verse, © Universal Studios and Quantum Mechanix Inc. as presented as a free supplement entitled The Verse in Numbers, whichever producers did the celestial math got it wrong, sadly. Pity, too, since QMx does such shiny work. And I've yet to see any correction. I doubt it will ever be corrected because the vast majority don't know the error, don't care, and it's just not profitable enough to correct. And I'm not a voice that gets heard.


The easy part of the problem is that the masses of the suns involved is a factor in determining their orbital period. Granted, science fiction is already a suspension of belief, and a space opera quadrupley such. With a magical hand wave, gravity and "timey-wimey stuff" becomes irrelevant, and whole planets can be made into clones of southern California thanks the the miracle of "terraforming machines".


But this issue can be solved with just a choice. So, presented here, is a choice. It assumes that given the solar masses and orbital periods, the orbital diameters (semi-major axes) are corrected (instead of adjusting the orbital periods, thus keeping Murphy and Red Sun systsms always opposite one another). We will also neglect the complexities of massive stars acting on hundreds of small bodies and pretend they are all in perfect circular orbits with no eccentricities. Also, Lagrange points are not that stable, especially for said massive stars in play. Don't get me started on luminosity radiation. Oh, wait...yeah, So.Cal. would be about right on that.


For the curious, when you have two stars in a two-body problem:
√[(R₂³)/(M₂+M₁)] where R is the radius (usually in A.U.) of the larger star's mass (M₁) to the smaller body's mass (M₂). The mistake that the T.V.I.N. makes is that it neglects the smaller body's mass. In our own Solar System, because the smaller bodies are so very, very small, we can neglect the smaller mass. But with massive stars (using solar masses is typical) very close to one another, it makes a difference. So here I could either keep the orbital period the same and adjust the orbital radius, or keep the radius constant and give the correct revolution period. This choice presents the former for those wishing to prevent causing problems with orbital mechanics.

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Astronomical Name:	34Tauri(2020)A	34Tauri(2020)B	34Tauri(2020)C	34Tauri(2020)D	34Tauri(2020)E
Common Name:	White Sun	Georgia	Red Sun	Kalidasa	Blue Sun
Chinese Name:	Bai Hu	Huang Long	Zhu Que	Xuan Wu	Qing Long
Chinese Translation:	White Tiger	Yellow Dragon	Red Phoenix	Black Tortoise	Blue Dragon
Class:	A0	G0	G5	F5	F0
Radius:	2.5 Sol	1.05 Sol	0.93 Sol	1.2 Sol	1.4 Sol
Mass:	3.2 Sol	1.1 Sol	0.93 Sol	1.29 Sol	1.7 Sol
Luminosity:	80 Sol	1.26 Sol	0.79 Sol	2.5 Sol	6 Sol
Temperature:	10,800 °K	6,000 °K	5,610 °K	6,540 °K	7,240 °K
Verse Location:	0 AU	68 AU	67.09 AU	121 AU	180 AU
Orbital Period:	-	270.41 yrs	270.41 yrs	628.14 yrs	1090.96 yrs
Abs. Mag.:	0.0723	4.5791	5.0859	3.8351	2.8846

NOTE

Note: The astrophysics of the 'Verse as portrayed in the most popular referential work, The 'Verse In Numbers, is impossible. The gravitational forces are miscalculated, not to mention would greatly perturb the planets and moons into erratic orbits. The radiation of large, luminous and close stars would fry atmospheres and burn every living thing. Better have your suspension of belief handy. Or a good dose of astrophysical ignorance. That works too.

In addition, each system consists of hundreds of planets, and most of those have moons. Thus it is most convenient to categorize each of these into five solar systems, corresponding to each of these five primary suns. Each of these systems also contain one or more protostars which were helioformed into M-class stars.

The Five Solar Systems

the Core

• White Sun (Bai Hu) system

the Border

• Georgia (Huang Long) system
• Red Sun (Zhu Que) system

the Rim

• Kalidasa (Xuan Wu) system
• Blue Sun (Qing Long) system

Definitions

Protostars

A protostar is a gas giant planet which turns into a small star. The gas giant in question does have sufficient mass to sustain a fusion reaction and thereby act as a star, however it does not have enough mass to start the reaction by itself. The process of turning a gas giant into a protostar is called "helioforming" (as in terraforming).
By helioforming the largest gas giants in the 34 Tauri (2020) star cluster, it was possible to sustain Earth-like life on many more moons than the primary stars themselves could support.

Planets

A planet is a celestial body that is in orbit around a Star, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a nearly round shape, has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and is neither a star nor a moon of a planet.
A pair of objects are considered a double planet system if they independently satisfy the definition of a planet, and the common center of gravity of the system (known as the barycenter) lies outside either body.
Plutons are planets with highly inclined orbits with large eccentricities and an orbital period of more than 200 years. The term "dwarf planet" is used to describe all planets smaller than the Sol system planet named Mercury. In centuries past, these planets would have simply been considered nothing more than spherical asteroids.

Moons

Technically, a moon is a celestial body that orbits another celestial body. In common usage, "moon" refers only to those objects of significant size orbiting around a planet, although moons could also have moons. They are also collectively called "natural satellites", a term that could also encompass asteroids of any size locked into a stable orbit.
The status of moons in the 'Verse can change if their primary's classification changed. For example, Miranda was originally a moon of the gas giant Burnham. When Burnham was helioformed, Miranda was reclassified as a planet. Miranda's moon, Caliban, remained a moon under both conditions.
Most moons that underwent terraforming did so at the same time their primary was being terraformed. Some moons required further development and were still terraforming while their primaries and neighboring moons supported large populations.
The 'Verse has approximately 122 terraformed moons, two of which (Priam and Zephyr) are technically part of double-planet systems but retain their original "moon" classifications. Approximately 25 moons are still undergoing terraforming. Twenty-two planets were once moons and later reclassified due to helioforming, and 32 moons are eligible for reclassification should their gas giant primaries ever be helioformed.
The smallest known moon is Bullet (of Hera) with a diameter of 125 kilometers. The smallest inhabited moon is Ita (of Whittier, with a diameter of 965 km. Despite the massive populations of the Central Planets, the moon Conrad (of Three Hills) currently claims the highest population density in the 'Verse.

Blackrock Planets

A Blackrock is a uninhabitable planet, or a planet deemed unfit for human habitation.

Show spoiler

Miranda was one planet that was deemed a blackrock, in order to cover up the Alliance's illicit activities.

Asteroids

An Asteroid Belt is a collection of asteroids that orbits a star in a regular orbit. Asteroids themselves are debris not used in the planetary formation process.

Astro-Engineering

Terraforming

Helioforming

Helioforming is the process of using nano-compression technology to compress and ignite a brown dwarf, turning it into an artificial sun (also called a "protostar").
Burnham was the first brown dwarf in the Verse to be helioformed. It was determined that Burnham was the best candidate for this very experimental and dangerous procedure, due to its distance from the more populous core worlds, and its small size. After the process was refined at Burnham, it was then applied to the other six brown dwarfs in the Verse.
The last brown dwarf to be helioformed was Qin Shi Huang, and only after the process was deemed as error-free as humanly possible. The helioform process reduces the body's diameter to 60% of its original value while the mass remains constant.

Regions

While the astrography of the 'Verse lead to political division into regions, the regions are more a construct of politics, economics, and culture than of the astrography. What constitutes whether a planets is "Core", "Border" or "Rim" is more often defined by the relative levels of technology use, wealth, and which side of the Unification War they happened to favor.
The following are considered the common "Regions" of the 'Verse.

The Central Planets (a.k.a. "Core")

The central planets are a wonderland of peace and technology. All citizens have enough to eat. They work in glistening skyscrapers and live in high-rise apartment buildings. The grass is green and the skies are clear and no one asks for anything. That's if you believe the Alliance propaganda.
To be fair, the propaganda is mostly true. Even the poor who live on the Core worlds rarely want for shelter or food. Still, contrary to what the Alliance might want everyone to think, not everyone on the Core worlds is well-to-do. Those who aren't wealthy don't find life much better than those living out on the Rim. They may be better schooled, and their work might not involve dirt collecting under their fingernails, but there are plenty of people who don't much like their lot in life.
Trapped in repetitive, unimaginative jobs, viewing nothing but the four low walls of a cube all day, they have the watchful eye of the Alliance on them at every turn. There is so much surveillance on a Core world 'to prevent crime and ensure the safety of citizens' that almost everything a person does is recorded on a monitor somewhere.
The authorities will tell you that crime is almost non-existent on the Central Planets, since their scanners are almost everywhere. Still, there are some who manage to find a way to poke the Alliance in its electronic eye now and then.
Most people on the Core worlds are content. They lead comfortable lives, with time and leisure to spend with their families. Their children all have access to the best quality education and health care. They have found the peaceful, prosperous existence that mankind has been seeking since he left the Garden of Eden. If they have to trade away some of their freedom to get this, they would tell you it was worth it.
These are the same people who can't understand why other people on the outer worlds fought so hard against it.

Border planets

The Border planets are near enough to the central planets that they have business dealings with those on the Core. However, the Border planets are far enough away from the Core that the eyes of the Alliance can't always make out what's going on.
Thus, these planets are excellent locales for certain unscrupulous folk from the Core to conduct business dealings "in private." They don't have to move to these planets (Though there are those eccentrics who travel here from the Core to 'get away from it all' - the kind of people who build strong fortresses to keep out the riffraff, and would never dream of socializing with the local yokels). The irony is that these same folk are all in favor of the rules and regulations that govern business dealings throughout the systems - just as long as those rules and regulations don't affect them.
To give the folk on these planets credit where credits are due, there are plenty on the Border worlds who are eager to do business with those on the Core. And there are always countless numbers without a silver in their pocket here looking for work.
Landing on Beaumonde and Persephone is supposedly regulated, but the traffic is so heavy that the harried Alliance officials who try to police it have mostly thrown up their hands in frustration and sometimes don't even bother to ask what your business is (Perhaps they figure it's best they don't know!). Landing on Bellerophon is more difficult, since the world is basically off limits to all who don't own one of its elegant estates. Still, there are ways...
The Border planets are the best and worst of all possible worlds. Tall, elegant skyscrapers and magnificent mansions stare down their steel noses at cardboard hovels and crowded slums. You can buy anything on the Border planets, from someone to pick off your worst enemy to a pink ruffled dress that looks like a layer cake. (Just don't buy the 'Good Dogs' from the vendor in the Eavesdown Docks. Not if you care that the sausage inside the bun was once actually a good little dog.)

"The Rim" planets

God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the firepower to make the difference.

— A common prayer for the Rim planets

The Rim worlds are the latest results of terraforming technology, only recently settled, and raw and untamed. Out on the farthest edges of the system, life can be quite challenging, as the comforts of civilization common to the Core Worlds just aren't so here.

Overview

Technology and power are far more expensive out on the outer worlds and moons, so folk have to make do without. People ride horseback, farm with handmade tools, and resort to entertainment that doesn't require electricity or batteries to operate. While some folk dream of the luxuries available on the central planets, others enjoy the freedom of open air and hard toil. In their own way, they're as stuck-up as the Core-Worlders, looking down their noses at soft folk who've never dug a ditch or mucked a horse stall.
While the Alliance government has a presence on the Rim, its grip is more than a mite looser here than elsewhere. Folk can't count on help coming right away (or at all), so they are accustomed to taking care of themselves and their own. Frontier-folk are usually armed, ready to draw at a moment's notice. Children learn to aim by shooting cans off a fence post. The lack of government interference and monitoring has made the Rim a haven for outlaws, outcasts, and shady business folk, as well as a middle class who started to feel like their own planets were getting too crowded for comfort. There is money to be made on the outer worlds, something plenty are just now figuring out.
Each world has a Governor, each moon a magistrate. As long as the general peace is kept and the proper reports are filed, such powerful figures may pretty much do as they please, least as far as the Alliance is concerned. Some government officials are good. Some not. Same here as most everywhere else in the 'Verse.
A citizen of the central planets who wakes up on a Rim world might think he's traveled backwards in time: people riding horses and shooting six guns. Yet, here and there, you can still find the technology of the 26th century, from Cortex access terminals to high-security bank vaults.

Burnham quadrant

The Burnham quadrant of the Verse, embedded deep into Reaver territory, contained the planet Miranda and its moon Caliban.

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A Note About Canon

See the Complete and Official Map of the Verse, though note that the "official" part of the title seems to refer specifically to the role-playing game, since the page says "The Official Map of The Verse has been endorsed by Margaret Weiss Productions, makers of the Serenity Role Playing Game, as a must-have resource for Serenity RPGers".
The creator of the RPG, Jamie Chambers, responds in an interview to the question of whether the material in the RPG should be considered "canon." He says that "there was no direct contact with Joss or his office during the creation of the Serenity Role Playing Game", and that "I only had a few extra resources to set about my work than any other fan. Aside from the television series and fan-compiled information on the Internet, I had the amazing script (which I had nearly memorized by the time the first sneak screening happened) and a short memo that was recently published as part of the Serenity Visual Companion." He adds "The next question, of course, is Joss Whedon bound by our presentation of his universe, its history, or characters? Hell no! As we Browncoats are fond of saying, Joss is Boss. He can -- and should -- tell his stories the way he wants."

Maps

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  The 'Verse - All Systems (hex grid)

  The Inter-System Distance Calculator is a simple graphical distance guide that can be used for gross estimates across the expanse of the Verse. Use it for approximations only since the scale and motion of the systems introduce complexities that a two-dimensional static map cannot portray.

Type

Star System

Included Locations

• Blue Sun System
• Georgia System
• Kalidasa System
• Red Sun System
• White Sun System

Owning Organization

Union of Allied Planets

Contested By

• Independent Faction

Related Historical Events

• 2500
  Unification Mandate