The Canaan Cluster: Introduction

When I stumbled across Diaspora a couple of weeks ago, I was impressed, especially with the cluster and ship/equipment creation systems. I immediately started designing, first ships, then a couple of bare bones clusters. Eventually I decided that if I was going to be really inspired while designing, I had to create a fully fleshed out universe.

The Canaan Cluster was born out of that decision. While it's still very much a work in progress, I'll be organizing my thoughts and notes here as they come--probably in more detail than other clusters I've seen, and probably in more detail than really recommended for Diaspora. But I like details.

After fooling around with Nutty Clusters for a while, I got a basic cluster set-up that I liked. My only real criteria were multiple T2+ systems, but nothing at T4 (I don't think I'm ready for that). Here's the cluster map:

The Canaan Cluster

And here are the systems:

Horesh
T0 E1 R1
Breadbasket of the cluster
Religious zealots
Leased out the system

Marah
T2 E-1 R-1
Stripped to the bone
Workers' paradise?
Papers, please

En Haddeh
T2 E2 R1
Floating cities
Life's a beach
Interstellar diplomats

Kerith
T3 E-2 R1
Chlorine atmosphere
Corporate caste system
High tech is the best tech

Tamar
T1 E-3 R1
Endless asteroid belts
Fiercely independent
Pirate haven

Divon
T-2 E-1 R-1
Nuked from orbit
Who runs Bartertown?
Nothing but gray skies

Wander
T-3 E0 R2
Smart sapphires
Bronze Age octopi
The new frontier

Why the Canaan Cluster? Well, coming up with names is always the hardest part of writing for me, so I rummaged through a pile of dictionaries and picked out the biblical one. So most of the systems have biblical names (originally all of them did, but I wanted an exception). "Canaan Cluster" flowed naturally from that, and beat out the earlier working title of "Exodus Cluster" for the simple reason that it's alliterative.