Fiction:Valian Empire/Planets

Every planet in the Valian Empire is catalogued in the Imperial World Registry, which contains over 800,000 files in its database; all imperial planets, thus, have official code names, or tags, that go hand in hand with their given names. The Registry’s creations dates back more than 8,000 years, intended to simplify space travel and bring order to Imperial holdings.

Planet’s tag names are usually quite lengthy; plant Val Besul’s tag, for example, is A3L-6-3325. For this reason, civilians aren’t usually aware of these codenames or use them at all; experienced pilots and spacers, however, must learn to analyze them at a moment’s notice, since they offer key information about any planet. The first characters in a planet tag describe qualitative aspects; the first states its Planetary Class, which indicates whether a planet is open to any incoming ship or not; the vast majority of planets are A-class planet, accessible to all, while U-class planets are restricted. The second character indicates its Demographic Designation; a Volanti-majority planet can range anywhere from 1 to 5 on this scale depending on the size of its population, with higher numbers indicating highly urbanized worlds. Planets with alien-majority populations are tagged with a Y (from the volanti word for alien, ypro) instead of a number; those with negligible populations are tagged S, and do not show up in standard star charts. The third character indicates a planet’s military priority status; H-class planets being highly secure, M-class being standard, and L-class indicating planets with low strategic value, which consequently tend to be less well-guarded (this might be either good or bad depending on whether you’re seeking the authorities’ aid or hiding something from them).

The first number in a planetary tag indicates which of the ten Imperial provinces the planet is located in, which allows one to quickly determine its rough position in the galaxy. Whatever numbers follow are simply the planet’s serial number; within the Registry, planets are tagged from 1 (planet Volaris) to 863607 (planet Nianye in the Petal Rim), with each number being connected to the planet’s exact three-dimensional coordinates; upon introducing any planet’s serial number into a modern starship with an updated Registry database, its location and the most efficient way to arrive can be found.