Milky Way
The Milky Way is the home galaxy of solspawn-kind and numerous xenobioforms, spanning a vast 120,000 light years in diameter and boasting 200 billion stars as well as 800 billion planets. Having existed for around 13 billion years, the Milky Way has birthed countless stars and seen them die as well, all of them orbiting around its supermassive central black hole Sagittarius A*. While once an almost entirely barren realm, solspawn have transformed thousands of light years worth of space into hubs of culture, history, infrastructure and life. Additionally, as they spread, the galaxy became known as being divided into three main regions based on how densely populated they are. These regions are defined as follows, as of 6800:
- 0-12,000 ly from Earth
- 4 billion star systems
- 8 billion stars
- 32 billion planets
- Nearly every system visited
- Almost exactly 80% of systems are colonized (>1 million population)
- 12,000-24,000 ly from Earth
- 16 billion star systems
- 32 billion stars
- 128 billion planets
- 80-90% of systems visited
- A few million systems colonized
- 24,000+ ly from Earth
- 80 billion star systems
- 160 billion stars
- 640 billion planets
- 20-25% of systems visited
- Very few systems colonized
These regions are always expanding (other than Wild Space which has covered the whole Milky Way since c.6200) and are doing so at an accelerated rate, especially as the past couple of centuries have seen some of the largest jumps in maximum starship speed ever seen. While population expansion to the outer regions remains slow due to limited interest in taking long journeys to move to new systems and the resources needed to create sufficient infrastructure compared to simply exploring, the modern exploratory golden age is actually piquing the interest of solspawn almost as much as when the humans first branched out into the stars.