Overview
The Encyclopedia Via Lactea is a Scope detailing the history, culture, astrography and politics of what is known as the Human Metacivilization, or the larger collection of all human-descended life in the galaxy. Stretching across an area of around twenty thousand light years, the Encyclopedia has ample setting for anything you want to create.
The Encyclopedia is a strictly sci-fi scenario, with elements incorporated from both soft and hard subgenres. It takes inspiration from other Scopes such as Borealis and Cosmoria, while it aims to create something more grounded in humanity and connected to the real world.
Setting
As mentioned before, the Encyclopedia is set in a universe in which humanity has spread out from Earth, and rapidly diversified into millions of polities, nations and cultures, spread out across an area roughly a sphere twenty thousand light years wide. The Encyclopedia is set in the year 13,549 CE, which lines up exactly with the date in the real world. Time never passes, and the Encyclopedia will always stay at the same point in time.
While a forty thousand light-year wide sphere of setting may not seem like much when compared to other scopes on this site, it serves as more than enough for our purposes, whilst remaining realistic. For example, it is unrealistic to consider intergalactic empires being governed from one planet, as the sheer amount of resources, people, and power concentrated on that world would quite possibly outweigh the planet itself.
This is why the setting is so small - it serves as a vast space to plot any events, whilst also small enough to feel snug and secure, with all of life in one basket, facing outwards against a cold, uncaring cosmos.
Astrography
Astrography is the primary subject of the Encyclopedia. Astrography is the space equivalent of geography, detailing nations, planets, features and more.
Astrography has many similarities with real-world geography, basically being the logical extension of geography to outer space. When referring to on-world features, geography is still used.
Collaboration
Collaboration is not permitted at the moment, however this is subject to change. This is because I (FrewSupernova) would like to get basic settings down and the framework of the scope in place, before more flesh is added to the story. In future, I would love if others got involved, but at present I would just like to construct the setting.