Tirane
There are three major problems with Tirane, which is also called Tirene in some early Challenge articles. Essentially, Loren K. Wiseman didn't read the previously established facts about Tirane, and didn't follow the worldbuilding rules. Not following the worldbuilding rules was quite common in the Colonial Atlas, and Tirane was not the worst offender - Kie-Yuma, Nous Voila and King were far worse.
However, post-Colonial Atlas Loren's article was slowly retconned in official books, and, for example, it was confirmed by the time of the Earth/Cybertech SB that neither America nor Australia had a colony on Tirane, but this is ignored by some. However, Tirane is so messed up it has caused controversy as long as I can remember.
Orbit and Temperature
Firstly, it is disputed which orbit Tirane is even in. In the original 1986 boxed set, it is stated that Tirane is the 4th planet in the system (PG, 16), but the CA made it the first of three planets orbiting AC A. Confusion arises in the 2nd edition, when both contradictory facts are presented a few pages apart. Which is it then? It's the fourth planet, because the 2300 Resource places Tirane in an orbit at 1.05 AU, which is beyond the possible scope of the first orbit and consistent with the 4th.
To be clear, system creation rules rolled a d10 for the first orbit, resulting in 0.1 to 0.9 AU or no planets (if a 10 was rolled, it was rerolled the first time and a second 10 ended system generation with no planets). Subsequent orbits were generated by a multiplier generated from another table. The rules were sketchy about whether you rolled once and populated the system, or kept rolling. Scientifically, the former is correct.
Reconstructing putative rolls to get the lowest error gives a roll of 4 (0.3 AU) for the first orbit, and a multiplier of 1.5. Since AC B prevents stable orbits greater than ca. 3.7 AU, there are seven stable orbits, thus:
There are not necessarily planets in orbits 5-7, but 1-3 are filled with something, even if only belts. However, the lack of belt mining indicates no belts. Perhaps it is best thought that all the planets beyond Tirane broke up, and the chaotic structure of the system has swept it clean, with significant bombardment per the CA writeup/
A distance of 1.05 AU means Tirane gets 138% of the sunlight of Earth, since Alpha Centauri A has a luminosity of 1.5 Sols. This means Tirane is hot. Really hot. The optimal "Earth like" distance for Tirane is around 1.23 AU. At 1.05 AU, Tirane is still in the life zone, but is in the "inner life zone." The average planetary temperature will be 4 degrees C assuming Earth-ish albedo etc., or about 25 degrees C warmer than Earth. This means Tirane is a "polar planet" with an uninhabitable equator, but reasonably habitable poles. The equator is literally a scorched desert, devoid of life. Where the boundaries of habitability are depend very much on the insolation and the axial tilt of the planet.
Sadly, we don't even know the size of Tirane.
Tirane's Size, Density etc.
Assuming the gravity was read off the colony table in the 2nd ed. (as the CA doesn't give a value), Tirane has a 1.01 G surface gravity (but only 0.9 G in the 1st edition. See Nyotekundu SB, page 71). Assuming it was made using the GDW world generation system, and read off the tables, it likely makes a 1.01 G Tirane a 16,000 km diameter, density 0.8 world, which gives it a mass of 1.61 Earths and a MMWR of 5 with a pressure of 0.978 atm.
If 0.9 G surface gravity were used (economically advantagous) then from the tables a 19,000 km diameter, density = 0.6 world fits, but MMWR drops to 4, and so the planet would be a failed core. This could not be colonised.
The two moons given in the CA are "a small ice ball" (Esa) and a distant rocky moonlet. The first problem is that "ice balls" can only exist in the outer system (by the world creation rules). The heat of the star would have caused the moon to loose all volatiles. Instead let's assume it is an icy cored body. Since Esa is defined to be a small moon, it will not produce significant tides, nor vulcanism. This has some interesting effects, but mountains will be rare, and the lack of vulcanism, combined with the low density, will make Tirane relatively mineral poor.
However, it is notable that Britain and France did exploit mineral production on Tirane, and so there are certainly some lodes. It's just that there will be far fewer mineral deposits on Tirane. However, in the writeup in the CA Tirane has been under heavy bombardment from the asteroids in the system, and the Azanian colony is a mining operation based at one of the Craters (like the British world of Crater). Clearly a lot of metallic asteroids fell on the planet and this probably gives us the raison d'être for the colony. The planet is pockmarked with asteroid craters, and in many of these there will be significant metal resources. These will be mostly in the equitorial desert, creating an interesting society.
The Colonies and History
The Tirane article messed up several colony names, and even identities. It also made every single colony except the French one independent. Later works have retconned them back.
Most notably, the Australian colony of New Canberra was retconned back out of existence in the Earth/Cybertech SB. The history now is that Australia planted a colony in the Japanese claim, and, after negotiation, they gained mineral rights but, as of 2300, New Canberra no longer exists. In all likelyhood, the Australian plantation was absorbed by the Japanese colony. This was, however simply stating both sets of facts - the historical ones from the CA, and the current colony list in the boxed set.
Similarly, the Argentinian colony was confirmed to still exist in the E/CS, and there is no American colony. The British colony is restated to be Wellon, and the ex-German one Garten in the boxed set, but then the names New Albion and Freihaven are later given. The boxed set said (after the CA) that the American colony was "nearly extinct."
The colonial population is nonsensical, since it would require the plantation of hundreds of millions of humans on Tirane > 100 years prior to reach 1.05 billion. The generally recognised fix is to divide populations by 10. This still requires massive emigration on a scale not seen on other worlds.
The "core" status relates to the average resident having the basic amenities of Earth like indoor toilets. In other colonies, the major cities will be something like a city on Earth, and are classified as "core." The core world status of Tirane simply indicates the majority live with flushing toilets etc. See Beanstalk for the development of BCV-4, only a few decades younger and the richest colony planet. It has a mix of high-tech cities (counted as "core"), but outside toilets and no sewers in places (counted as "frontier).
Given what we have determined about the physical nature of Tirane, it is likely the major population centres are in the northern and southern temperate zones (i.e. average temperature from 0 to 20 degrees c). The temperatures are approximately as follows.
We can make Dave Malesevich's map work. We just need to adjust things slightly.
Making Dave Malesevich's Map Work
The map of Tirane in Mongoose 2k3 is a modified version of the map drawn by Dave Malesevich, which in turn are modifications of the map drawn by Dan Schirren in 1996. I was one of the people suggesting modifications. Colin further modified it for 2320, stating in December 2004:
The new color map of Tirane is posted to the files section. It hassemi-official status until OK'd by Hunter at QLI. Then it becomes thereal deal for 2320.It's pretty close to the Tirane project maps, save that it addsanother island near Tirania that is home to Santa Maria, and Enfer isnot empty, but the location of New Albion, the second British colonyon Tirane.
Thus, it has no canon status, and Dave M owns the copyright.
Per LKW's writeup, there are seven continents mentioned in the CA. Incidently, one of my contributions to the DM map was to point out that DS's map had too many continents. There was then an argument about deleting the continent of Enfer (named by me) and it simply got downsized.
So, taking the geography of Dave M.'s map, the approximate temperature zones are:
There is are two large uninhabitable islands, one of which is New Albion. The north of the ESA continent and the north of Amatersau, and the south of Santa Maria (replacing the non-existent Tirania) are pretty uninhabitable, being way into the death zone.
The Colonies of Tirane
The colonial populations are untenable, and the generally agreed fix is to knock off a zero (the same for Nibelungen). In order of initial settlement, the seven colonies of Tirane are:
Provence Nouveau (French, 23.9 million) is the original Human colony landed on the southern shore of the ESA continent. It covers about 140,000 sq. km of inhabited area in the temperate to near desert zones (i.e. the size of the state of New York) and lays claim to about 220,000 sq. km of death zone land, upto the Tiranian Alpes (excluding Tundukubwa), which are the site of many mining camps.
Garten (French affiliate, ex-German, 19.5 million) is a satellite of the original ESA settlement allotted to Germany. It consists of the trans-Alpine region of the continent but in practice almost the entire population lives in the 50,000 sq. km fertile Limite River delta region. The Limite River provides an excellent artery to service mining encampments to the north. The whole colony, including the mining region, is about the size of Indiana. Due to French support, Garten was able to avoid occupation by Germany and has declared independence.
Tundukubwa (Azanian, 6.8 million) is the third colony on the ESA continent and is essentially a city-state built to service mining operations in a particularly rich asteroidal crater. It claims about 10,000 sq km
Wellon (British dominion, 21.2 million) was founded separately from the other ESA colonies, with Britain investing in opening up the northern hemisphere by settling in the New Albion Islands. The main population centres are on the northern islands which only have an area of about 30,000 sq. km and the largest of them, Wellon Island (ca. 20,000 sq. km, capital = Knightsbridge), is about the size of Massachusetts. Further south is the island of New Highlands (ca. 10,000 sq. km) which is well into the desert zone, but cooled by sea currents into being merely tropical and is settled by a few million. Further south the islands of New Scotland (40,000 sq. km) and New Albion (130,000 sq. km) host only mining operations. Wellon is now, like Britain's largest colony of Alicia on Beowulf, a self-governing dominion within the British Empire, and the Imperial Parliament only controls external defence (i.e. there is no Wellon space force), trade (retaining control of the primary orbital port) and foreign relations.
Santa Maria (9.8 million Argentines and 1.8 million Mexicans) is one of the larger colonies, as they got "second pick" after ESA. It is based around Santa Maria bay, and in total is about 150,000 sq. km (about the size of California), although only half of this is habitable, with the rest being mines in the death zone.
Provinca do Brasil (Brazilian, 10.2 million) was claimed by Brazil, but not actively settled until the 2210's (see SotFA, 56). It consists of an island of ca. 70,000 sq. km and a few smaller islands in the southern habitable zone (about the size of Missouri).
Amaterasu (Japanese, 11.9 million) was the final habitable area on Tirane to be claimed, and the Japanese thus settled it in 2184. The mountainous island of Enfer (ca. 80,000 sq. km, with only about 10,000 sq. km of habitable land) was thus settled, and tantalum was struck. Shortly afterwards the Australians tried to claim it citing a paper claim despite no actual colonisation. Thus resulted in the "1.5th interstellar war" which was quickly settled by negotiation. The Australians renounced their claim in return for a share of the tantalum. This tested the limits of the Melbourne Accords, creating the precedent that no-one could attempt to settle a colony in a reasonable claim, and confirming that actual settlement was need to claim territory (which was the whole point of the accords). There remain some descendents of the Australian settlers in Amatersau.
Additionally, America attempted to settle the unclaimed continent of Tirania in the death zone, but the colonists simply could not survive in such conditions, and the attempt was abandoned.
A couple of small points follow.
"Grandseasons"
The change in insolation due to Toliman (AC B) is only about 0.25 degrees C. The borders of the zones shift slightly, but there simply isn't enough insolation to have a major effect. The effect of the grandseasons is thus very mild.
Stutterwarp
All the "early stutterwarp lacked range" was retconned away by the Stutterwarp rewrite under Lester W. Smith. Stutterwaps have always had a 7.7 ly range.
Conclusion
This is really where I was going a quarter of a century ago when the Tirane SB list was started. LKW made some major errors both scientifically, and checking basic facts like what orbit Tirane was in, and what the colonies were. This corrects all that. I know it won't be for everyone.
