There’s a bit of worldbuilding that often comes up when you’re working in a rich setting. Sometimes you’ll want to trace master-student or mentor-protégé chains, so you can see schools of thought and who’s likely to have had the most influence on whose philosophy.

If I wanted to work in the Star Wars universe, for example, I might want to trace links between Jedi masters and their padawans. In fact, there’s a very famous chain in the canon universe, stretching five “generations” (Yoda -> Dooku -> Qui-Gon Jinn -> Obi-Wan Kenobi -> Anakin Skywalker -> Ahsoka). If I was writing wuxia fiction, I might want to trace lines of succession for the leadership of various martial-arts schools. And so on.

Today, since I’m planning the next “season” for my Star Trek: Lower Decks fan-fiction writing, I had occasion to do some research and map out just such a mentorship chain. In this case, for “important cyberneticists.” The result is the attached “family tree,” which combines both alpha canon and some plot-relevant decisions of my own. Took about 90 minutes of work to produce, including sketching out the chart in Affinity Photo.

I won’t explain every item on this tree – Star Trek fans may recognize some or all of the names, and possibly there will be some raised eyebrows at some of the links I’ve established for my own continuity. Still, this can serve as a small example of the worldbuilding technique.