Do we know why there’s a Federation enclave between the Klingon/Romulan Empires and the Shackleton Expanse?
Was it punched off during the Klingon-Romulan wars? A result of their recession? Or just an awkward result of the elasticity of canon?
Just seems unnatural, and so likely an interesting story behind why it’s like that. A player is abound to ask 
Or it could lead to an interesting story!
Not sure but I recall that somewhere I might have known that it’s not really an enclave, but that, because of the three-dimensionality of space, its connection to “Federation Core” kind of “overlaps” with Klingon space? Maybe? Something along those lines.
Or maybe that was already the interesting story someone else came up with. I really don’t know.
Probably partially a 3d thing… but looking at some images of the Stellar Cartography book’s map (all somewhat low-res, and I unfortunately don’t own it) it looks like some of the stars over there (and in other areas) are labelled with current real-word names. So I would imagine that there was some throwaway line in an episode at some point that referenced some of those real stars, and since they had to be on the map… that’s where they are.
Probably should have written “Exclave”.
Looking on the Continuing Missions and they said that the Federation space goes “over” Romulan and Klingon space. But yeah, probably the result of a statement made in an episode that wasn’t fully thought out.
For the sake of the campaign I’m going to be running, I think I’ll make it an exclave. Makes things exciting when we get to the Federation-Klingon War of '73, with Narendra Station and the players being cut-off from the bulk of the Federation!
The other thing to remember is that the Federation and Klingons until '73 have a pretty strong alliance. If I recall, as long as they log a flight plan with the Klingons Federations ships could cross Klingon space pretty freely.
Yeah, that was my gameplan. At the beginning of the campaign, things with the Klingons will be pretty rosy. They’ll potentially have issues with rogue Klingons that have left the Empire for glory and territory after the Civil War, but for the most part they’ll be good allies. Then in '72, the Klingons will suddenly declare war. It won’t affect Narendra Station directly since those Klingons will honour the founding treaties etc. However, the players will have to face two major issues. One is that in the Expanse, all bets are off (at least, for those not stationed at or directly linked to Narendra Station). The other is that the Klingons will block Federation reinforcements and supplies for the Expanse (not necessarily intentionally, but they’re not going to let Federation ships to pass freely through their space, and the Romulans are going to seize the opportunity to hamper their rivals in exploring the Expanse), which may well become the greater issue.
It’s only for short time really, have a few Klingon centred episodes scattered among the more generalised episodes, then have them resurrect the Khitomer accords and refocus the campaign on the other dangers.