This works, so I hate to complain, but it would be a lot more pythonic to turn topologies into a Python package (add an __init__.py file) and turn all the makeTopology() methods into __init__ methods on the respective Topology subclasses.  You might even be able to change the default for the description param into Self.__class__.__name__ and then you wouldn't have to set it explicitly (though I'm not 100% sure that would work, since proxies like Self are really only designed to work with Param attributes).

Anyway, I thought I'd throw this out there and see what Nate thinks...