Ancient Hand-drawn Map of Anasthias

[Robulous]

Attachment 42555

Slightly breaking the rules as I haven't posted it WIP, but this is an ancient map I created as a roleplaying prop many years ago. I thought I'd post a copy of the scan since it hasn't seen the light of day for a long time.

It's ancient because it is literally many years old, but was also meant to be very old in my fantasy world of Helevos. It represents a rather distorted vision of the continent of Anasthias and it's outlying islands, supposedly created by the navigator Gastrinimer, who claimed to have circumnavigated the world but was in fact a liar and a swindler. As with most of my in-world maps, west is at the top, since on Helevos, the sun rises in the west.

For interest, I created it by soaking paper in cold tea, drying it, crumpling it, ironing it flat, then drawing on it with pencil and ink. The pale line across the middle is the result of it being stored rolled up with a ribbon around it!

The legend is written in one of my conlangs (I'm a stickler for detail!) and literally translates as: "The lands of Anasthias- prepared for Our Highest [Lord] named - the most noble [King] Gvedoleth - in the year [of] - this lord fifteenth."

[rdanhenry]

The only way the sun can rise in the west is if the sun moves around the world. Otherwise, north is determined by planet rotation, which necessarily puts the sun (or any moon without an even faster opposite motion) rising in the east and setting in the west. "The sun rises in the west" sounds exotic, but it isn't meaningful. All you've done is relabel the east.

I like the map, though.

[lostatsea]

In our solar system two planets (Venus and Uranus) do rotate opposite their orbit so for them the sun rises in their west. Also if a Star rotates opposite our own sun then it stands to reason that most if not all its planets would have reversed orbits and rotations also. I think ? :-)

[Robulous]

I think we're forgetting that north and south are arbitrary and interchangeable as far as physics is concerned. If our dominant civilisations had grown up in southern Africa or South America we probably would've called that half of the world "north", that hemisphere of the world would appear at the top of maps, and the sun would arise in the west, as in my world.

(In fact to physics, the "North Pole" is actually a south magnet, since the north pole of any magnet is only attracted the south poles of other magnets. The magnetic field of earth also regularly flips, so that north becomes south every million years or so. We are due for a flip some time soon!)