Māinm, development and stuff

[Naeddyr]

Today I finished up the graticule graphics. I do not think I'll add any numbering this time around: it's rather pointless for now.

You might notice the ellipse, and the line at the middle with the irregular intervals. These lines represent the Sun's path over the surface, as seen from the above. The semiellipses depict the Sun's path during the Northern and Southern Summer solstices respectively, and the middle line the two equinoxes, so you can also tell the area of the map where you can actually have the Sun in your zenith (which happens twice a year). The intervals show the hours: if you divide the day into twelve or was it twenty four hours, the Sun will be at tick x by hour x, because its path is circular: it will take a long while to get up, so it'll spend a relatively long period on the eastern and western edges of the map. I hope I got the logic of the interval lengths right, but eh, it's just decoration. There are also degree intervals on the outer edge, and circles depicting the distance from the center.

I also started thinking about populating the map with people. There are small symbols on the map, which either represent big cities, or capitals, or something. The thing is that the scale of this map is huge, and real-world countries, especially in more fragmentary historical times, are tiny things. I refer you back to the map on page one with the size comparison between the Western Hemisphere and Māinm. Also you may notice my old nemesis, the swastika, who always tends to crop up when I do anything graphical or designy. This time it's not that swastikaish, and one person I showed it said it didn't look like one, so I thought, eh, whatever. I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Here are some things that are still left undone or in planning stages:

• Flora
• People (the particularly mundane fantasy races I've cooked up for this: people with four fingers! People with tails! People who don't have wisdom teeth!)
• Words and names
• A circle of stars (like a zodiac) on the outer rim of the map, for basic navigation
• A scale
• Ice floats
• Maybe the ocean currents
• Borders
• Cities
• I also need to make more codelangs for this map, probably just deriving them all from Archaized Finnish, because that would be consistent and simple, and maybe one English codelang where I just flip words backwards and go on from that
• All the other stuff that comes outside the map