Northern Chalcedonia - a WIP

[atpollard]

We're being a little sloppy with terms here. "Inland" started out referring to swamps near the center of a continent ... far, far away from any coast ... while "coastal" started out referring to swamps 'near the coast' ... which I took to imply within a hundred miles of the coast or thereabouts. Now we are splitting hairs over brackish waters or not.

Most swamps in Florida are freshwater, except for those directly connected with the Gulf of Mexico or other tidal water body. Minnesota is 100% fresh water swamps.

[mythus]

Sorry I haven't replied in a while.

Long story short: Place I was living at, landlord contacted me and said he sold it, so I had to move. Luckily I found a place quickly, but it took a little bit before I could get internet and such back on.

In the meantime, I have been working hard on my map. I haven't done any texturing, instead I've been focusing on the parts I need done first (after all, this is the map we use in our RP campaign, gotta have it campaign ready - prettying it up can come once that is done I hope). I've made some slight changes to parts of the continent that I think look better, added in some more detailing (streams and such), and the like. I've also decided to call the continent Chalcedonia instead of Northern Chalcedonia. After some thought, due to the reason this continent is named as it is, having the southern continent that is connected to this one bearing the same name just doesn't make as much sense - from a story point of view anyways.

atpollard: Yeah that's the same here in coastal Mississippi. I went to the local alligator ranch (yes we have one) which is built on a swamp, and to the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport just to make sure, and was told that all of the coastal area swamps are fresh water, not brackish water. It is only the small portions, which are really marsh areas instead of swamp areas that are brackish.

In the end, whether the swamp is fresh water or brackish water, I am not certain if that plays any role or not with the way a swamp is illustrated on a map. I would imagine that swamps would simply be labeled as swamps. The type of water would only be important for local communities havesting the swamp as a source of food (allergies to salt water fish and whatnot). But I could be completely wrong here.

The river mess-up was definetly one thing that was wrong and am glad to be caught on and get fixed though lol. That was indeed a very amature mistake on my part.

Anyways, here's what I've got done so far.

The black dots on the mountains, those indicate cities, however those cities are actually in large caverns under the mountains (partially natural and partially "man"made).
The dark gray - mountains.
The olive green - swamps.
There is some marsh I put in around the bend lake in the Auster River, has to be there to replace the swamp I took out - story element.
the almost yellow color on the grass plains - arid, dry areas.
The light gray in the high plains/mountain valley - story element, inhospitable to plant growth
the brownish area - badlands
The red dashed lines - national borders
the different green around the mountains - high plains/plateau/type areas

I think that's everything? Oh yeah, I'm not showing the map with the "structure" layer in these screenshots. The structure layer shows quest related locations, and especially in the small scaled resolution of these images, would seem abit noisy.

So let me know thoughts and critiq's, thanks!

[mythus]

I think you guys are rubbing off on me, or I'm actually learning something.

I was working on my map this morning, naming stuff and putting in labels, when I noticed something that seemed a little off. That long river in the western section of my map, that starts from the mountains, goes north, exits the mountains into the high plains area, makes a large turn south for a bit around the western edge of the mountains, turns west to exit the high plains into the lower plains, then turns back north to exit into the sea.

You see, I began to wonder "Why does it do that again?" Besides me drawing it like that of course lol. But what causes that river to make a south turn and then go back north, when it would have been easier for that river to just cut through at a north-westerly direction to empty into the sea. And why hasn't anyone else here, who are infinitely more knowledgable about these things and river rules, caught me on this? Surely this couln't be plausible with all that I have learned in here about how rivers run their course, right?

So I thought I may need to add a logical reason for this river to do that, ie, easier ground to cut through + obstruction. So, I put in some low level, small mountain ranges to fill the void plain created by the abnormally large loop.

I want to share that with you here, and for you guys to compare if you will with the maps I put I in my previous post. Please let me know if I was right to be concerned here, if this solution is a good solution, or if I am being silly and rivers do or could do that without said obstructions.

Some notes:
I kept the grid and structure layers in these shots. The small block on the grid indicated 5 sq. miles of distance (5 i. west to east, 5 mi. north to south). The game this map is being used with uses movement grid to calculate movements (ie, a person can travel x amount of blocks in a given time frame). Besides, it is also similar enough... I think... to longitude and latitude for navigational purposes, and acts as a built in scale IMO. So yay.

The 50% zoomed in map may show a confusing process. The whole larger river looks like it should be named the Crystal River with the Asteria River feeding into it. However, the prominent culture of the country this river is in has named the larger river the Asteria River indicating that the Crystal River flows into it. I imagine it would take some ascian geologists to unearth the truth depending upon current flow and river bed formation, but the ascians, and as a result the Empire of Ascia, are more concernedwith cultural and belief patterns than science, the Asteria River holds significance to them and thus would object to any river renaming in the near future .

[mythus]

Here is (if I did this right) the full map. Not a screenshot of the map, but the map itself. It is a large map so may be slow to load, and for that I appologize.

I know I lack a lot in the art department. But I feel that the map is usable. I feel I learned a lot from the critiqs I got here, so thank you very much. I am lacking textures, and feel I could do more in that department, but so far every attempt I made has not been good there - yet.

Please feel free to point out any more critiqs and comments you have regarding the map.

Also, the map is Open Publication Licensed, so feel free to use it if you have a desire to.

[mythus]

Above post > map obviously didn't attach right. Must be too large. I thought it did, but that looks like an older map, I will try again.

EDIT: Yeah, the image is a 10.8 MB png, a big larger that the 4 MB limit. I'd have to scale the map by 50% or more to share it, which will loose some of the finer details...

[Gamerprinter]

Yeah, do the thumbnail at the appropriate size the forum will take, then post a link to the full map - that's what I do.

[jbgibson]

Certainly your Asteria River diversion southwards looks more plausible with the range of mountains there. But you don't even need that much elevation -- a couple of hundred feet of hills would be plenty. A way to indicate the Valley Of The Asteria indenting up into the hills would be to severely invade the mid-height color with flatland color. Hmm- except you're coloring biomes instead of altitude per se.... no matter. If the flattish river valley reaches upriver, the plains/ grassland climate zone can too. Something like this maybe?


Left-hand version to just suggest 'the river valley continues on upstream"; the right-hand if your story doesn't demand inhospitable wilderness all through there - a fertile river-bottom is plenty believable for hundreds of miles up beyond the plains proper. And that kind of paints in the "dividing ridge of rougher terrain" as well as putting outright mountains there would.

I applaud you starting to get questions sneaking into your process - those are what sharpen your world into something really workable. It's not so much "meh - it's fantasy - how much does it matter", as it is every little detail that doesn't have to be explained, your readers/players can fill in with their own imagination better. Of course other worlds will have some differing geological processes going on. But unless you have the budget of a James Cameron or George Lucas, you'll spend all your story time explaining the setting, when maybe the setting doesn't matter that much.

I like your landforms, by the way. Some people fail to put in a reasonable number/ size/ shape of islands - your percentage looks about right. I get the 'major ridgelines' thing you have going, but be careful with that. If a viewer doesn't pay attention those could look like actual single ridges splayed off of single mountains, which would visually shrink the extent of your continent by 10x or 20x.

[mythus]

Gameprinter, that is a good idea. So I used my webspace to upload the full map.

http://legendsofnorova.com/Chalcedonia.png

Again, I must warn you, it is a large image... 10.8 MiB large. Please, if you have bandwidth issues, don't try to load it. It will only be painful.

jb, thank you for your remarks.

My map is more um.. biodome based than altitude based for sure. I seem to suck at altitude based maps lol. I want to get better at that for sure, but since I also needed this map to be done, I just stuck with what I am most used to.

The mountains I threw in to better fix that river issue with the Asterian... though plausible I guess given the amount of space each block coveres (5 miles), it just looks offsetting doesn't it. Hills or something would be better. I like that little cut away you did with map1 (the small cut away). I do have to be careful though with invading the gray area too much. You see, that area is story-influenced.

This is the map of the continent of Chalcedonia in the 2nd Era of Nor'Ova's timeline. There were two era's prior (Before the Era's and the First Era). If we were to compare to earth, this would be considered a future era so to speak. Anyways, around the end of the First Era, the dark god had took possession of a mortal political leader, and through him attempted to unite the world under his control as he prepared to cast Ablution (spell to cleanse the world ie... armageddon). Well not everyone fell quietly to him, and a nuclear war broke out between the global empire and the free nations. That nuclear war became known as the Great Magic War, for it destroyed most of society and technology, and towards the end the dark god did start unleashing magic against his foes). The epicenter of the global conflict is that gray area on the map. It is where the old capital city and the dark lord's palace was. As the dark lord was loosing he let loose a birage of magical power there, which has spoiled that area of land. The Asterian River that runs through it is clean now, but at one time well lol....

Anyways, that is a nutshell version of the events that has made that area, the Valley of the Forsaken, the way it is and why I don't want to allter it too much. Granted the scale of things though, what is too much is hard to say, and will require some thinking.

But yes, from what I've learned here I have begun to question many things about what I've done prior with my maps, and even feel ashamed of the foolishness of my thoughts at the start of this very thread.

As far as the ridges go, you may notice from the linked map that I have them named and have some mountain peaks labled. Obviously, that is hardly all of the summits in the mountains. Those are simply the most er... noticable... promienant...