Well, having gone back to where I ought to have started, I've tried making the tectonic plates make some sort of sense. As I was rather fond of the general shape of the continents, I've tried to keep them fairly close to their original shapes – with the exception of dividing 'North Eastilia' into two landmasses (C and D in the new map) and reshaping the landmass now labelled F – and so I've attempted to put the plates in 'on top', as it were.

Of course, what seems like it might make 'some sort of sense' to me will probably look completely off to someone who knows the first thing about tectonics, so I thought I'd offer up my most complete WIP for scrutiny before I get in over my head.

The orange lines are the edges of the plates, the orange icons describe the type of activity at the particular edge where they appear; I hope they make sense. The larger arrows placed (more or less) in the centre of each plate indicate its general movement vector. The continents, marked by grey/black lines, are also marked by a lighter shade of their plate's colour. Continent outlines are very rough, as are the plate outlines (particularly around the poles), and will be made more interesting once I've solidified the tectonics more.

Click image for larger version.  Name: Tectonics.png  Views: 1236  Size: 1.80 MB  ID: 47228

The parts I'm most unsure about are:

  1. the polar regions, where (a), on the north pole, I'm not sure the blue plate can be subducted along the entire northern coastline of C, nor what happens along the edge with the green plate (continent F in the upper map), and (b), on both poles, whether a split is plausible in these regions;
  2. the small red plate off the eastern coast of continent A and the plate which is mostly continent C, both of which I'm struggling to see just how they might work with the surrounding plates;
  3. the narrow eastern peninsula on continent B, which is mostly on the brown 'North Sea' plate, strikes me as odd, but I don't know whether to simply remove it or if some other division might make it less 'odd';
  4. the purple plate between A-B and F (could this plausibly be a part of the blue plate to the north of it, if its vector etc. are changed to match the latter's?);
  5. the green ocean plate east of A and B – the more I look at it, the more I wonder if it makes sense at all, or whether it ought to be split roughly along the north-south axis (though this would make it difficult to match eastern A-B to western C-D-E …).


Also, looking at maps of the tectonic plates on Earth I notice there are comparatively small plates, and wonder whether I need more of those to make this world seem plausible.