WIP - Continent of Vyros

[Caenwyr]

Rivers are apparently one of the most difficult things to draw on a map. There's tons of things you can do wrong. A good overview of how rivers should behave (and how they absolutely shouldn't) can be found here. Most of your rivers seem to behave pretty good by the way! The only (small) remark I can give is that they might be a bit too "regular" for my taste. Real world rivers can be pretty jagged: straight in flat areas, snaky in others, with sharp corners where a normal person would draw gentle curves. But overall I really like your rivers.

One exception: the river you drew to drain the inner sea. The delta you've drawn is absolutely massive, way too big to be physically possible. It's true, the Ganges delta is massive as well, but it feels as though this one's many times bigger yet, and with far less plausible surroundings. the Ganges delta is surrounded by humongous mountain ranges that all dump their waters (and sediment!!) into one tight spot - no wonder there's a delta. Yours seems to be on pretty flat terrain. It seems very implausible one inner sea can drain with such ferocity to create such a huge delta.

The correct type of river mouth depends on several parameters. Basically there's two types of river mouths: deltas, and estuaries. Deltas are formed by rivers with lots of sediment, which is deposited in a relatively calm sea. Estuaries form in strong tidal seas, where the riverbed is eroded not only by the river itself, but also by the sea. The wider and more funnel-shaped an estuary becomes, the stronger the tidal erosion.
I guess what I'm saying is: there might be a delta at the mouth of your river, but it should be far, far smaller than this one.

That is, if you choose to draw a river at all. Contrary to all I and the guys before me said, your inner sea doesn't necessarily have to have an outlet. Take the Caspian Sea for example: a huge body of water, by no means connected to the ocean. There's a lengthy but very interesting article on the origin of the landlocked sea and the reason for its relatively low salinity - be sure to take a look! Maybe you can use that as an explanatory basis?

In short: whether or not you link the inner sea to the ocean depends on the geological history of the sea. Since you're the one making this map, it's all up to you to decide. If you choose to keep the river, however, make sure to strongly reduce the delta, or eliminate it altogether.



One last remark: I really like your landmasses and the placement of your mountains. You chose a very nice colour palette, though you might consider lightening it up a bit. At the moment it's a bit hard to distinguish the details, but maybe that's just me. All in all, my compliments, and keep up the good work!!

[Caenwyr]

One last thing: if you do choose to link the inner sea to the ocean, a better place would be the northeastern tip, where the placement of the northern edge of the sea close to the mountain range to the north seems to suggest a fault line, slowly ripping the continent apart. This hypothesis would be supported by the already submerged rift north of that mountain range: continental break-up usually happens over a hotspot, where a plume of magma pushes up the continental plate and fractures it in three directions. Usually only one or two directions end up being viable, the other dying out or only forming millions of years later.

A few examples in our world:

• East African Rift (the original two arms created the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the third is now becoming active and already stretches all the way to Malawi and Mozambique. Eventually it will separate eastern Africa from the rest of the continent)
• Sinai peninsula (all three arms are active - the northeastern arm is the reason for the low altitude of the Dead Sea Valley, which will eventually be submerged and connected to the Red Sea)
• Rhine Graben (which threatened to break up Europe, but seems to be dormant now)

The hypothetical hotspot in your map would be located somewhere just off the coast, roughly in line with both the already submerged trench and the one still forming south of the mountain range.

(By the way, if you choose to go for that scenario, be aware that the northern edge of the inner sea will probably be a good deal deeper than the rest of it. This seems irrelevant, but it might influence erosion patterns etc. For example, there won't be any deltas on that coast, not even tiny ones)