WIP: unnamed Earh-like planet

[Pixie]

Your tectonics are fine, groovey, I say stop worrying with them

As for your question: cold currents tend to be deeper and narrower, so they normally follow the continental shelves. Warmer currents, on the other hand, are shallow and tend to spread out - which means, you can take more liberty with the warm currents than with the cold ones.

Those basins are great, both for history/civilization as for climate stabilization. They will probably generate their own closed currents. (google "black sea currents" and look at the images results).

[groovey]

Thanks Pixie, your answer calmed me down about it.

Until I get to the currents though, here's my early phase of the height-map, for info purposes, so don't focus on the pretty or the style. As in now I only have 2 levels done, 0-1.000m, in dark green, and 1.000-2.500m, in light green. I borrowed my color gradient from Pixie, but simplifying since I'm not going after so much detail.

Well, I'd appreciate some input before starting with the next levels, since the 1.000-2.500m level will be the base for the next altitude levels. I tried not to go crazy adding green light areas keeping in mind this map of Earth Pixie brought up in another thread, but even though, do I have too much light green? Do those areas look ok? Do they contradict the tectonics in any way?

[ascanius]

Hey. So far what you have looks good but it's hard to tell with just two height levels. The northern mountain range in swefendlea looks like it should be two, is that your plan, two ranges with a low lying connection. Keep up the gold work. I can't wait to see what you do with that central see. It's going to be a lot of fun to toy with later on.

[Pixie]

"Keep up the gold work", groovey, level 1000m looks very good.

There could be more random sport over 1000m, small remnants of old mountain ranges, lonely volcanoes, etc. These would add some realism to the map, but nothing else. Since what you really want is to figure out geographical constraints to develop your setting, ignore that push towards realism. (You can always worry about it later).

[Naima]

I really like the shape of the continents look very natural , how did you create them ? hand brainstorming? cloning parts of real world or by fractal terrains? Or pehraps some other system?

[Akubra]

I can only agree with what is said above, groovey. All looks fine to me too.

On another note, every time I look at your map I am intrigued by the names. So much so that I tried to figure out your "system". Is it ok if I have a go?

Acubrä = west / Ascantä = east / Arec = north / Orter = south / Arlia = central
Acubter (Acubrä + Orter) = southwest / Ascarter (Ascantä + Orter) = southeast
Arin = far, extreme, very / Thëand = little, small / Arinthëas = very small
Ascarec = northeast / Acubrec = northwest (not on the map, my own constructions)

...or is it just me seeing a logic that isn't there?

Cheers - Akubra

[groovey]

WARNING: VERY LONG POST


Hello everyone!

First of all sorry for taking so long to be back, had to focus in other stuff these past days and I didn't want to be distracted by map stuff because then I'd want to work on that and not the stuff I had to work on.

So ok, managed not to mess up the easy part of the job, yay!

@ascanius, I forgot to mention that, the northern mountain range is indeed two: the modern one created by the convergent boundary btw Swëfendlëa and Ascantä; and the big blob to the left is an old range, that as you say, connect be connected by that 1000-2500m level.

About the central sea, since it's supposed to be my "Mediterranean Sea", which I carry in my heart, I'm very excited about it too, to see how the currents will behave in there and all that. I can't wait till I'm done with the main features of the map so I can start world-building settlements and trade routes, which I have never done before, so that will be a challenge too.

@Pixie, I'll keep in mind your suggestions about adding random bits here and then, because it makes sense and it crossed my mind too.

@ Naima, thanks, I'm very happy to hear you think that way about my continents, because in every fictional map, mine or not, I'm always thinking about the shapes of the land masses, if they feel organic or a bit constrained, and after looking so much at mine and losing perspective a bit, at this point I wasn't sure if they looked natural to others.

I came up with them messing up with Fractal Terrains, until I got interesting shapes. I saved those land masses as exported images, then in Photoshop I resized and rotated as needed, then with the help of the magic wand I selected the shape of the land and in a new layer applied the "outline" tool and that's it, I had a clean version the shape, which then I would edit a bit on some parts if needed, with the brush tool or cutting and pasting bits of that shape to rearrange them a bit. I hope I could make myself clear enough.


(Long section about my conlanging follows, skip if not interested)

@Akubra, you almost got it all right! Not sure if you're very good at it or my conlang is disappointingly easy...

Since I made a few fixes:

- Acub: west/left
- Ascar: east/right

And so Acubrä and Ascantä means something slightly different, but I don't know what yet, they're obviously a derivation of west and east, or west/east + other word, but that's all I know for now.

You got north and south, and S-W, S-E, N-W AND N-E 100% right, even the ones you guessed on your own.

- Indris: I still don't know what it means or if it's supposed to mean something, the meaning of the original word might be lost by now, and so it's simply a name they give to that ocean section btw the south of the two continents, to the volcanic islands below and then to the west btw Swëfendlëa and Arlia. I'm not sure how to define it though, it's not an ocean on its own I think, but can it be a Sea or they simple made that up and called that area of their commercial interest a Sea, with no real foundation?

- Arin = little/small

- Thëand: thëas = island + plural -nd: thëand. In the latest version not posted yet that plate is "Picsë dir Thëand" and not simply "Picsë Thëand" (which lacked the possessive), so it means "Picsë's islands" or "the islands of Picsë".

- So Arinthëas = small island (I know it isn't small really, so I might change the name), but turned into the actual name of the island, like Iceland, or Greenland.

- Hemthëas: hem = big/great + thëas = island. EDIT: in my latest version I changed it to Hemlëa to avoid the issue altogether, so now it either means Hem=great + lëa = land, or a shortened version of Hemsey=name of a King/Emperor + lëa = land.

As with Arinthëas, I'm not sure Hemthëas should be considered an island at all, since is big enough to be a continent, thus why if needed, I could change the meaning to be similar to "Stalingrad" or the "Philippines". Since the root "Hem" gave way to the male name "Hemsey", a very common name for the King/Emperors, if I need to I can make Hemthëas be Hemlëa (Hemsey's land), shortened, either because explorers named it after him or because one Hemsey king/Emperor "conquered" it.

The matter with these two plate names is that this is a tectonic plate map I am assigning names to, as if I were the makers of the map, from Imperial Swëfendlëa. Since at that point of their history they are not advanced enough to know about plates, it's kind of weird for me to name the plates having in mind how THEY would name each one, thus the silly names like "small island" or "big island".

For example, in a normal map they wouldn't divide Ascantä in two big pieces, so it seemed to me that if a time traveler went back to them with the tectonic map but with no names in it, and it was up to them to name the plates, they would keep the two plates that divide Ascantä related by name.

Another problem btw their level of knowledge and the need to name a tectonic map they'd have no idea about is naming the regions of the west part, which I'm not sure they even know about yet, if they do is because of Arlia, with a competent navigation technology that could make it easy to get to Picsë through the island chains, and from there to Acubrä to at least know it's there.

Picsë was most probably named by Arlia, perhaps written "Picsi", and then normalized to Picsë by the Empire. Acubrä is definitively an imperial word though, so again I figured that if a time traveler gave them the tectonic map to be named, since they don't know much about the big North-west continent, they'd simply name it something related to the fact that is on the west, while with Ascantä, which they are much more familiar with if only by their mutual hatred and trade, they deliberately chose such a bland superficial name (and not the name the people on Ascantä would give to their continent if they ever gave it one), since all it matters to the people on Swëfendlëa (for cultural, mythical and traditional reasons) is that the people on the east suck and are not important, so they are simple "the others" who are not as great as us so they don't deserve a proper name.


- Arlia: in Arlian (of which I only have a few very basic notes on) actually means "free or freedom land": ar = free or freedom; lia = land (written 'lëa' in the Empire/Swëfendlëa). Since the language of Swëfendlëa and Arlia are related, some primitive and common roots or words are similar.

I'm not sure yet if in Swëfendlëa (I refer to the nation because I still don't know how to name the language, sometimes I call it the Imperial Language to call it something) the word or the root for freedom will be the same, since "freedom" wouldn't be a very basic word or concept in early communities, as land or house would be. I don't think that word would be part of the language of the very early community from which both Arlia and Swëfendlëa came from, so it seems to me like the type of word that would come later on with a more advance social/political structure and by then the common ancient language would have given way to many different derivation of it considered languages on their own.


Anyway, the basic story is that the Swëfendlëa Empire originated (as a Monarchy) in the north close to the boundary with Ascantä, and then, at some specific point, by a mix of previous culture spread, religion and of course political ambition, it started to expand south after taking the whole north, all in a very long and intermittent process lasting centuries and with a heavy program of assimilation mixed with tolerance (the Roman Empire is my big model with this).

Most communities ended up submitting to this, but a few didn't want to submit to the Monarchy-then-Empire, which they saw as an oppressor, so as it expanded, those resistant communities migrated south each time the Empire got closer down, and once they saw no way out of it, they risked into the ocean and through the islands chains (still don't know how exactly since only recently I got the map with that info and when I world-built that story I didn't have the map) got to what they called Arlia, "free or freedom land". Of course, the process is much more complex and I still need to work out the details now that I have the map, but you can get the basic idea.

Interesting enough for me is that though for the rest of the world the makers of the map (The Empire) use the names they have for those lands, for Arlia they respect the native name, so they don't name it Arlëa instead, this is a result of the long and complex relationship btw the two, mostly always tense or simply bad, but the most significant for the two lands.

- Ënenlëa: ënen = sister + lëa = land, mashed up as an actual name for that land. The name (written a bit differently in Arlia, though I still don't know how) was given by Arlia, thus why it's a sister land, upon which Arlia has a lot of ambitions.


Hope I didn't bore anyone to death with the conlang bit if any of you decided to go through it.

Akubra, have you started to work in your conlang? Your plates have names so the question is if they mean something yet?

[Naima]

Groovey so far are some of the most natural I saw ... And I saw many ... Most fantasy worlds do have cool and interesting spots , but most of the time look fake or just as big islands .
I have spent two days browsing fractal worlds and I love many if the ones it generates I feel they look very belieavable even if not changed . I am instead trying to shape my world directly inside ft with the tools , but I think I exagerated trying to go too much for an earthlike shape that kind of because I have in mind some cultures befoure the land itself . Your world though looks good and enough different from Earth .

[ascanius]

Hey Groovey are you by any chance on the CBB or ZBB. If you are you should add me same user name. If your not you should check them out, great spots for conlangers.

[groovey]

ascanius, I know both, wonderful resources, but I'm just a lurker there. I'm a very shy person so even on the Internet is hard for me to talk with others. Thankfully in the Guild I feel comfortable enough by now so it's not a problem anymore, but irrupting in a new community is very scary for me.

Plus I'm not going to lie, I can only decipher the linguistic posts partially, there's so many technical words and such (like it should), I get confused a lot by the terminology because I'm only familiar with the most basic stuff, so some post I find of interest, but what really gets me going on my conlang building is the Language Construction Kit books and this page for general reference of what I need, because they're like conlang for dummies, and that's not an insult, it helps a lot of dummies like me.

@Naima, thanks a lot, that's a great compliment for me.