Mesa Caves?

[soggymuse]

Hi guys! So I've lurked a long time around here, but this is my first time actually posting anything. I finally got a few of my maps up in a gallery (I was going to post more but it looks like there's a quota, oops) and I'd like some input on my current map.



As you can tell, it's a WIP. I'm working in Paint Tool SAI (because it renders lines for sketches better than Photoshop), so I'll fiddle with line widths and make it prettier eventually, but I'm having issues now with adding shadows. (SAI's not really set up for layer effects.)

I'm thinking about starting again in Photoshop now that I've got the basic layout done, but before I do that, I'd like some opinions. I've never done an underground map before so there's some things I'd like to check.

Background

To explain, this cave system is inside a mesa that edges onto an area of mud pits. There's a series of hot springs and pools inside the caverns (the source of their fresh water), so obviously there's some geothermal activity here, but mesas are apparently formed by erosion. I haven't been able to find anything on Google about caves through mesas, either, only things like the cave cities that, from the photos, don't actually go very deep past the edges.

I've explained the Burrows here by saying that the tunnels and caverns were formed (or at least helped along) by what the residents call "wind gods". These are a species that controls the wind; they built a temple on top of the mountain and spend most of their lives seeking spiritual enlightenment through academic pursuits and meditation (that includes a Tai Chi-esque martial art form involving command of air flow around them and their surroundings). In other words, they've caused so much erosion that the Tahnih tribe were able to move in. (There's also some sort of mole-like creature that burrows through the mesa that's helped the tunnels along, and that the Tahnih hunt to supplement their diet since the surrounding area is dry (where it's not boiling mud pits) and sparse.)

Fact Check

First, is this at all likely? I'm writing a fantasy/romance series and this is actually a side from the main story arc so it never bothered me before (it wouldn't actually have come up beyond the name "Tahnih Burrows" so it didn't matter if it was geologically possible). Now that it is going to be an actual setting for a story, though, I'd like it to at least be feasible. I've done my research but haven't found a heck of a lot about mesas and caves, so it's hard to gauge how likely a cave/tunnel system like this would be.

Second, how big can mesas get? I'm stupidly terrible with spatial awareness. (My dad has frequently tried to explain space as "like a football field" or something and I have no idea what that actually means. I'm bed-bound, so it's not like I can go out and measure stuff, either.) On the texture map for Anuur, the Burrows didn't seem that big but then I was looking at the sketch version and realised it's actually pretty huge. (Each grid square on the world map is 316 miles across so the area works out at 949x791 miles. That doesn't seem that big to me until I try to map it out and realise it would take 33 days for someone to walk, as the crow flies, the width of the Burrows. Given the story, it needs to be less than half a day to get from the Mudlands (just east of the Burrows) to a healer's cave, and then less than a day to reach the heart the of the Tahnih community (the hot springs and council chambers).)

I thought about turning the Burrows into a Badlands-style region with lots of smaller mesas clustered together instead. Most of them would be simple flat-topped mountains; the only one really affected by the extra wind erosion and mole tunneling would be the one with the temple on top. So how big could each mesa get? (The Burrows map is approximately 22x18 squares at 10 feet each, which makes it quite tiny by comparison.)

Should I scale up the Burrows map (and redraw altogether)? Or leave it as it is and say the Tahnih mesa just happens to be one of the smaller ones?

Here's a copy of the sketch and texture maps to show the difference and the original outline.



Changed to WIP (19/10).

[Chick]

Hello Freesong, welcome to the Guild!

Once you have posted 6 times in the forum, you will be able to upload more maps to your gallery.

It looks like you have a nice start on the caves, I'll look forward to seeing where you take it

[waldronate]

Regarding mesa size, see http://seethesouthwest.com/903/the-d...a-and-plateau/ for a good description.

Large cave systems form naturally and readily in limestone layers in humid areas. Take a look at karst terrains for an example of pretty far-gone versions of this ( http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=83608 has a nice overhead image and some links).

Check out the terms mogote and tepui for some nice pictures of limestone versions of buttes and mesas.

[snodsy]

Great idea, I've wanted to do a cave map at some point, but you've taken it to a whole new level, love it! Maybe do some research on this place for caves/ hot springs? Cave and Basin National Historic Site

[snodsy]

hot springs vapor caves. http://www.ironmountainhotsprings.com/history/
Here is another hot spring cave, although very touristy

[soggymuse]

Chick: Thank you for the kind welcome and the compliment. I figured it would be something like that.

waldronite: While the Karst geography isn't right for me in this instance (the Tahnih Burrows area is dry above-ground, looking more like a combination of the first picture of Hverir on the Mudpot wikipedia page and the buttes in Southwest USA), it does give me ideas for other maps... Damn you. XD

The page about buttes, mesas and plateaus does give me a better road for research, though. I was too focused on the word "mesa", so little wonder I couldn't come up with much. Clearly, there needs to have been a river of some kind in the region's history, though the idea of a plateau "floating on a cushion of molten lava" could also explain where the geothermal energy comes from that fuels the hot springs and the mud pots. Maybe the river(s) that formed the region went underground at some point...

snodsy:

Thank you! I did do some research on hot springs and mud pots/pits, but I was focused more on "how creatures can survive boiling temperatures and nasty chemicals" at that point (I was trying to design a creature that nearly kills one of the protagonists). There are a lot of instances of "indoor" springs and hot springs, so I know it's possible to get them in caves, I just wasn't sure if they would appear in a region along with the other geological features I need.

I'll look more into the vapor caves you mentioned, thanks.

Update:

I've added the underground river, and coloured in height levels to get a better idea of what this looks like from the side and where the steps and inclines need to go.



I've also outlined the mountain top and added a lake and "sun roofs" (for want of a better word). Not all of them cut through the mountain from top to bottom so there'll be other slices added later, but I wanted an idea of where the temple might be and I wanted to add a waterfall to source part of the hot springs. (I'm not sure if that would be too loud for the kind of tranquil bath house I was aiming for, though. ) One of the sun roofs gives the "wind gods" access from above to the council chamber, too. (They have massive wings so I doubt they'd want to travel through the tunnels for meetings. ¬_¬)

And the more I've thought about this since posting yesterday, the more I like the idea of this being a region of individual buttes, mesas and plateaus spread over a geothermally active region and flanked by mud pots to the east and coastline to the west. I might do another version of the regional map later, but for now I'm focusing on the Tahnih Burrows and I feel like I've got a better handle on what the geological features need to be and how they formed.

Thanks, guys!

[soggymuse]

I've added two layers of tunnels and tried to indicate height differences with different shades. However, each layer is split into levels of its own, so this isn't an entirely accurate representation, just an idea of how the warren of tunnels and caves interacts.



I've seen a few areas that could do with adjusting, though. There are a few intersecting tunnels that would make nice loops under the next level down instead. And a few dead ends that I can turn into extra entrances, too.

[Abu Lafia]

Hey Freesong, this is a really cool cave map you made there so far. I have nothing to say about geological issues, but for me the layout looks very good. Also love the layered version. I'm happy to read, that you need it for writing and not as a rpg-battlemap, since my experience with this kind of cave maps is, that they are hardly "playable" . The background of the world/inhabitants sounds really interesting.
Looking forward how this develops. Keep up the great work!

[soggymuse]

Thank you, Abu Lafia!

Yeah, I wouldn't want to run/play a game with this as a map. It's hard enough to understand what's going on as the cartographer/worldbuilder of the region, let alone someone else looking in. (That's one of the reasons I'm doing it as 3D as possible, tbh. I'm not very good at visualising vertical axes from a top-down map. I had hoped to convert it to isometric at some point, but I want to get as much done by November 1st as possible since I plan to use this setting for NANOWRIMO.)

So as per waldronite's suggestions here, I've fiddled with the layout somewhat to add more ventilation via sinkholes (what I'd previously called "sun roofs" for want of a better/more accurate word) and added the "kitchen" area (basically just a bunch of fires in the same room as a waterfall that provides most of their fresh water). I'll need to move the healer's den so her fire also has ventilation, but I wanted to move the main thrust of the settlement up to the middle level anyway.



I'm having to mess with the scale again, though. I originally had it at 5 foot per grid square, but then upped it to 10 to try and get a handle on the size of the burrow. 10 feet seemed too big for some tunnels/caves once I'd added layers, so I've downsized it back to 5 - which means rescaling the ladders and fires and beds, but that just means they'll be more obvious since on the 10-foot scale they're barely visible when zoomed out to see the full map. I'm not really happy with the ladders, anyway, but I've had trouble finding examples of top-down ladders that would suit this style so I sort of butchered Dyson's symbols a little bit. I'm using his style for natural and artificial stairs, which you might be able to see where I've got a start on editing those on the bottom level at the top of the map compared to the rest of the steps elsewhere. I might use his style to indicate the "cliffs" too since the shadows I've added to the bottom layer don't make the height differences obvious, and I couldn't get the stairs to look right the way I was doing them before.

I'm not sure about the waterfall in the hot springs anymore. I can't imagine all that noise would provide as tranquil an atmosphere as I'd previously imagined, so I might take that out. Maybe move the lake and waterfall from there to the north-west where two sinkholes go all the way down to the underground river...

[soggymuse]

I've started adding more of the region around this particular mesa to get an idea of the surroundings, mostly because waldronite gave me some suggestions here that made me think this tribe shepherds local "goats" during the day and then brings them "indoors" for shelter and protection at night. I wanted to get a look-see at what kind of terrain they'd be dealing with. I might add a ground river between the Burrows and the mountains to the left, I'm not sure yet. The "pools" on the right are an attempt to represent the Mudlands to the east of the Burrows, but I need to work on the scaling of them more. (Part of the story is that travelers have to zig-zag back and forth across the Mudlands using very narrow paths between the mud pots and geysers, a lot of which lead to dead-ends and backtracking and none of which are apparent on the map right now. I might have to use the same technique for the caves/tunnels instead of just drawing loops.)



This WIP shows just the bottom level of tunnels inside the Burrows. I've updated the steps/stairs, resized ladders, added a bridge to cross and access the river for waste and fresh water, and redone the ledges (though I've just spotted two that I missed). I've also painted the waterfall in at the hot springs.

Next is to do all the same stuff on the middle level.