The Inhabited Continent of Theia (in three versions)

[nwisth]

Hi! Since I finished Azélors Köppen climate tutorial for Theia (the planet I've created as the setting for my book project), I've been busy reworking my main continent map.

I was quite proud of my previous attempt, to be honest. I cut out the height map for my main continent from my world map, increased it to 400%, then used Wilbur and Photoshop to create this:

OLD MAP (Lambert Conformal Conical):



After Azélor pointed out that my mountains seemed to form blobs instead of ranges, and that my rivers were off, I decided to rework the whole thing, instead of just repainting the climates.

First, the rivers. They had always bugged me, making these long, straight, V-shapes that made my large, flat highland plateau look very unnatural. I also hadn't figured out how to export Wilbur's river system as single-pixel white lines on a black background, so I hand-traced every incised river in blue - which was a long, painstaking process - and ended up looking rather sloppy. I adjusted the original height map, making sure it corresponded to my intended elevation, and sent it through Wilbur again, doing six passes of decreasingly blurred Incise Flow to carve proper river valleys. This time, the result got a lot better.

I also wanted to fix my mountain plateaus, to give them some more peaks. At first I tried to paint peaks onto my mountain blobs using a scattered brush, but that just gave it measels. Later, I tried taking NASA height maps of the Himalayas and merging them into my mountain zones. It was a lot better, but I still couldn't get the effect I wanted. Then, as I was browsing the forums, I found this excellent mountain tutorial , and went to work, painting four new layers of alpine heights with mbartelsm's amazing mountain brush. On my scale, I was afraid the result would be weird, but I did not have to fear - it worked like a charm, and merged well with my river system.

I've made three varieties of the map:

Here's the Bathy-Orographical version of the map, showing height and rivers:



Here's the terrain map, showing biomes:



And here's the realm & trade-map, showing the face of civilization on Theia:



As you can see, there are towns and cities on the map, with varying density. With all this new stuff in place, I had to start checking the population.

I won't spoil too much from my upcoming book series, but I can give you a quick synopsis. On Theia, people believe they were created by the six gods less than eight hundred years ago. After the gods had a falling out, there was an exodus from the City of Firsthome - 720 years ago as the story starts. Three gods led their people in different directions - heading north, west and east respectively - while the last two gods kept their people in Firsthome.

This exodus resulted in four quite different cultures, with differing ways of life resulting from their chosen god's personal philosophy.

In the fertile mediterranean-like land of Firsthome, the so-called Homesteaders live in a Republic designed by the Goddess of Justice, based on equal rights and votes for all, with a strong legal system, a professional legion, and excellent water powered technology based on the vast library left behind by the God of Knowledge.

In the West, love is sacred, and happiness is mandatory. Two alliances of powerful Sorcerer-Kings have waged war for centuries, arguing about whether the God of Love, Passion and Fire has ascended or not. Despite the war, these theocratic monarchies are wealthy and prosperous; here the Temple is the State, and bureaucratic Templars manage both the hearts of men and the king's god-given property.

In the North, matrilinear Houses compete for resources. Here, risk management is the highest virtue, as taught to them by the Goddess of Death and Mathematics. Using swift longships and knarrs, they've colonized the entire north, organizing themselves into a Clan-based and House-based feudalism, with touches of Anarchy (large distances and scattered population make for relatively small areas of control, where the matron of a powerful House can pretty much do as she pleases).

In the East, they follow the teachings of the Goddess of Fertility, who has organized them into a caste-based collectivist meritocracy with feudal structures. Here, the dukes, counts and barons of the warrior caste wage war, while most of the population live and work in collective farms. Love and family has no place, for procreation is serious business; after conceiving and giving birth in a so-called Creche, a mother returns to her collective, while the child is raised by the priesthood until the age of sixteen, when everyone is tested and assigned to a caste.

To manage this, I have created a huge Excel sheet. Originally, it was based on "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" by S. John Ross, an excellent starting point which I recommend to anyone interested in medieval-level populations.

To find out the population numbers in my different realms, I have set up a system where I can punch in each realm's number of 30-km hexes, separated by biome. I've simplified the Köppen climates into tundra/alpine, boreal, oceanic, temperate rainforest, mediterranean, steppe, savanna and tropical marsh basin - and then gone through the map, counting hexes of each type in each realm, punching it into the sheet.



I used a table showing medieval population density in Europe (from Wikipedia), and re-calculated this into numbers per 30-km hex - to give me an idea of comparable numbers for my world. Then I gave each hex-type a base population density figure, which I could use to calculated the average base PD of each realm. Again, this was modified by the age of the realm and their respective culture's figures for population growth, giving me a modified population density I could plug into the formulas made by S. John Ross. With other adjustments from level of infrastructure and local agricultural surplus (simple educated guesses based on climate, culture and technology levels), I would get my population numbers, divided into number of farmers and non-farmers, cities, towns, et cetera - which I could then place on the map.

I have also placed resources on the map. This is quite ugly and not fit for viewing, but very useful when it comes to building economies and trade routes. With 58 different items divided between metals and minerals, animals, plants and industrial products, I marked each as either Not Used, Imported, Self-sufficient, or Exported. I could probably embellish the system a lot, but at least I know which realms import more than they export, and which ones have access to a wide variety of goods. The trade routes on the map show the major lanes of transportation, which makes the map come alive, in my humble opinion.

I've made more maps from Theia - regional maps of the Kingdom of Lumen, the realm of Redwood Rise, the Republic of Firsthome, and the Countship of Vistan. On these, I've zoomed in far enough to place every single village. Of course, now that my river system has changed, my Vistan map has to be redone, and with my new climate calculations, I'm sure the village numbers aren't right anymore, either.

But reworking those will have to wait for another time. So far, I hope you'll enjoy this sneak peek at the world of Theia and its people. :)

-Niels