Mondvert Series

[jshoer]

A series of three maps of Mondvert, a human colony established on a new world around a distant star.



The Third Great Ark traveled over a hundred light-years, carrying a manifest of 8000 passengers in suspended animation. The journey took many centuries, and the colonists knew that they would be starting a civilization from scratch when they arrived.

The Ark went into orbit around a promising green-and-blue world without any sentient species, using the last of its gargantuan power reserves, and automated systems woke the advance crew. This dedicated group of 100 men and women spent the next decade of their lives observing and mapping Mondvert - followed by, once suitable sites were identified, exploring, testing, and cataloging. By 16 After Arrival, the advance crew had established enough infrastructure to begin settling the rest of the passengers. The first settlement founded was simply called The Colony, located in a place with fields, forests, stone, and minerals. Shuttles from orbit landed in a field a short distance outside of the new town, and soon, 4000 settlers called it home. A similar group of 4000 settlers later landed in a northern region of the continent that promised bountiful seas and plentiful game and crops. By 20 AA, Colony and Weilai were incorporated as towns, along with Transceiver Tower, which 500 settlers from Colony set up at a prominent site to maintain communications worldwide and with the empty orbiting Ark.

However, within a few years without active maintenance, ailing systems on the Ark began to fail and the great ship could no longer maintain its orbit. It crashed onto a different continent of Mondvert. The people of the new world would be without satellite information from orbit until they could develop and launch their own.

Enterprising citizens of Colony and Weilai spread across the surface, founding towns and cities as they went. Expansion and advancement is limited by population and the rate of population growth. They have plenty of data and technology; but they are limited to the resources they can find on the planet. Rare Earth metals are particularly troublesome, which is bad for electronics manufacture. So, while technologies such as aircraft and computers are present (and more prevalent as time passes), they are not common. More fruitful investments were technologies that could benefit many sectors over the long term, so, for example, radio is common. Most residents live in wood or stone houses, farming and herding are major sources of food, and craftsmen build commodities and machines out of materials available on Mondvert. The cultures of the world evolve to incorporate a mix of technologies and methods from Old Earth.

About fifty years after arrival (AA), the governors of Weilai made the decision to launch a concerted exploration of the continent on which the Third Ark crashed, hoping to augment their nation with some of the lost old technologies from the Ark. They founded the city of Expedition Point for the purpose of bootstrapping a shipping industry. Building the city out, establishing an industrial base, and then moving settlers on to Naya Chaukee would take years. In the meantime, Colony spread steadily southwest and built out a rail system with solar-powered locomotives. Scientific advancement centers more on the practical matter of learning about Mondvert than on fundamental discovery.

After two hundred years of relatively peaceful growth, defined only by the struggle of learning and establishing human civilization on a new planet, the first major civilization-wide setback occurred: a local disease finally made the jump to human hosts, and a virulent plague struck Colony in 225 AA. This event precipitated a number of southern settlements to secede from Colony and form a new nation, the Khet Compact. The Compact set a "Quarantine Line," south of which they would allow no one from Colony to pass. After dealing with the plague, Colony decided to attempt the military recapture of Khet in what became known as the Quarantine War. Ultimately, Colony failed - but they still claim territory effectively governed by Khet, including the capital city, and tensions run high in this territory. This tension cause Transceiver Tower, long an independent city-state proud of its original purpose to provide services to everyone, to formalize a policy of neutrality.

The autonomous government of Naya Chaukee finally located the wreckage of the Ark in the rugged jungles in 258 AA, after having lost singleminded interest in the effort to locate the Ark. They founded a town at the Ark site to break down salvageable parts of the wreck.

Today, in 315 AA, Mondvert is a well-established world with a unique culture stemming from the blend of peoples on the original Ark and the mix of viable technologies used to build up their civilization. This series of maps has been produced by the Magistrate's Office of Transceiver Tower in advance of the city's tricentennial to celebrate the variety of historical experiences of human life on Mondvert.

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Done in mostly Photoshop, over way too long a time, with a population model behind it. I wanted to give it a theme like expansion across the American West, but I also wanted to do that in a bit more realistic manner with lots of cultures represented on the original Ark. Thanks to everyone who helped me out with names in other languages on the WIP thread!

[arsheesh]

Intriguing narrative for these maps. The sci-fi "Ark" motif is pretty nifty. The maps each do a nice job of conveying the information they were designed for. Great work.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Ilanthar]

Interesting work and style on those, Joseph! Clean maps with a lot of information.
I'm somewhat not sure about the slight blur over the mountains, though.

[jshoer]

Thanks!

Ilanthar, can you give a little more detail about what you mean? I was trying to do the mountains by shading alone - so, without a drawn ridge line - but I didn't apply any blur effects. It was an experiment. Maybe it had mixed success...

[Ilanthar]

By Jshoer
Ilanthar, can you give a little more detail about what you mean? I was trying to do the mountains by shading alone - so, without a drawn ridge line - but I didn't apply any blur effects. It was an experiment. Maybe it had mixed success...

The rest of the map is very clean and without blurs (very modern and sf in that way) and - for me, and maybe just me really -, the blur seems a bit out of place somehow.

I've tested things without ridge lines and didn't get any result that I like either...