Terran Map: Krellshah and Serian

[Xeviat]

I have finally figured out a way to do a map for my setting that remains proportionally accurate while allowing me to fiddle with it easily. Here's the fruits of my labor.

The landmass to the Southwest is Krellshah, which is the Europe inspired region of my setting, while the landmass to the Southeast is Serian, which is inspired by Asia. The small continent to the Northwest is Draconia. The points at the North and South are the poles, and you can see where the splits in the map are to create a more accurate flap map (I've been working off the Dymaxion projection map). The marks on the sides of the map mark the Arctic circles, the tropics, and the equator, which helps give the scale for the map (in actuality, the map is 6 inches tall, meaning 1 inch equals 4146.76 miles, or 6673.57 km).

Currently, you can still see familiar shapes, such as the coast of Africa. I'm seeking to camouflage that as much as I can, but it isn't easy (perhaps I can open the Rift Valley, even though the tectonic projections I'm working off say that won't happen). But that still won't distort the recognizable coast. The brown on the map are mountain ranges; I'll later be making layers to place altitude, climate, and terrain as I slowly determine it all.

I'm heading over to the Cartographer's Guild for assistance, but if anyone here has any advice on spicing up the coastlines or camouflaging the East coast of Serian (or Africa's West coast if you must), please let me know.

[Xeviat]

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[Xeviat]

Ker bump; no opinions yet?

[Xeviat]

I've learned much on the Cartographer's Guild. I'd still like input from those here, though I guess things haven't progressed to levels where opinions can be given yet. I do need to establish altitude, climate, and terrain before I can really place the races' homelands, but I have a fairly good idea where some will go.

Please, opinions of some sort? (the second image is a smaller resolution image, though it is a bit distorted).

[Elemental_Elf]

First off, great job, the maps! They look really good :)

How big is your world? The continent of Krellshah-&-Serian is awfully big, I hope you can fill it all up :)

[Xeviat]

Just some notes based on the map. I'm going to primarily be dealing with the Western portion of the large Southern continent (though there are a few regions on the Eastern side that intrigue me, like that region between the mountains near the center of the continent, or the region south of the huge mountain range, no doubt a very cold region since it is entirely south of the arctic circle).

As for the Western region, there will be three human cultures, each residing amongst those areas of white separated by the main mountain ranges. The Holylands, my premier region, is that middle region of white (as opposed to the northern region nearest the equator or the south most region). The Holylands culture is based primarily off of a Roman descended Europe. The Southern region is more of a Celtic descended Europe, while the Northern region will be based heavily on Egyptian style culture.

There will be two dwarf, ifrit, triton, and valkyrie cultures in the Western continent. The Valkyries are easiest to place; one is on the central mountain range that runs east/west, the other is on the portion of the mountains on the tropic (which is actually the Tibetan Plateau). One culture of dwarfs live under the southern mountain range, the other elsewhere (I want a good hill/mountain dwarf distinction, where the mountain dwarfs are subterranean and more isolationist while the hill dwarfs are surface dwellers and participate in heavy trade with other cultures). One group of Ifrit will live in cooler southern deserts, while another will live in a volcanic region of the northern jungles. The tritons will have control of those two islands that lay on the -15 latitude line, while the other group will reside amongst the various islands between that continent and the large northern "island"-continent (those are going to be the "pirate" tritons).

I'll be able to place the cultures more easily once terrains are established. Maybe there are members here who know more about climate and biomes than I do. Any help or input would be greatly appreciated. As you can see, I'm going for a large level of realism here.

Thanks everyone for your interest.

[Alexius Carthwall]

Alright, while I prefer a more artistic style of mapping than what you are doing, I understand the reasoning behind wanting it to be proportionally accurate for what you are doing ^_^.

Now other than that ;), the map is looking really good (I did notice one of your islands to the west is drawn with a larger brush size than the rest of the map though). Some of the things that determines Biomes is the rotation of the world, the orientation of it's axis, and the distance to your planets sun. Have you thought any about that? because depending on those three conditions, it will wildly affect not only your planets Biomes, but the seasons as well :P  

Let me know and I'll try to help you out :)

[Xeviat]

It's as big as Earth, the rotational axis is the same as Earth, it's as far away from the sun as Earth ... If you look closely, that's Asia, Africa, and Australia, repositioned due to plate tectonics, with their coastlines "artistically" adjusted.

(That island looks like a larger brush size because of the way I had it outlined, mostly an accident really.)

I will be making more artistic maps once I have everything else finalized.

Thanks for the interest.

[Xeviat]

I'm wracking my brain over this climatological stuff. Any help?

[Alexius Carthwall]

Hey Xapn, I will help on the climatology stuff the best I can :). First off do you think you could post up what you've got so far so I can take a look at it? generally I use a a real transparent layer in photo shop and differing colors to due a rough sketch of where I want my climate zones, then once my mountains and rivers, etc start being placed, I can go back and adjust those layers as I see fit.  

One thing you need to decide is your ocean currents. All ocean currents have a natural tendency to go in a big circle as the cold water sinks to the bottom as it passes the poles and then warms up and rises as it passes the equator.  This will affect the climate zones depending on what side of the current your on.

I assume the black on your map is mountains? Hope this helps! and like I said upload any ideas you've got for your climates and We'll see where to go from there. :)

[Xeviat]

I've been reading about ocean and air currents, and I've placed them on my map. Those black areas are mountains, but they're not .... set in stone yet. They're general regions where there could be mountains, but I've yet to erode them enough.

What I've read is that, in an "ideal" world, there will be bands of climate from the equator to the pole: Very wet (0 degrees), wet to dry, semi dry, dry (at 30 degrees), semi dry, dry to wet, wet (at 60 degrees), and polar past the arctic circle. But it also says that ocean currents will alter this (like how Europe is warmer than it should be based on latitude alone), and that air currents and mountains will create rain shadows.

I'll make some layers for water and air currents. I'm not sure where the currents will be warm or cold, but I'll place them and perhaps you can help.

Again, thanks for all the help.

[Xeviat]

Here's the newest snapshot of the image. The green arrows show the air currents when they're low to the ground (the high currents go in the opposite direction for the most part). Where the air currents meet is high pressure (less rain), and where the air currents go away from each other is low pressure (more rain). The ocean currents are the blue arrows (this is earth, but magnetic north has switched to south, so the maps are "upside-down"), but I'm not sure where they are warm currents and where they're cold (the currents traveling to the poles slowly cool while the currents traveling south slowly warm, correct?).

The bands of color added are roughly where differing rainfall would be if mountains and ocean currents had no effect. This is where I get lost; I'm not sure exactly how much the mountains and such should impact things.

If sending you the PSD would help, let me know.

PS: If it wasn't already apparent, this is only half the world. I haven't finalized the other half. Antarctica has moved "north" away from the pole, moving into the growing Atlantic ocean as the Pacific ocean began to squeeze shut and force it out; South America has moved "north" and "west"; North America has moved "west" and a little "north", but has rotated in a counter-clock-wise fashion, opposite the rotation of Asia (Russia and Alaska would be closer, except I didn't want that to be. Since the east most region of Russia is on the American plate, I'm erecting larger mountains along that fault where the continental crust is impacting. This, combined with terrible ocean there kept land and coastal sea travel out of the question until better boats were made. The "Americas" are going to be populated by more feral races, and will be the sites of grand forgotten adventures.