Map Thread XIX

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The result of a marathonic 3 day worldbuilding exercise:

The initial sketch:

View attachment 535159

The blank map:

View attachment 535163

And the result with biomes:

View attachment 535162

All this started because of my frustation that every fantasy setting has the same "European Woodlands" enviroment. I've been playing Skyrim and Oblivion lately, and Skyrim is amazing in that it shows the whole diversity of cold climates, from birch forests to Yellowstone-like volcanic terrain to tundra and ice. Meanwhile, Oblivion is all boring temperate woodlands with only some snow and dark forests. The worst thing is that Oblivion's setting (Cyrodill) was supposed to be endless jungle*, but they changed it to the same setting nearly every fantasy work has.

It's so stupid. Coming from a (sub)tropical place, it's so boring that fantasy writers are allergic to tropical settings or they relegate them to exotic lands far from the main focus.

So I made Wana. A world of tropical fantasy.

"Great port cities made of intrincately decorated wood grow in the mouths of rivers, some even extend further into the water, into floating houses. The great deserts are dotted by cities of brick and mud, decorated with precious stones and geometrical mosaics. Swamps have artificial islands of rich soil where crops, and then cities and pyramids grow. Great temples rise in the jungles, carved into the trees themselves. In the highest valleys and mountaintops, stone fortresses are the capitals of great empires, their temples covered in gold and silver. Mysterious sacred groves abound inside the jungle, around gigantic trees, beautiful waterfalls, and otherworldy metal rocks. Giant mounts and mesas that look like ancient warriors or animals are found in the deserts and savannas of the world. Beasts long extinct elsewhere lurk in remote places. The nights are full of whispers from the inexplicable. Floating mountains, plains of living fire, lakes that are portals to other worlds, salt flats that are mirrors to the heavens, giant trees that have their own ecosystems and civilizations. Temples from the earliest civilizations are buried in the desert sands and the mountain valleys. And who knows what’s below the sea?"

For now this is only a one shot map. I want to make a TES style empire (maybe) with each province with its unique enviroment. But the result at the end was an amazingly diverse collection of ecosystems. Which was the intention in the first place! But makes hard to draw borders. Despite it is based in the ancient continent of Gondwana and you can see a lot of Earth parallels, I also don't want to make exact Earth civilization equivalents for every place (well maybe ONE Tawantinsuyu expy, for old times sake). I also need to decide if there will be another sentient species, how much magic is in the world, and so on. So I'll give it thought and I'll post 'travel guides' later.

The biome key was from an old worldbuilding project with my own additions. It's not supposed to represent exact enviroments, but works for my purposes (Every ecologist has its own classification system, trust me, I know.) Unlike other worldbuilding projects, I drew the biomes first and the elevation will be based on them, since I knew what kind of world I liked. I think I might have made the interior too wet, IRL it should have been more arid, but this IS supposed to be a tropical Earth, so it's warmer and wetter. Also, rainforests by themselves are great humidity sponges (see the biotic pump theory). Vulcanic terrains are supposed to be equivalents of the Afar Depression or Yellowstone, only more widespread.

If you have any questions or comments go ahead! It might give me inspiration to create the civilization part.

*There are mods that give it a proper tropical flavor and they're awesome.
As someone who has also dusted off their copy of Skyrim lately, I think this is a really neat concept! Tolkien's massive presence in the fantasy genre has led to a serious neglect of the potential of other settings in biomes other than temperate woodlands. I guess my most immediate question is, if this world is meant to be in the spirit of TES but with more tropical and subtropical biomes and with the "Imperial" culture being more based off of Tawantinsuyu than Rome, are there still elves and orcs like in TES and Tolkien's works? Or are there other magical races entirely? If so, are they based off of the folklore of real world cultures from similar climes?
 

Eparkhos

Banned
Solar Federation Map.png

The Solar Confederation as it existed in 2218. The areas shown refer only to systems recognized as the territories of the Confederation, and do not show the various ISAPs (Interstellar Supply and Arrangement Platforms) which the Confederation is part of
 
newspanishempireuniverse.png

So this map is a follow up to my "New Spanish Empire" universe. The premise is that Spain and Italy both have more colonies than they did in OTL, and the current year is 1930.

There are several more key points to notice:
1. Argentine Namibia and Uruguayan Walvis Bay were both LoN mandates awarded to the two nations for effective occupation of German Southwest Africa during WWI.
2. Not only did Chile acquire Easter Island, but they also ventured further into the Pacific, eventually acquiring Pitcairn Island as well.
3. Mauritania is a joint Franco-Spanish condominium, and Sudan is a joint Anglo-Italian condominium.
4. Ethiopia fought on the side of the Central Powers and lost, thus the monarchy was dissolved and the nation was entirely annexed by Italy.
5. Siam became a German protectorate following a succession crisis, and the protectorate was transferred to Italy following Germany's defeat.
6. Germany acquired Gabon, Congo, and Ubangi-Shari in ATL, and while Gabon and Congo were ceded to Spain, a much larger Ubangi-Shari was ceded to France.
7. The United States kept Liberia and acquired Sierra Leone as colonies, and a much longer Spanish-American War meant that Spain still kept its possessions in Asia and Oceania.
8. Bulgaria was punished more severely in ATL, with its loss of sovereignty via annexation into the Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia.
9. Greece and Turkey agreed that the city of Constantinople/Istanbul be jointly administered between the two nations.
10. The Great Powers intervened in the China, and agreed that China would cede Xinjiang to the Soviets, Tibet to the British, Yunnan to the French, and Manchuria to the Japanese.
 

Eparkhos

Banned
Is Earth part of the Solar confederation ?
Interesting map nontheless !
Earth got nuked exactly 4, 128 times on 13 March 2128. Certain areas (Tierra del Fuego, the Falklands and some tiny islands scattered in out-of-the-way places) survived, but most of the planet was a write-off. Who fired first is unknown (mostly because the Confederation was founded by the colonies of India, Brazil and the East African Federation, who were the three main superpowers before the apocalypse). The Colonies (and the six Free Settlements*) had themselves a decade-long WTF period before the NHPS (India), MNS (EAF) and the GPM (Brazil) created the Martian Confederation in 2133, and then begin efforts to salvage what they can from Earth. This is ruined when asteroid 101955 Bennu gets knocked off of course by a moonlet and slams into the ocean near St. Helena on 20 July 2135, wiping out the few surviving settlements (except Tristan da Cunha).

What does that "T.I" mean in Soraren?
Abbreviation of Toliman I. The 158th Congress of the International Astronomical Federation (2108) streamlined the naming of moons and planets by exclusively using Latin Numerals rather than letters.
 
Temporary Map, Just to get it out there, W is water, L is land, the northern lines are for tests for fixing on the projection issue. Ain't much other than that, going to try to get another map out as I fix the project and begin working on climate zones, rivers and geography
Test.jpg
 
2121 - Climate Change Future

uxMPlwn.png


I had more of a write-up on this but it was lost in an unidentified user error.

Basic situation - 12 billion people share a much tighter hospitable region on Earth. Hyper-Urban Cores are dominated by habitable arcologies with integrated food production, underground infrastructure and industry, and a spaghetti of skyways for 'ground' traffic. Mega-Cities resemble modern dense urban areas, but they extend out over a much wider area. Super-Urbanization is similar to a more developed Western Europe / Japan / BosWash density, with a lot of carefully managed parks and intensive farms in between, no real wilderness.

The Arid Zones are too hot and dry for normal habitation, and are even too extreme for any kind of major automated economic activity. Brown regions experience bad weather all the time, and land values fluctuate rapidly as predictions for agricultural futures change constantly, but it's not completely inhospitable, and may be the best place for a subsistence farmer to survive without access to the automated economy. The Tropical Green zones are closer to sub-tropical in the wildlife and agriculture, but closer to modern tropical in conditions, (GMO) wildlife here is actually competitive with human farming, with weaponized weeds and pests over-running farms regularly. Farming Blocs are entirely developed for food production, with every scrap of land fully utilized in the production of food and feedstocks for humanity, and scarcely a chance for wildlife to interfere. Neo-temperate zones are the most familiar, similar to the temperate zones of the previous era, with colder winters, warmer summers, wetter autumns, and drier springs, and more variable weather throughout, but you'll have to wear sunscreen all year round because the ozone layer is full of holes.

(oh and yes I agree that my original content here is sporadic and anemic)
 
1586274038685.png

A religious map of the Old World in 1300AD.
Bright green in Sahara is Donatism, brownish in Somalia is Waaqefanna, what we see in Oman is the so-called Msadeqi Manicheism, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tatarstan are home to Denawar Manicheans, Punjab is home to Roshblani Manicheism and variety is also present along the coast of China called Mingjian.

The other colours are based primarily on EU4, with notable exception of Judaism (blue in Dagestan).
 

Aurantiacis

Gone Fishin'
5UwQdc1.jpg


So I don't have too detailed of a backstory for this one (as I really am not in the mood), but the backstory goes in that the Chinese replace the Indian influence in OTL, having traditional Chinese faiths and philosophies come to dominate Southeast Asia and having Pure Land/Tiantai Buddhism become the regional cosmology. In something devoid in OTL, we also have massive influxes of Chinese settlers pouring into places like Tondo, Java, and Indochina, as the maritime Silk Road also gets ramped up as well. This, compounded with the much more devastating Jin/Tibetan raids into the Chinese heartland, sees the Song Dynasty completely displaced by a coordinated effort by the (much more bloodthirsty than OTL) Ulanbaatar Empire in the mid 1200s, . The Song Dynasty (along with mass migrations out of Ulaanbaatar-held China) move into SE Asia, and now is the dominant power of the region, where now two Mandates of Heaven exist, one in the mainland, and one in SE Asia. Its population consists of a large native (but even larger 混人, Chinese-native mestizos) population. Its government is very federal and possesses a powerful navy that has been the bane of the Ulaanbaatar Horde. The poem around the margins of the map is by Li Bai (undeniably the best Tang Chinese poet and you cannot convince me otherwise), Parting at a Wine Shop in Nanking:

"風吹柳花滿店香,吳姬壓酒喚客嘗。
金陵子弟來相送,欲行不行各盡觴。
請君試問東流水,別意與之誰短長。"

"A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;
And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,
Oh, go and ask this river running to the east
If it can travel farther than a friend's love!"

So that's about it. It's been six days of endless reading on Chinese dynastical records in Southeast Asia, research of traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms, and translation of obscure Chinese names. Hope y'all enjoy.
 
Last edited:
5UwQdc1.jpg


So I don't have too detailed of a backstory for this one (as I really am not in the mood), but the backstory goes in that the Chinese replace the Indian influence in OTL, having traditional Chinese faiths and philosophies come to dominate Southeast Asia and having Pure Land/Tiantai Buddhism become the regional cosmology. In something devoid in OTL, we also have massive influxes of Chinese settlers pouring into places like Tondo, Java, and Indochina, as the maritime Silk Road also gets ramped up as well. This, compounded with the much more devastating Jin/Tibetan raids into the Chinese heartland, sees the Song Dynasty completely displaced by a coordinated effort by the (much more bloodthirsty than OTL) Ulanbaatar Empire in the mid 1200s, . The Song Dynasty (along with mass migrations out of Ulaanbaatar-held China) into SE Asia, and now is the dominant power of the region, where now two Mandates of Heaven exist, one in the mainland, and one in SE Asia. Its population consists of a large native (but even larger 混人, Chinese-native mestizos) population. Its government is very federal and possesses a powerful navy that has been the bane of the Ulaanbaatar Horde. The poem around the margins of the map is by Li Bai (undeniably the best Tang Chinese poet and you cannot convince me otherwise), Parting at a Wine Shop in Nanking:

"風吹柳花滿店香,吳姬壓酒喚客嘗。
金陵子弟來相送,欲行不行各盡觴。
請君試問東流水,別意與之誰短長。"

"A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;
And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,
Oh, go and ask this river running to the east
If it can travel farther than a friend's love!"

So that's about it. It's been six days of endless reading on Chinese dynastical records in Southeast Asia, research of traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms, and translation of obscure Chinese names. Hope y'all enjoy.
Beautiful map!
 
Quick question, which of the three alternate settlements involving the ancestors of the modern Turks sounds the most interesting:
Pushed North into the Northern Caucases
Pushed west into the Balkans
Pushed south into North Africa
 
Quick question, which of the three alternate settlements involving the ancestors of the modern Turks sounds the most interesting:
Pushed North into the Northern Caucases
Pushed west into the Balkans
Pushed south into North Africa
Alternate migrations are one of my favorite topics. A long time ago, I had an idea where the Turks pushed way north into Saint Petersburg area. That was a fun scenario, I should remake it sometime.

As for this, I think the Africa scenario is the most interesting.
 
From the Multipolar Space Race TL:

The World in 2100



GDP and Population

Code:
WORLD ------------------ US$ 178,584.2 -- 9,189.4

United States ----------- US$ 42,323.7 ---- 423.2
China ------------------- US$ 24,621.6 -- 1,894.0
British Federation ------ US$ 17,502.8 ---- 336.9
Japan ------------------- US$ 13,306.5 ---- 190.1
Germany ----------------- US$ 11,371.3 ---- 157.9
Russia ------------------- US$ 8,661.6 ---- 433.1
India -------------------- US$ 6,757.9 -- 1,930.8
France ------------------- US$ 6,047.8 ----- 94.5
Italy -------------------- US$ 4,998.7 ----- 96.1
Korea -------------------- US$ 4,086.1 ---- 102.2
Brazil ------------------- US$ 3,702.7 ---- 264.5
Benelux ------------------ US$ 2,976.2 ----- 41.5
Scandinavia -------------- US$ 2,509.7 ----- 30.8
Spain -------------------- US$ 2,280.9 ----- 60.0
Mexico ------------------- US$ 1,948.6 ---- 149.9
Indonesia ---------------- US$ 1,846.2 ---- 307.7
 
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