Fantasy and Alien Blank Basemaps Thread
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Tada!(filler)
That looks really cool. You should develop it more.
Here's one of mine:
In the center's there's supposed to be a sort of magic World-Mountain that serves as a sealing stone to a nigh-omnipotent being whose mere presence bends the geography of the continent in that particulat spirally circular shape
Dorozhand
Banned
This is something I've been working on for a while. It's a diagram of a planetary system:
Huitzilopochtli - Metal-rich Class-B blue star about 8 times the mass of Sol. Bathes everything in the system in a pale-blue glow, a lot of UV radiation, habitable zone very far out but also very wide. Metal rich composition allowed for a good amount of terrestrial planet formation. Rather long estimated lifetime of 7 billion years allowed for native life to actually form and evolve.
Intraxiuhtecuhtlian Asteroids (Scorched Belt) - As the name implies, these asteroids are extremely hot half-molten lava-balls. Correspond roughly to the theoretical "Vulcan Asteroids" once thought to exist within Mercury's orbit.
Xiuhtecuhtli - Innermost planet, about the mass of Terra. Incredibly hot, covered in seas of liquid metals and minerals and bathed in the haze of an atmosphere of Sulphur, Mercury, and Sodium vapour.
Mixcoatl - About the mass of Mercury, and of a similar temperature and composition, though slightly less dense. High albedo makes for a brightly visible body.
Huixtocihuatl - Of great interest to scientists, geologists, and miners alike is this planet, which was once apparently once covered in ocean. Orbital instability due to proximity to Teotlale, set off by an impact sent it spiraling disastrously inwards about 2 billion years ago. Once outside of the habitable zone, its oceans boiled off, and all that's left now is an immense, world-spanning salt flat. It's about .85 the mass of Earth and its orbit is extremely offset from the rest of the system's plane. The impact which sent it to its fate also gave it a moon, Nextepehua, the god of ash.
Intrateotlalean Asteroids (Tempest Belt) - Believed to be the ejecta from a large impact on Malinalxochitl which greatly reduced the moon's size, these asteroids are unstable and chaotic. A great hazard to anyone attempting to mine them or even travel through them. It is lucky that Teotlale's three moons and Atlacamani's freakishly large moon acted as impact shields, or life may have been extinguished there.
Teotlale - The first world within Huiztilopochtli's habitable zone, though barely. Bombarded by UV radiation, the harsh blue disc in the sky is an unmerciful mistress. The baked sand is nearly lifeless on the surface, but underground bacteria thrive. Multicellular life tightly hugs little oasis ponds which spring from the earth, and large plants with orange fan-like leaves are as big as life gets even there. The only significant area of surface water are two small lakes almost on top of the north and south poles, each less than about 500 km in surface area and .5 km deep. They are the only places which host significant permanent animal life. Tiny herbivores and shelled, gelatinous cephalopods which evolved in geothermal vents, slowly creeping to the surface over a billion years. Teotlale has no plate tectonics, which probably saved the life as volcanism would have belched forth CO2 and the world may have ended up like Venus.
Teotlale has three moons.
-Nexoxcho
Stained red with iron oxide, spectacular from the surface. Only about 45 km in size.
- Malinalxochitl
About 200 km wide. Used to be larger, but an oblique impact threw off significant mass and created an asteroid belt in the process.
- Chalchiutotolin
This one is interesting. It's about the size of Europa, and has a thick atmosphere. It's covered in lush jungle rainforest which looks like paradise, or early sci-fi's conception of Venus, from orbit. You don't want to go down though, as the comparison to Venus doesn't end there. Everything is poison. The life of the moon uses Hydrofluoric acid as a solvent, and oceans and an atmosphere of the stuff cover the world in a greenish haze. Exobiologists had a field day studying it, and the deaths were almost worth the knowledge that they gained.
Atlacamani - Atlacamani is squarely in the center of the habitable zone, and thus has a mild, temperate climate similar to earth. The planet is .95 the size of earth and slightly less dense, this lighter gravity makes the world a particularly comfortable place to live. It's surface is mostly land, with 40 % covered by seas. It's plate tectonics is somewhat more active than earth's, and this produces higher mountains and lower trenches, there is even a range thrust up by a corona. It is not a metal-poor world, its metal content mostly consists of aluminum, Vanadium, and other lighter metals, with a bit less Iron.
Its biosphere is rich and varied, containing animals, fungi, other phyla harder to define, and plants. As with most plant life in the system, Atlacamani's is bright orange to scarlet. The planet possesses polar, tundra, steppe, temperate, and tropical temperature zones, and rain is very common. Cloud cover and a slightly thicker atmosphere than earth prevent a lot of the harshest of the blue sun's rays from irritating human eyes. This also produces spectacular sunrises. One view of an Atlacamani sunrise, as the azure orb stains the sky with shades of purple, magenta, aquamarine, and maroon is often enough to convince them to stay. The day is about 27 hours long, leisurely compared to earth without being oppressive like Teotlale's 38 hour days.
Atlacamani has one moon, but what a moon it is! Chicomecoatl is the size of Ganymede and appears as a spectacular light-brown disc in the night sky, thrice as large as Luna. It even possesses pockets of single-celled life of its own in its soil and deepest caves, and is believed to have once had oceans of liquid water. It was likely created by a gargantuan impact which occurred very soon after the planet's formation, Atlacamani's more elastic materials allowing for it, though barely. The moon accreted more dust after it formed, growing larger still. It is named after a god of agriculture, as it is vital in maintaining Atlacamani's axial tilt of 34 degrees, and its seasons which are created thereby.
Nonohualco - This is the third and final inhabitant of the Goldilocks zone, and is quite frigid. Its land mostly consists of gloomy, windswept tundra, containing cold-resistant life-forms, although oases of warmth near hot-springs on the geologically active world produce pockets of rich biosphere. Its atmosphere is thinner than earth's, about Thibetan levels at the surface, at least tolerable to humans. Its temperature averages 12 degrees Centigrade, but is fairly uniform throughout the world due to geologic activity. Seas cover about 15% of the surface, and teem with life.
Nonohualco possesses two moons. One, Cipactonal, is almost the size of Europa and has an atmosphere similar to the parent world, although its life is more rudimentary. The other, Tepeyollotl, is geologically active like Io due to tidal stress between Nonohualco and Cipactonal, and possesses extremely tall mountains.
Huehuecoyotl - The last of the inner planets, there is very little to say about this Mercury-sized lifeless ball of rock other than a peculiar quantity of Vanadium in its crust.
Intraxochipillian Asteroids (Great Belt) - This is a massive belt of asteroids stretching from the edge of Huehuecoyotl's hill sphere to Xochipilli. The massive gas-giant's tidal forces prevent any bodies larger than Triton from forming. Rich in metals, it is fodder for mining operations.
Xochipilli - A gigantic gas giant 2.3 times the mass of Jupiter, named after the Aztec god of jollity and contentedness. It contains a lot of Methane, which, along with the light of Huitzilopochtli, gives it a staggering bright blue hue. Storms larger than the great red spot rage all across its surface. One is nearly six times the size of Atlacamani. Two spectacular rings orbit the planet, the remnants of a moon collision.
Of its many, many satellites (all but the two largest named after gods of wine), the most interesting are:
Mayahuel - Twice the mass of Callisto, it shepherds the two great rings, riding almost exactly between them.
Patecatl - The smallest body in the system to independently evolve life, it is about the size of Triton. Tidal forces warm ice below its surface, which resulted in a Europa-like ocean forming. Life is mostly very simple, mostly orange algae clinging to the bottom of the ice. Small animals have evolved from polyp fungi at the warmest regions of the equator and at the bottom of the ocean at vents, but reach no more than a decimeter in size.
Camaxtli - A blue moon. Tidal forces between great Xochipilli and the Mars-sized Xolotl result in a geologically active body and significant atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses trap heat, and create a climate almost like earth. The world, .78 the size of earth, is an oasis of life in the cold outer system, oceans covering 82% of the surface and continents rich with great orange forests.
Xolotl - about the mass of Mars, Xolotl is a dry but life-bearing moon. Tidal forces keep it just warm enough, though greenhouse gasses are less concentrated and plants are black, in order to get as much of the star's light as possible.
Ometeotl - A binary gas giant. Two planets, one slightly larger than Jupiter and one a bit smaller, orbit one another at a common barycenter. The larger, Ometeotl A, is pale blue, while the smaller, Ometeotl B, is an aquamarine colour, like Uranus but slightly greener. Both worlds rotate very fast, and have great storms the size of planets.
The moons of Ometeotl are all lifeless except for Ethane covered Xocotzin. It contains lakes of liquid hydrocarbons which, remarkably, have produced fragile colonies of bacteria which use it as a solvent. Xocotzin is also remarkable for another thing. It possesses its own tertiary satellite called Tlazolteotl.
Ehecatl - A gas giant consisting mostly of hydrogen, helium, methane, and, most strikingly, Ammonia. The planet is over 7% Ammonia! How this came to be is unknown, but its consequences shook the world of biology to its core.
Tloxipeuhca, a world about the size of Mars, possesses oceans of liquid Ammonia. These seas have produced an entire fully realized biosphere using Ammonia as a solvent in lieu of water. Ammonia lakes, rivers, storms and hurricanes, and continents covered in Ammonia life! Animals, plants, fungi, and a kingdom of fungi-like animals which use alkali metals and oxygen dissolved in the water to produce energy and recycle waste. Boron-based biochemistry allowed for variable divergences and sped up the process of evolution. Fish, cephalopods, vertebrates, and even land megafauna of phyla and purpose wild and exotic formed. An exobiologist's Eden. It also happens to be one of the only places known with an easily accessible natural supply of Rubidium and Caesium. The moon also has a tertiary satellite of its own.
Perhaps the most staggering thing about Tloxipeuhca is the presence of intelligence. A land-dwelling, radial, vertebrate species with a gelatinous body encased in calcium borate armor plates which used evolved "hands" (branched crinoid-like tendrils) to manipulate its environment, use tools, master combustion (possible on Tloxipeuhca), and spread across the world. Great care is taken not to interfere with their cultural development, only to observe from orbit or with robotic probes. Any rogue mining company which attempted to exploit the moon in any but the most controlled and supervised methods (tiny robotic probes in the oceans to extract Rubidium and Caesium) would face an immediate liquidation of all assets and a war of extermination against its leadership.
Tloxipeuhca is the last world in the system to harbor life.
Xantico - This gas giant, about the size of Neptune, contains a peculiar quantity of Sodium, which stains its clouds magenta. Other than that, it is a garden variety gasbag. Its moons are all lifeless. Two of them, Tlatlauhqui and Nanahuatl, are of interest in that they contain large quantities of liquid Nitrogen.
Ixquimilli - One of the two "Outer Terrestrials", considered planets by virtue of their Mercurian masses, they were likely moons ejected from either Xantico or Zacatzontli. Ixquimilli has a high albedo, making it bright in the night sky of Atlacamani. The world is frozen solid nitrogen, water, and ammonia ice, with a rocky core and some deposits of Iodine, which hint at an origin with Zacatzontli.
Oxomo - less visible than Ixquimilli, but larger. It is also frozen solid, and one of the coldest objects in the system.
Zacatzontli - A gas giant, slightly smaller than Neptune, containing some quantity of Iodine, which stains its clouds purple. A lonely world at the dim edge of the system, named after the god of the night-road. Beyond it lay the Outer Belt. Its moons, while not frozen solid, are very cold. Itzpapalotlcihuatl and Cihuacoatl are famous for having geysers of liquid nitrogen.
Transzacatzontlian Belt (Outer Belt) - A lonely field of ice-balls no larger than Luna dwells here. Very unexplored, but may contain resources yet untapped.
One last world, the Earth sized Miquiztlitecuhtli is a dim marker of the boundary of the system. No one knows just how it got there, or exactly what it's made of, but its mass has sparked debate over whether it should be classified as an Outer Belt Object or the 15th Planet.
The Comet Sphere - like Sol's Oort Cloud. The origin of comets.
http://i.imgur.com/dlrjIcA.png
Huitzilopochtli - Metal-rich Class-B blue star about 8 times the mass of Sol. Bathes everything in the system in a pale-blue glow, a lot of UV radiation, habitable zone very far out but also very wide. Metal rich composition allowed for a good amount of terrestrial planet formation. Rather long estimated lifetime of 7 billion years allowed for native life to actually form and evolve.
Intraxiuhtecuhtlian Asteroids (Scorched Belt) - As the name implies, these asteroids are extremely hot half-molten lava-balls. Correspond roughly to the theoretical "Vulcan Asteroids" once thought to exist within Mercury's orbit.
Xiuhtecuhtli - Innermost planet, about the mass of Terra. Incredibly hot, covered in seas of liquid metals and minerals and bathed in the haze of an atmosphere of Sulphur, Mercury, and Sodium vapour.
Mixcoatl - About the mass of Mercury, and of a similar temperature and composition, though slightly less dense. High albedo makes for a brightly visible body.
Huixtocihuatl - Of great interest to scientists, geologists, and miners alike is this planet, which was once apparently once covered in ocean. Orbital instability due to proximity to Teotlale, set off by an impact sent it spiraling disastrously inwards about 2 billion years ago. Once outside of the habitable zone, its oceans boiled off, and all that's left now is an immense, world-spanning salt flat. It's about .85 the mass of Earth and its orbit is extremely offset from the rest of the system's plane. The impact which sent it to its fate also gave it a moon, Nextepehua, the god of ash.
Intrateotlalean Asteroids (Tempest Belt) - Believed to be the ejecta from a large impact on Malinalxochitl which greatly reduced the moon's size, these asteroids are unstable and chaotic. A great hazard to anyone attempting to mine them or even travel through them. It is lucky that Teotlale's three moons and Atlacamani's freakishly large moon acted as impact shields, or life may have been extinguished there.
Teotlale - The first world within Huiztilopochtli's habitable zone, though barely. Bombarded by UV radiation, the harsh blue disc in the sky is an unmerciful mistress. The baked sand is nearly lifeless on the surface, but underground bacteria thrive. Multicellular life tightly hugs little oasis ponds which spring from the earth, and large plants with orange fan-like leaves are as big as life gets even there. The only significant area of surface water are two small lakes almost on top of the north and south poles, each less than about 500 km in surface area and .5 km deep. They are the only places which host significant permanent animal life. Tiny herbivores and shelled, gelatinous cephalopods which evolved in geothermal vents, slowly creeping to the surface over a billion years. Teotlale has no plate tectonics, which probably saved the life as volcanism would have belched forth CO2 and the world may have ended up like Venus.
Teotlale has three moons.
-Nexoxcho
Stained red with iron oxide, spectacular from the surface. Only about 45 km in size.
- Malinalxochitl
About 200 km wide. Used to be larger, but an oblique impact threw off significant mass and created an asteroid belt in the process.
- Chalchiutotolin
This one is interesting. It's about the size of Europa, and has a thick atmosphere. It's covered in lush jungle rainforest which looks like paradise, or early sci-fi's conception of Venus, from orbit. You don't want to go down though, as the comparison to Venus doesn't end there. Everything is poison. The life of the moon uses Hydrofluoric acid as a solvent, and oceans and an atmosphere of the stuff cover the world in a greenish haze. Exobiologists had a field day studying it, and the deaths were almost worth the knowledge that they gained.
Atlacamani - Atlacamani is squarely in the center of the habitable zone, and thus has a mild, temperate climate similar to earth. The planet is .95 the size of earth and slightly less dense, this lighter gravity makes the world a particularly comfortable place to live. It's surface is mostly land, with 40 % covered by seas. It's plate tectonics is somewhat more active than earth's, and this produces higher mountains and lower trenches, there is even a range thrust up by a corona. It is not a metal-poor world, its metal content mostly consists of aluminum, Vanadium, and other lighter metals, with a bit less Iron.
Its biosphere is rich and varied, containing animals, fungi, other phyla harder to define, and plants. As with most plant life in the system, Atlacamani's is bright orange to scarlet. The planet possesses polar, tundra, steppe, temperate, and tropical temperature zones, and rain is very common. Cloud cover and a slightly thicker atmosphere than earth prevent a lot of the harshest of the blue sun's rays from irritating human eyes. This also produces spectacular sunrises. One view of an Atlacamani sunrise, as the azure orb stains the sky with shades of purple, magenta, aquamarine, and maroon is often enough to convince them to stay. The day is about 27 hours long, leisurely compared to earth without being oppressive like Teotlale's 38 hour days.
Atlacamani has one moon, but what a moon it is! Chicomecoatl is the size of Ganymede and appears as a spectacular light-brown disc in the night sky, thrice as large as Luna. It even possesses pockets of single-celled life of its own in its soil and deepest caves, and is believed to have once had oceans of liquid water. It was likely created by a gargantuan impact which occurred very soon after the planet's formation, Atlacamani's more elastic materials allowing for it, though barely. The moon accreted more dust after it formed, growing larger still. It is named after a god of agriculture, as it is vital in maintaining Atlacamani's axial tilt of 34 degrees, and its seasons which are created thereby.
Nonohualco - This is the third and final inhabitant of the Goldilocks zone, and is quite frigid. Its land mostly consists of gloomy, windswept tundra, containing cold-resistant life-forms, although oases of warmth near hot-springs on the geologically active world produce pockets of rich biosphere. Its atmosphere is thinner than earth's, about Thibetan levels at the surface, at least tolerable to humans. Its temperature averages 12 degrees Centigrade, but is fairly uniform throughout the world due to geologic activity. Seas cover about 15% of the surface, and teem with life.
Nonohualco possesses two moons. One, Cipactonal, is almost the size of Europa and has an atmosphere similar to the parent world, although its life is more rudimentary. The other, Tepeyollotl, is geologically active like Io due to tidal stress between Nonohualco and Cipactonal, and possesses extremely tall mountains.
Huehuecoyotl - The last of the inner planets, there is very little to say about this Mercury-sized lifeless ball of rock other than a peculiar quantity of Vanadium in its crust.
Intraxochipillian Asteroids (Great Belt) - This is a massive belt of asteroids stretching from the edge of Huehuecoyotl's hill sphere to Xochipilli. The massive gas-giant's tidal forces prevent any bodies larger than Triton from forming. Rich in metals, it is fodder for mining operations.
Xochipilli - A gigantic gas giant 2.3 times the mass of Jupiter, named after the Aztec god of jollity and contentedness. It contains a lot of Methane, which, along with the light of Huitzilopochtli, gives it a staggering bright blue hue. Storms larger than the great red spot rage all across its surface. One is nearly six times the size of Atlacamani. Two spectacular rings orbit the planet, the remnants of a moon collision.
Of its many, many satellites (all but the two largest named after gods of wine), the most interesting are:
Mayahuel - Twice the mass of Callisto, it shepherds the two great rings, riding almost exactly between them.
Patecatl - The smallest body in the system to independently evolve life, it is about the size of Triton. Tidal forces warm ice below its surface, which resulted in a Europa-like ocean forming. Life is mostly very simple, mostly orange algae clinging to the bottom of the ice. Small animals have evolved from polyp fungi at the warmest regions of the equator and at the bottom of the ocean at vents, but reach no more than a decimeter in size.
Camaxtli - A blue moon. Tidal forces between great Xochipilli and the Mars-sized Xolotl result in a geologically active body and significant atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses trap heat, and create a climate almost like earth. The world, .78 the size of earth, is an oasis of life in the cold outer system, oceans covering 82% of the surface and continents rich with great orange forests.
Xolotl - about the mass of Mars, Xolotl is a dry but life-bearing moon. Tidal forces keep it just warm enough, though greenhouse gasses are less concentrated and plants are black, in order to get as much of the star's light as possible.
Ometeotl - A binary gas giant. Two planets, one slightly larger than Jupiter and one a bit smaller, orbit one another at a common barycenter. The larger, Ometeotl A, is pale blue, while the smaller, Ometeotl B, is an aquamarine colour, like Uranus but slightly greener. Both worlds rotate very fast, and have great storms the size of planets.
The moons of Ometeotl are all lifeless except for Ethane covered Xocotzin. It contains lakes of liquid hydrocarbons which, remarkably, have produced fragile colonies of bacteria which use it as a solvent. Xocotzin is also remarkable for another thing. It possesses its own tertiary satellite called Tlazolteotl.
Ehecatl - A gas giant consisting mostly of hydrogen, helium, methane, and, most strikingly, Ammonia. The planet is over 7% Ammonia! How this came to be is unknown, but its consequences shook the world of biology to its core.
Tloxipeuhca, a world about the size of Mars, possesses oceans of liquid Ammonia. These seas have produced an entire fully realized biosphere using Ammonia as a solvent in lieu of water. Ammonia lakes, rivers, storms and hurricanes, and continents covered in Ammonia life! Animals, plants, fungi, and a kingdom of fungi-like animals which use alkali metals and oxygen dissolved in the water to produce energy and recycle waste. Boron-based biochemistry allowed for variable divergences and sped up the process of evolution. Fish, cephalopods, vertebrates, and even land megafauna of phyla and purpose wild and exotic formed. An exobiologist's Eden. It also happens to be one of the only places known with an easily accessible natural supply of Rubidium and Caesium. The moon also has a tertiary satellite of its own.
Perhaps the most staggering thing about Tloxipeuhca is the presence of intelligence. A land-dwelling, radial, vertebrate species with a gelatinous body encased in calcium borate armor plates which used evolved "hands" (branched crinoid-like tendrils) to manipulate its environment, use tools, master combustion (possible on Tloxipeuhca), and spread across the world. Great care is taken not to interfere with their cultural development, only to observe from orbit or with robotic probes. Any rogue mining company which attempted to exploit the moon in any but the most controlled and supervised methods (tiny robotic probes in the oceans to extract Rubidium and Caesium) would face an immediate liquidation of all assets and a war of extermination against its leadership.
Tloxipeuhca is the last world in the system to harbor life.
Xantico - This gas giant, about the size of Neptune, contains a peculiar quantity of Sodium, which stains its clouds magenta. Other than that, it is a garden variety gasbag. Its moons are all lifeless. Two of them, Tlatlauhqui and Nanahuatl, are of interest in that they contain large quantities of liquid Nitrogen.
Ixquimilli - One of the two "Outer Terrestrials", considered planets by virtue of their Mercurian masses, they were likely moons ejected from either Xantico or Zacatzontli. Ixquimilli has a high albedo, making it bright in the night sky of Atlacamani. The world is frozen solid nitrogen, water, and ammonia ice, with a rocky core and some deposits of Iodine, which hint at an origin with Zacatzontli.
Oxomo - less visible than Ixquimilli, but larger. It is also frozen solid, and one of the coldest objects in the system.
Zacatzontli - A gas giant, slightly smaller than Neptune, containing some quantity of Iodine, which stains its clouds purple. A lonely world at the dim edge of the system, named after the god of the night-road. Beyond it lay the Outer Belt. Its moons, while not frozen solid, are very cold. Itzpapalotlcihuatl and Cihuacoatl are famous for having geysers of liquid nitrogen.
Transzacatzontlian Belt (Outer Belt) - A lonely field of ice-balls no larger than Luna dwells here. Very unexplored, but may contain resources yet untapped.
One last world, the Earth sized Miquiztlitecuhtli is a dim marker of the boundary of the system. No one knows just how it got there, or exactly what it's made of, but its mass has sparked debate over whether it should be classified as an Outer Belt Object or the 15th Planet.
The Comet Sphere - like Sol's Oort Cloud. The origin of comets.
http://i.imgur.com/dlrjIcA.png
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I have this map, a bit more than just Westros, but its Worlda scale.
I'm not really sure where you are talking about, but all of this map is canon.
A map I mad from taking a rectangle and applying different noise filters.
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How is a terraformed Mars not fantasy or alien?
I guess my mental definition of 'Alien' is extrasolar.
Fascinating design! Love the Meso-American nomenclature (forgive me if I used improper terminology, I'm unfamiliar with such languages and cultures).