Thus Endeth the 5th Day

[the_gneech]

Okay, I chopped it, channelled it, banged a few nails through it, and sprinkled nuts on the top. Behold, the New! Improved! Ethangea, with all cities and names yanked off, some topography moved around, and the edges un-cropped. Now I'm off to Office Depot to pick up some tabloid paper to run through the color printer and make large printouts of. With my Sharpies, my computer, a few notes, and a general idea of where I want things to go, I'm off to write history! Or at least, this world's history.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are most welcome.



-The Gneech

Comments

Pretty colours; what do they mean?

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Hiyas, Gneech...

I like the colours... but they're not that obvious to me. For example, I can guess that:

• blue = water


• light brown = desert


• white = arctic


• the greens = forest

...but I have a bunch of questions...

• What's the difference between light green and dark green?


• What is the really dark green in the south of the map?


• Why isn't the south pole cold? (Or is that the south pole?)


• What are the red-and-white i's dotting the southeast (and a bit of the southwest) corner of the map?


• How much does the world tip? (Translation: How strong are the seasons for this world?)


• Have you thought about how the winds blow in the world, and how that would translate to rain? (On this world, winds generally blow to the east. Therefore, when you have a mountain range, the west side is usually wetter than the east side.)



Good luck!

Re: Pretty colours; what do they mean?

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, the blue is water, obviously. :) For the rest, in broad terms, the darker a color it is, the denser the vegetation. Thus...

White = Glacier
Sand = Barren (can be sand, rock, or other desert)
Bright Green = Plain / Grass / Scrub
Medium Green = Temperate / Light Forest
Dark Green = Coniferous / Dense Forest
Deep Green = Jungle / "Impenetrable"

This map is just one half of the northern hemisphere (sorry, Batty!). It takes in from just above the arctic circle, to approximately 1/10th of the way past the equator to the south. (The equator almost exactly bisects the great desert on the southern landmass.)

The red-and-white symbols are geologically active (though not necessarily violent) volcanoes.

The world has comparable seasons to ours, which is what, a 23% inclination? I knew that once. (It's worth noting that this world also has a single, large moon -- in other words, it's basically Earth with a different "skin.")

I included thoughts about rain when placing the vegetation. Generally speaking, the weather patterns in this part of the world move in great, clockwise patterns on the upper 2/3 of the map, and counter-clockwise on the lower portions. The great barren in the NW is largely there because the moisture that comes up from the inland sea gets stopped by that mountain range ... and the wide desert in the middle of the northern landmass is in the "eye" of the prevailing weather pattern of that particular area.

Some other thoughts: You can sorta see the tectonic plates, by tracing the mountain ranges. There is one massive plate to the west, a smaller chunk that makes up the landmass that just out to the north, a "sunken" plate that makes up the great northeastern sea, a wide plate near the center of the map, and two smaller plates that make up the north and south halves of the eastern portion of the map.

The "sunken" plate, I'm thinking, used to be higher and encompass a landmass, which is now a great sunken continent. What caused the plate to sink, I'm not sure. Massive meteor strike? Geothermal activity? The death throes of some ancient god? I'm still working on that bit.

You can also tell by Slartibartfast's "lovely crinkly edges" that there was an ice age at some point ... it seems to have really torn up the northeastern corner of the northern landmass in particular.

Hmm ... I just noticed that a good portion of the westernmost landmass looks a bit like a stretched and squooshed North America. Neat, but totally unplanned. If you check out the previous incarnation (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?itemid=22527898) of this map, the area I'm referring to is just off to the east of the "Gulf of Drowned Gods," and was mostly cropped out of the picture.

Hmm ... maybe I should import in a map of North America and superimpose it, just to give myself a sense of scale. *wanders off to find some clipart...*

Planetary apron strings?

[level-head.livejournal.com]

The world has comparable seasons to ours, which is what, a 23% inclination? I knew that once.

23.45 degrees. We're just a little above the center of a 3 degree "wobble", which tops out at about 24.5 or so.

Our seasons are also significantly influenced by our variation in distance from the sun. Our closest approach is in the first couple of days in January. The result is that Northern hemisphere seasons are milder (in our winter, the closer sun offsets the effect somewhat) and Southern hemisphere seasons are more extreme.

(It's worth noting that this world also has a single, large moon -- in other words, it's basically Earth with a different "skin.")

I see you are philosophically tide to our pair-shaped planet. Let youself go! The "big honkin' moon" effect is likely to be extraordinarily rare in the universe -- ours seems to be the accident of a major collision that re-melted the entire planet and rebounded "just right" to produce the effect we have. The scenario in "Inherit the Stars" is just about as likely -- though there are problems with orbital capture.

There are fractal edge generators in programs like Corel Draw that may be useful to you to provide realistic detailing of shorelines. Shorelines were the original classic metaphor for fractal edges -- it seems that you can examine them in nearly infinite magnification and still have jagged edges. It helps make a map seem "right".

You may also want to "rough out" the rest of the planet -- sailing ships can go far, and the lands over the horizon may figure into a story at some point -- particularly if The Lady Gneech's suggestion of flying transportation is included.

===|==============/ Level Head

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, the moon as it exists in our world figures mightily in my own "personal" mythic landscape, as it were ... I gotta have it. :)

As for the rest of the planet, the area I've drawn out is already more than I plan to use any time in the near future. Right now I'm drawing with as large a brush as I've got while still being able to make out detail.

In rough terms, I know that the southern landmass continues in a vaguely triangular shape to the southwest. What, if any, civilizations exist down there, I don't know. Given that this is only one side of the world, there is probably also another landmass or two across the vast oceans to the east and west, known only in legend, if at all. -TG

Re: Pretty colours; what do they mean?

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Earth's Moon and related matters, your music going at this time was "Caribbean Blue" -- a really delightful song originally from the album "Shepard Moons". Any idea where that title (and its eponymic song) came from? Obscure hint: Crank up the volume on the last few seconds of "Shepard Moons"...

Of course, if you're a Niven reader, as I suspect you are, all bets are off. "Clasp digits with me, that I may know your herd!"

===|==============/ Level Head

Re: Pretty colours; what do they mean?

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Re: Pretty colours; what do they mean?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

So it's a bit of the world, not the whole world? That leaves you with a awful lot of other continents to raise, unless the rest of the world is considerably damper than the lands on your map.

batty

Re: Pretty colours; what do they mean?

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

(Post with errors deleted; new post replaces it.)

As it is, this chunk is a big piece to swallow all at once! I've been looking at Middle Earth, Hyborea, Faerûn, and Greyhawk by comparison (primarily because they're the other large, detailed fantasy worlds I'm familiar with ... see an upcoming entry for discussion of this), and the only one drawn on the same scale as Ethangea is Hyborea.

Check out Middle Earth projected onto Europe, for example, as presented here: [1]



If you superimpose Europe and Ethangea at a similar scale, you get this:



As you can see, I'm dealing with what Michael Palin might call "Huuuuuuuge ... tracts o' land!" So huge, in fact, that I'm considering a major re-think of my scale, which will wreak havoc on my thoughts about weather patterns, and might re-shape where the deserts and fertile areas are. The top of the southern landmass should be at most parallel with the southern tip of the Red Sea.[2]

-The Gneech

[1] From A Meridional Grid on the Middle-Earth Map, by Lalaith.

[2] Looking at Europe and North America superimposed like this always provokes the same reaction in me: "England is at the same latitude as Hudson Bay? That's nuts! Don't they know it's COLD up there??? I thought England was a temperate area! Paris on par with Vancouver? And what's this nonsense about Egypt and Texas being at roughly the same place? Either Europe is too ding-dang far north, or North America is too ding-dang far south!"

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

The URL for the webpage that has the Middle Earth meridional map is:

http://people.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~lalaith/Tolkien/Grid.html (http://people.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~lalaith/Tolkien/Grid.html) ... which got lost in the error post. :P