Pseudo-Roman fantasy world

[Ares96]

Hello there.

I've been working fertively on a novel set in a fantasy world vaguely analogous to ancient Rome and the Silk Road, dealing with a time equivalent to the Crisis of the Third Century, and I'm trying to map it. I have nigh-on zero experience with fantasy mapping, so I thought posting it here might net me some useful advice and criticism.

TTD-worldhand-v2.jpg

As you can tell, it's loosely analogous to Europe, but only loosely. You've got the Inland Sea in the middle of everything (well, certainly as the not-Romans would see it) with not-Egypt, the cradle of civilization, on its eastern end, the fertile regions around not-Rome in the northwest and a more mountainous arid region in the southwest. North of all of this is a vague cultural region I'm thus far only calling "the North" (whereas they refer to the not-Roman Empire as the Southmarch, as opposed to the Northmarch which is the area north of their own limits of settlement - as you may be able to tell from the abnormally high level of detail, I've brought the region in wholesale from a previous universe of mine), and east of it, the loosely-governed cultural sphere of not-Russia exists entirely separate from the Empire, which is all just as well because the Empire isn't particularly interested in it anyway.

East of that, which I haven't mapped yet, a series of unstable city-states and tribal confederacies lie along the roadways connecting the Empire with not-China in the east. That's beginning to change though, as the city-state of not-Palmyra/Samarkand, formerly allied to Rome, is rising to hegemony in the area. Again though, I haven't mapped any of this, so I expect more details would come when it shows up on the map.

Now, I've started out drawing this by hand - this is mostly because it's the only way I know how for things I can't trace off existing maps. Somehow it feels sub-par when I do it on the computer. That said, I may go on to turn this into a computer-drawn map as it progresses.

[Diamond]

Well, I like the layout so far. I especially like the mountains around the southern part of the inland sea - that looks unusual and cool.

[Ares96]

Well, I like the layout so far. I especially like the mountains around the southern part of the inland sea - that looks unusual and cool.

Interesting that you should say that, because that almost immediately struck me as unrealistic - I think I might get rid of the part south of *Egypt and replace it with desert.

[acrosome]

Yeah, I'd say keep the totally-not-the-Atlas mountains, but get rid of the others along the southeastern totally-not-the-Mediterranean. Your totally-not-Egypt will need a HUGE river that seasonally floods if you want to keep the motif of a "breadbasket", and it needs to be a hydraulic empire of some sort. And the terrain needs to be flat, so that it floods. On Earth the Nile is fed by massive seasonal rains on the highlands far, far to the south near the equator. In fact, the reason that the Nile flooded was a bit of a mystery to the Egyptians, thus their belief that "the gods must be doing it."

If OTOH you mean to have your totally-not-Egypt where I would put totally-not-the-Levant, then assuming that the climate is similar I have a hard time imagining a "breadbasket" there. Again, unless you have a seasonally flooding river. If the climate differs, though, go for it.

Your rivers pass. (It is common for neophytes to try to do impossible things with rivers.) The only oddity I see is the one that seems to go uphill to cross the totally-not-the-Atlas mountains. But I suppose that could be a water gap, or just an artifact of how things are drawn to such low resolution at this scale.

[Ares96]

The idea for not-Egypt was for it to be not-Mesopotamia as well, and not-Rome's main foe and Hegelian antithesis during its rise (so not-Carthage in this specific sense too). I hadn't really thought about its precise climate, although you do have a point about the Nile floods - the problem is I'll have drawn myself into a corner, since the rivers go east and the setting depends on having trade to the east. That said, I don't see why the Persian Gulf needs to exist in exactly the same way.

[Ares96]

Had an idea to model the culture where Mesopotamia would be not on Egypt but on a slightly smaller version of China - results pictured below.

TTD-worldhand-v3.jpg

I'm being a bit hampered at this point by my inability to draw less dramatic differences in altitude - does anyone have any tricks for this?