Building the world of Galesia
After so many years of thinking about my constructed world, I find myself at the very beginning. Almost no geography, very vague concept of history, etc. It was easy to make maps when I was a kid. The concept was clear - I always wanted to make variations of tolkienistic worlds and I made a lot of them. But now don't want to bake empty worlds like pies, I want to make THE world. So back in 2012 I took the best parts out of at least 3 worlds, mixed them together and formed the map of Aralor. And then I got stuck.
This year I finally realised that I do have some important differences in worldview with Tolkien. I don't like how Tolkien dealt with Feanor. Sadly, there's too much of "Repent, you sinners!" in Silmarillion for me. I always supported Feanor's rebellion and I want this story to be told correctly!I do want to have the "tolkienistic north-west" in my world, but it won't be the center of it. I'm thinking about a civilization based on the ancient Greeks. For now I call them Galesians - and the world is Galesia. It sounds both like Galley and Galleon and Gallia - I like it!
These guys will be tied to themes of Feanor, Prometheus and Daedalus - surpassing the gods, learning and technology, etc. There probably will be exagerrations of technology on the brink of steampunk or even some magic on the brink of the Prometheus mythology.
Map-wise, this means I need a proper MEDITERRANEAN! And I've never made analogues of it. What's worse, the Mediterranean is probably one of the regions with the most complex tectonics. (Look at all those small plates crushed between Africa and Europe!) And I'd like to proceed with at least slightly plausible tectonics model.
So, I've installed G.Plates - and now I can use it as a newb - as a tool for drawing on a globe.I made a rough sketch.
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1. RIFT OR COLLISION
It seems that when continents break apart, they tend to do it along very accurate lines. Look at the red sea. Look at all the borders of Africa! Look at India and S.America (and N.America)! So no continental rift would probably create anything like the mediterranean. What I need is a collision - and what's the worst, a collision between 2 major continents with several minor plates caught in between. Maybe some smaller rifts can also be present, though.
Just for the sake of exotic feel, I'd like my Mediterranean to run from the north to the south. Since there is not much space between the temperate zone and the jungle, let the sea curve a little bit to the south-east. This region is shown on the globe with a blue L-like figure with a broken yellow line inside (roughly from 50*N to 20*N).
NorthernHemisphere.png
2. I do not want to start completely from scratch, so I want to connect my Aralor map to this mediterranean region. So let's imagine that the northernmost point of the mediterranean is in the southeastern corner of my old Aralor map.
This means that my mediterranean region will have a connection to a large sea to the west.
3. I would also like an old mountain range to the east of the mediterranean, going through the steppes and deserts straight to the far east. These mountains can be old, geologically inactive (~Ural).
4. Now to cover the North. I decided I should stick to the traditions of both Tolkien and Martin and make the landmass extend into the far north. So I introduced the Arctica continent. This gives me 2 mountain ranges with something like a Baltic sea in between. The southern mountain range is inherited from the old Aralor map, while the northern one... ehm... it is needed to make the traditional feel of the "mountaineous north"
Frankly, I don't see how I could interpret these 2 long parallel mountain ranges in the north. Another tectonic plate, caught between Arctica and Tolkienland? And what about the sea right in the middle of the plate? Baltic Sea is an analogue, but the Baltic has its own history. Could a Baltic sea appear up there?
So, here is what I have:
MountainandPlate.jpg
(This is definetly not how I want my mediterranean to look like, it's only a sketch.)
I've drawn the old inactive eastern mountains with a dashed line.
The blue lines are the major plates boundaries.
Finally, I put a dashed line along the eastern edge of the steppes along the coast of the northeastern sea (~Okhotsk). I'm not sure if the plates will go in the right direction to create those mountains, but chances are high (it is the edge of the continent, after all). It would probably be nice if some mountains did exist there...
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Next step is to answer all the questions that I've listed here. I need to decide where the main plates are, what their direction is, which plate is subducted etc. And that will require making a global map, not a regional one. Right now I have a Pangea - and I'm not really interested in other continents, but I might need to put at least one continent somewhere in order to change the global climate... (I'll have to think about how the second continent is going to effect the ocean currents.) My goal is to make a dry continent with lots of deserts, steppes in the north and few forests - I don't want much jungle or taiga.
P.S. I think I should stick to using Gimp + GProjector instead of trying to understand GPlates. I probably won't be able to use it properly anyway...
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I'll try to fix it somehow...
Originally Posted by Jean-Abdel
