Concept Checking

[Jkaen]

Hey all, been a while since I posted here, as I got seconded out to our Cairo office, and no longer have a computer capable of much more than word processing.

Anyway, I am knocking round a concept for a world (well continent) and wanted to sense check things with you guys first.

Basic premise goes along the lines of:

Mountain ring sitting in ocean, various races living on the rock.
Large slab of rock magiced in to act as dam across opening in ring
Now trapped water magiced out.
races now free to expand onto new formed plains

From this point on I want the world to make as much sense as possible with no magic. Potential issues I see which I am not sure will cause problem are:

I have a river coming from the dam and forming a lake. Given this lake is below the water table is it possible to drain or will my river eventually drown everybody on the newly formed plains?

Can I logically only have 1 river on my plains?

I have no indigenous flora or fauna for my plains, assuming I bring these in from elsewhere also, is approx 1000 years a reasonable amount of time for things to establish like they had always been there?

Given fairly free reign over rock types am I ok assuming no seepage from the ocean to my plain?

[waldronate]

How big is the area? Consider the Black Sea basin (or Mediterranean). These two areas have been intermittently blocked off from the ocean over geologic history. Evaporation will then remove the water at some rate. As long as the rate of evaporation is greater than the rate of incoming water then the basin will remain dry.

You can have as many rivers entering the basin as you wish as long as they don't bring in more water than can evaporate. The interior will likely be very dry due to the rain shadow effect from the mountains, but the mountains will capture that moisture and convert it into rain in the mountains itself. The outside of the ring of mountains is likely to be fairly wet and might be where some tribes will prefer to live.

How far below sea level the interior end up being will influence temperature. Temperature gets hotter the lower in the atmosphere you get. The bottom of the empty Mediterranean basin, for example, was likely 20 degree hotter than the current sea level. This increased temperature would probably have resulted in a particularly nasty desert broken only by ribbons of green around the rivers falling into the basin and with a deadly hypersaline lake in the center.

[Jkaen]

Lets say black sea basin as a reasonable size approximation.

I did forget rivers flowing from the mountains I admit, although as you point out, most of those will be external (where I did not really want too many people living, will have to get my head round how to stop that).

Also forgot about evaporation, which helps me witht he 'where does the water go' problem.

Thanks for the help

[Jkaen]

Have worked up a first pass at the range itself, any comments or suggestions welcome.

My main worry is the mountains look to 'sausagey' in that the width doesn't wary enough, would be interested in hearing if people agree

[Will Phillips]

Before I throw my two cents in, I gotta ask two things: a. what's the scale of this map, and b. apart from the fantastic basis of the world, how realistic are you looking at it being?

[Jkaen]

Size: Black Sea Basin

Realism: Other than the 2 hits of sorcery I want it as realistic as possible

[Jkaen]

Ok, been playing around with mountin creation, and took the approach of making a whole lot of little ranges and then just moving them around till I had my circle. Still not convinced it looks natural though, anybody have any suggestions?

[Diamond]

I think if you gave each of the main 'sections' some more smaller spurs and splinter ranges, it might look more natural.

[waldronate]

It's also possible to piece together parts of DEMs and get an image that can be used for bump mapping (see attached).

[Jkaen]

sorry, DEMs?