Working on the map for my fantasy novel, Blood and Amber

[Marscaleb]

From a purely cultural point of view - I feel like the names and 'feel' of the nations too closely mirror the real world. If Eurasia is flipped, did the Huns and Magyars and Goths etc immigrate west to east? It would seem so, just based purely on the names. Was there a 'Roman' Empire? It seems so - again based on names and general distribution of nations.

Where is Australia? Same place as our world? Where are the Americas? Same place, same orientation as our world? Greenland? Greenland isn't shown on your map, but if it is east of Iceland (and it seems that it must be, just based on the name Iceland), it's far enough north that it might actually be part of the North American landmass, or at least within a short sailing distance of it. How did that effect the course of colonization, and everything that came after? I guess what I'm trying to say is that if it was me, I'd have an easier time believing in this map if there were no cultural allegories at all OR if you had just come up with a completely new world OR if you'd just made it a straight-up alternate history.

This is the kind of feedback I want, but I need to frame this in a proper context. My last post was held for moderation (since I'm new here) and I think your reply was posted before my last post was visible. Should I take your comment as a response to my later version, where I mentioned the context and rules for this map?
That is to say, do your grievances about the mirrored geometry still hold up even for a story explicitly about a character originally from our world?

As a side note about the names, when I had posted this map on a different site, I got a lot of people complaining about the similarities between names on my map to names in the real world. And honestly, I was very surprised about (most) of the ones that people called out.
Some of these names (at least one in particular) involved me going relatively deep into history and shifting a focus on some of the dominant tribes/peoples that settled an area, forming some alt-history origins. Others involved a lighter dive into the etymology and a little bit of wikipedia reading. So I'm well aware there's a bit of a mix in the quality of these names. I would appreciate any thoughts about which ones work and which ones do not.

Considering the mirrored position of the continents the climate would be different, you wouldn't have a mediterranean basin there but probably a more subtropical climate due to the warm currents that would happen in place of the cold ones of the atlantic .

I'm not sure how much water gets in through the strait of Gibraltar; I don't think the Mediterranean would be impacted that severely by a warmer Atlantic.

At any rate, I've actually found some computer models people have made for a retrograde Earth, which functionally is the same thing as a mirrored Earth. I'm not sure I trust them 100%, but they are useful.
But hey, feel free to share your thoughts on what would change. I'm not treating those models as gospel, so I'm fine with hearing what other people think would happen.

[Naima]

I am not sure I follow why that would be the case.

because of the currents warmness, on the east to west side currents they same height would be warmer.

ocean.currents.jpg

[Naima]

This is the kind of feedback I want, but I need to frame this in a proper context. My last post was held for moderation (since I'm new here) and I think your reply was posted before my last post was visible. Should I take your comment as a response to my later version, where I mentioned the context and rules for this map?
That is to say, do your grievances about the mirrored geometry still hold up even for a story explicitly about a character originally from our world?

As a side note about the names, when I had posted this map on a different site, I got a lot of people complaining about the similarities between names on my map to names in the real world. And honestly, I was very surprised about (most) of the ones that people called out.
Some of these names (at least one in particular) involved me going relatively deep into history and shifting a focus on some of the dominant tribes/peoples that settled an area, forming some alt-history origins. Others involved a lighter dive into the etymology and a little bit of wikipedia reading. So I'm well aware there's a bit of a mix in the quality of these names. I would appreciate any thoughts about which ones work and which ones do not.


I'm not sure how much water gets in through the strait of Gibraltar; I don't think the Mediterranean would be impacted that severely by a warmer Atlantic.

At any rate, I've actually found some computer models people have made for a retrograde Earth, which functionally is the same thing as a mirrored Earth. I'm not sure I trust them 100%, but they are useful.
But hey, feel free to share your thoughts on what would change. I'm not treating those models as gospel, so I'm fine with hearing what other people think would happen.

retrograde means it spins opposite side, meaning sun rises to west and sunsets to the east, this would invert currents direction on the horizontal side but if you also mirror the landscape then you would have same situation with mediterranean climate there.

[Redrobes]

because of the currents warmness, on the east to west side currents they same height would be warmer.

Does that assume that the planet is spinning in the same direction though. If it were flipped then wouldn't the east west thing swap too ?

[Diamond]

This is the kind of feedback I want, but I need to frame this in a proper context. My last post was held for moderation (since I'm new here) and I think your reply was posted before my last post was visible. Should I take your comment as a response to my later version, where I mentioned the context and rules for this map?
That is to say, do your grievances about the mirrored geometry still hold up even for a story explicitly about a character originally from our world?

No, it was in response to your after-moderation post. I mean, maybe I'd pick up on it a little sooner than other people because I'm a history buff (especially Roman and pre-Roman civilizations), but what I'm getting at is the migration patterns and settlements of this world are going to be vastly different because of the differing weather and ocean currents and mountain range placement as it effects weather patterns, and... you get what I'm saying.

[Naima]

If the world is retrograde the effects inverse yes.

[Marscaleb]

I realized that if there was a bit of an archipelago between Norway and Britain, it would be more feasible for all that territory to be one country.



I like this development; I'm leaning more toward making more various changes to the geography, but for story reasons I still need to make it look similar to our world.
But now does this make the portions that look a lot like our world out-of-place? Like how the Swedish coast still looks like our world, even though Norway connects with Scotland, does that seem too odd? I need to figure out how much I keep and how much I change.

[Marscaleb]

I think I've landed at a good amount of the geography to alter.
A couple easily-noticeable changes, a few bits here and there that are just off, and s good chunk of the coastlines are just a bit different, while the rest is the same. Maybe it's just because I've been staring at this for too long, but I feel like I've struck a nice balance.

I've been reworking the names. I've put them into a similar boat. Some are completely different, other have varying degrees of how similar they sound to historical alternatives. Maybe I need to make a few more that use the same name.

I like what I have here. Now I need to bury this, forget about it, and come back to it in a few months and see how I feel about it with fresh eyes.

I welcome any final thoughts and feedback; those are things I'd like to weigh when I have the fresh eyes.

[Marscaleb]

It's been a while, but after coming back to my map with fresh eyes, I understood better a few things I wanted out of it. I didn't make a lot of changes, but here is the latest version. (Sans a few changes I made to the coast of Africa.)

So the next thing I wanted to do was a map for alternate-Africa, so I could work out who owned what after the scramble. Also, a couple of these countries are mentioned in the story so I wanted to show them.
But man oh man, I'm getting burnt-out working on this Africa map. I need to take a break, so I thought I'd share what I have so far and see what comments others have. This version is unfinished and includes my notes.

So, one of the critical differences between this world and ours is that Northern Africa gets a lot more rain. The far East coast is pretty tropical, even swampy, but it fades out into being woodland, and then prairie, and finally semi-arid by the time it reaches the red sea. (The retrograde models suggest it should be green all the way past the middle East, but I'm taking some liberties.) I've been trying to think of how this would impact things, and I started thinking it meant that Europe had a longer history of interaction with Africa, and perhaps they had some nations whose sovereignty they recognized and did some commerce with; I'll even write them as having the same religion in some cases (broadly speaking).
I was thinking Almor once had a mighty empire in that quadrant, but after it collapsed European countries began erecting and expanding colonies.
But this idea left me uncertain about how exactly they go about an African scramble. Are they using existing or old borders, or are they drawing straight lines? I tried to make more "Natural" borders around Almor, but I'm not sure how many countries I should have, how many should be sovereign and how many are tribal regions easily subjugated by others?
And somehow, drawing up a scramble like this just rubs me the wrong way. I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired.

I'd appreciate your thoughts, not just on the map but on the world-building. For now, I need to take a break.

Oh yeah, and I was thinking of some names for the continents. I decided to go with ones that people can easily decode in the text, so I'm looking at: Eusar, Afritar, and Sasia. Thoughts?