The “Great Lands” Master Map
Okay, here’s another map for the “Great Lands” setting. This one is focused more closely on the Great Lands themselves – that is, proto-Europe. The map was produced using Wonderdraft, with a carefully selected excerpt of the world map applied as a tracing image.
You can see that Europe hasn’t been fully assembled yet – with Africa still moving northward and rotating slightly counter-clockwise, the Italian and Balkan peninsulas haven’t merged in with the main portion of the continent. You can also see that the Atlantic Ocean is a bit narrower in this epoch – that’s a piece of Greenland in the far northwest, and the Americas aren’t too far off the western edge of the map.
The “Sea Kingdom” is an ahistorical bit, a subcontinent springing up along the mid-Atlantic ridge. I need a Númenor-analogue, so there it is.
The most notable feature of this pseudo-Eocene world is the climate. The planet is a lot warmer and less arid than we’re accustomed to, and sea level is quite a bit higher. The Great Lands have a humid subtropical climate all the way up into parts of what will eventually be Scandinavia and Russia. Warm, wet summers, cool winters with occasional snow, and the natural biome is either dense deciduous forest or highland prairie. Only in the very far north do you start getting a humid continental climate, with cool summers and bitterly cold winters.
People living in the Great Lands are not going to look or dress like medieval Europeans – they’re going to be generally olive to dark brown in complexion, and they’ll tend to dress pretty lightly in the summertime. I suspect the Tremara (the pseudo-Indo-European people that my protagonists belong to) are going to rather resemble Indians (as in, people from the Indian subcontinent, not Native Americans).
This part of the world will be home to several hominid species at once, each analogous to one of the Standard Fantasy Races found in (e.g.) Dungeons & Dragons. “Common-folk” (humans) can be found just about everywhere on this map. “Elder-folk” (elves) mostly stick to the western Great Lands, and keep to themselves. “Smith-folk” (dwarves) set up holdfasts wherever there’s copper, tin, or iron ore to be found, especially in hilly or mountainous regions. “Sea-folk” (halflings) come from a set of tropical islands far to the east, although a fair number of them have traveled on Sea-Kingdom ships to settle in the Great Lands. “Nomad-folk” or skatoi (orcs) mostly hang out in the colder northern regions, although they like to go raiding into the Great Lands on land or by sea.
Developing lots of neat ideas for this new version of the setting. More to come!
