u/Leather-Lab2875

Hey this is my WIP map for my setting. Would love to know your feedback on the geography. Comment down below what you think abt the map.

For context, im making a sci fantasy setting, its set on the Earthlike homeworld of Enia. I have a few time periods of the same world that im fleshing out simultaneously. Rn, im working on a Neolithic/Bronze age one. But just keeping ideas in my head is difficult, i love geography and maps so ive made and remade maps for the setting many times already.

Ive redesigned this map 5 times in the past couple years and this is the latest one. I like the direction its going and its pretty much perfectly what i need imo but im still unsure. So i blocked in the mountains and made it look pretty but wanted to do the rivers and climate stuff after getting whatever feedback i can manage.

So a rundown on the images, no.1 is some places i thought you guys would find intresting. no.2 is continents, and no.3 is geography.

After that, we have a few things that make geography in this world weird. The big curved black lines are the spire vellum, ancient magical megawalls that are kilometres tall and make the great wall of china look like a sandcastle. They teleport to new areas randomly every few million years and work almost like giant trees, except the carbon polymer theyre made of is fireproof, blastproof and hard to tear off.

Then we have the Wyld. Its a long story, how it got there but the Wyld is the radiation from early humans activating an ancient space-time scrambling machine. The machine's original purpose would have been to alter space time on the ground as a last ditch defensive move against landing parties from space. The distortion would make satellite monitoring irrelevant for precise combat info where the distortion exists because while satellite info might say a precise forest is where the enemy is, the enemy will land and the land of the forest moved and where it used to be is a lake. Again, its a whole thing so aside from coasts or river valleys, you have to find and destroy the machines that cause the scrambling to get rid of the Wyld.

Ill stop myself from rambling now. Im looking for feedback and if you could spare the time, discussing this map, before i put down everything else cos i dont want to keep redoing things and making minor changes.

So if you can spare the time, let me know in the comments what you think of the map? if you want more info on anything, have any cool ideas in a similar vein that i could add, also do comment. Ill reply to the ones i can.

Thank you for reading:)

Ive redesigned this map 5 times in the past couple years and this is the latest one. I like the direction its going and its pretty much perfectly what i need imo but im still unsure. So i blocked in the mountains and made it look pretty but wanted to do the rivers and climate stuff after getting whatever feedback i can manage.

So a rundown on the images, no.1 is the geography with just mountains, no.2 is continents

After that, we have a few things that make geography in this world weird. Im adding those in case they factor in with any critiques you guys might have. The big curved black lines are the spire vellum, ancient magical megawalls that are kilometres tall and make the great wall of china look like a sandcastle. They teleport to new areas randomly every few million years and work almost like giant trees, except the carbon polymer theyre made of is fireproof, blastproof and hard to tear off.

Then we have the Wyld. Its a long story, how it got there but the Wyld is the radiation from early humans activating an ancient space-time scrambling machine. Again, its a whole thing so aside from coasts or river valleys, you have to find and destroy the machines that cause the scrambling to get rid of the Wyld and you cant really build anything permanent in the wyld. Build a house and it could disappear randomly next week basically.

Im basically looking for feedback and if you could spare the time, discussing this map, before i put down everything else cos i dont want to keep redoing things and making minor changes.

So if you can spare the time, let me know in the comments what you think of the map? if you want more info on anything, have any cool ideas in a similar vein that i could add, also do comment. Tysm.

Thank you for reading:)

So hey, i have this sci fantasy world and there is a continent thats an equivalent of the Americas smashed together. In the South America equivalent region, i wanted to have a rainforest thats stuck in time(not literally), where ferns, horsetails and fungal growths share space with flowering plants and where mammals and birds are the minority in an ecosystem dominated by insects, from arthropod pack hunters to giant herbivores that eat the trees themselves.

I want big scary insects as seen in images 1&2(these are just concepts btw, theyre just to show the vibe i want). The main reason why insects dont ever get this big irl is, according to what ik:

1. The inefficient respiration system of insects where they have no blood or blood vessels, just an internal soup w organs and they have holes all over the body for air to go directly in and out. This is why apparently they got huge in the Carboniferous when there was a lot more oxygen, that and the lack of competition which quickly changed.
2. They have exoskeletons which they need to molt out of when they grow which can get ridiculous or not feasible at large enough sizes.

And these 2 reasons are the core issue im having.

I decided to make a few sketches and chart the evolution of the biggest plausible insect omnivore i can think of to see if it was possible which are seen from images 3,4&5. Image 3 shows how this creature's evolution started w a neotenous caterpillar species taking to life as a detritivore on the forest floor.

Image 4 shows the creature having evolved a behaviour of making gambeson for itself, essentially using the same mechanism for pupa building to build a thick layer of silk wool around its soft body. The creature also has deveoped chitin on its legs and larger eyes. This one also shows how the wool works like tail shedding or loose skin in other animals with the insect able to tear itself free of a bird's grasp by tearing itself off the wool(admittedly a bit unclear from my sketch)

Image 5 is the final evolution with the creature growing very large and developing a caste system. The top image is a worker and the bottom is a queen and at this size, the creatures cant cover themselves in silk and so use juveniles of the species to thicken up. Someting i didnt mention is these guys have an intestine like tube system inside them that functins like a respiratory system and they can also use their little tail as an extra leg and that is also from where they produce silk from.

Also there are magical reasons that keep bird populations very limited in this part of my world, the mammals are small in number just due to competition from the insects. As im just starting worldbuilding on this region, im not thinking abt human introduced invasive species so basically, dont worry abt competition from non insects.

My question is, how, if at all, from a biological sense could insects get as big as in images 1&2? What changes would need to be made to circumvent their current limitations in getting to big sizes? Excited to hear ur ideas.

First time in Anbennar and very rusty at the game as a whole. Decided to play Wesdam, took the Lorent path by accident and didnt manage to finish the mission tree before the Empire of Anbennar formed. So just played the colonial game, formed Ardmiyya as a crown colony. I make a ridiculous amount of money and have a military in the top 10 by size, otherwise i think i messed up a lot of opportunities. How well do you think i did, any reccomendations for nations i should try out are welcome. I was thinking of Verne or Busilar...