u/Leather-Lab2875

Pretty casually, I've been persuing old maps of various time periods for the past few days. Can't sit down at the pc cos of a medical thing so to pass the time, decided to make a map in the meanwhile.

That's how I came up with this map for a section of a long term setting of mine. The region is themed after Korea and maritime East Asia so I decided to combine the aesthetic of more modern Korean world maps and the old European Ptolemaic world map. Intrested in feedback about if the combo worked here?

There's a bunch of lore so if you're interested just check out my post on r/worldbuilding. Don't want to clog this up with unnecessary background.

Thunder, typhoons, flooded tropical coasts, treacherous jungles, giant birds, ancient advanced ruins, crocodiles and Marsupials. This is the land known as Hosong-Xho(Ho-song-show) in the Proto-Haxyeen tongue. The Hosong-dha, Thunder sea, seperates it's two sections, West and East, on the continents of Rion and Shonai respectively.

Note: X is used here as a "sh" sound so look out for this when you spot it.

Note: Further info abt the specific images at the end. Sorry for making you scroll so much for it, can't make a pinned comment seemingly.

This a small section of my larger worldbuilding project called Project P Bronze, exploring the Bronze Age of a very different but familiar Eathlike planet called Enia. Refer to my previous [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuildersCorner/s/cWP2a2rzQ3) for info about setting specific stuff like the Wyld and Spire vellum, won't be explaining them here.

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The 2 major cultures of Hosong-Xho are the Haxyeen and the Dongobada, let's learn more abt each.

# 1. The Haxyeen 

The Haxyeen live in the Northwest coasts of Hosong-Xho, farming and forging bronze in poor mountainous lands and marshy cold islands. Where they live is called Haxtsan, land of the Haxyeen.

Despite these meagre circumstances, Haxyeen origin myth hints at a grand past, taking after a larger global mythical framework known as the Capitolean Monomyth.

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**The Mythical fall of Bodulan and the Storn curse**

Haxyeen myth says that Dracons once ruled the world as emissary kings of the Gods. But as the gods descended to war and man began to covet the thrones of Dracons, the creator god of the Haxyeen turned wild lions into human form, making the Mein-xho, lion headed ancestors of the Haxyeen who ruled all of Hosong-Xho from the capital of Bodulan.

In the West, a vast human empire overthrew their Dracons and pushed them to the sea. These men, through magic, made unholy offspring with lizards and ruled as crocodile headed tyrants. The Dracons of the East fled to Bodulan where the Mein-xho offered protection. When the Westmen came looking with their vast armies, to finally kill the Dracons, the Mein-xho declined and a battle ensued.

The Mein-xho were indecisive in their war and some of them wanted to kill the Dracons themselves, and this indecisiveness lost them the battle, the Mein-xho were all killed or forced to flee to the North, present day Haxtsan. The city of Bodulan was sacked and defiled and then occupied, the occupiers being the supposed ancestors of the neighbouring Dongobadan people.

The Dracons worked a powerful magic curse, endless typhoons, storms and tsunamis which sank the Western lands, leaving a thousand scattered Islands in its wake and endless thundering storms, a curse on both the indecisive Mein-xho and the genocidal Westmen. With that, the Dracons retreated into the sea and never came back, the mortal world descending to war and barbarism.

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The Haxyeen people hold themselves strictly to tradition, myth and superstitions. They dress in simple clothing and have "draconic" social rules about the most minor things. A strong culture of patriarchal nobility, a hereditary shamanic class and social stratification is also fast emerging.

They wear robe like jackets that hang loose at the wrists at the wrists and are tied at the stomach with a thread or belt. Tight pants with wide bottoms are worn along with wooden or leather sandals. A variety of hats of unique shapes are worn with the nobility wearing extra feathers on their hats, exotic patternsnlike tigerskins, etc. Hair is worn in tight buns, short ponytails or other patterns where the hair is short. Facial hair is kept shaved and exclusively the nobility will grow moustaches. Women's clothing is generally the same but a lot more flowy, tightly controlled and impractical for everyday life, keeping to the patriarchal intention of keeping women in the home tho lower social classes ignore these rules for convenience.

The Haxyeen make a living by fishing and as of late, farming rice and wheat. Their future fate looks promising.

Especially the emerging kingdoms of Tsisha and Xindhan have bright futures. The Northern kingdom of Dotseo, who control passes through the mountains to the Western steppe beyond, stand to benefit the most. The steppe peoples have learned to tame a great bird the like of which is only otherwise native to Shonai. The steppe people have learned to use it for meat, feathers and labour and very soon they will learn that the beast is useful in war when hitched to a chariot. In the case of such an event, the first of the Haxyeen to benefit or fall to ruins would be the Xuadhu, possible wyvernlords of the Thunder Coast.

# 2. The Dongobada

Dongobada means "crocodile people" in their own language. They live on both coasts of the Hosong-Xho and the islands inbetween, fishing, trading, working copper and learning to farm rice. This land itself, they call, Dongo-Milanda, "where the crocodile swims".

Dongobada myth is more sparse and no singular mythological tradition exists as with the Haxyeen. The broad throughline is that, at the origin of the world, the gods made crocodiles to rule the seas, the rest of humanity to rule the land and the Dongobada to rule the borders between the two. The Dongobada have a very complex tribe specific oral traditions which they take very seriously. 

A myth of a revered ancestor slaying dragons has gained prominence as of late, perhaps, something that trade routes from Eastern Shonai have brought.

The Dongobada are almost an opposite of the Haxyeen. Social life revolves around warrior and secret societies but aside from the esoteric nature of these, very little social stratification exists. A strong democratic culture exists among selecting chiefs. Aside from the ritual context or the context of activities like hunting, fishing or the secret societies, there are very little social rules, especially around dress. 

Still, the common dress is relatively open, single piece robe like dresses with wide cuffs, tied much lower at the waist. The robe extends upto the knee or up to the ankles for adult women. Underneath, just a loincloth is worn. Hair is worn is loose but buns and patterns and kept, long but trimmed. Long trimmed or untrimmed beards or moustaches and other facial hair is quite common.

The chieftains of tribes keep their hair and facial hair short and trimmed and avoid full beards, preferring other short styles without sideburns.

Simple boots with thin soles are often worn to avoid foot infections while on ships and in water and to avoid leeches in the feet.

The Dongobada farm rice and craft copper but still make heavy use of stone. This is because they use bronze tools acquired from Shonai via trade. However, if they learn to work bronze, their already urbanising settlements are already on track to build organised civilisation.

The Dongobada kingdoms of Bodulan, Bangdan and Gudungan especially are lining up to urbanised heavily in the coming centuries. 

Bodulan especially, with their capital city of the same name, has a lot of ancient technology and ruins in its vicinity from the site of an ancient ruined city that they could use, if the horrors contained within the ruins and it's Wyld pocket don't tear them apart first.

The very same ancient city was perhaps the seat of the Mein-xho of the Haxyeen myth.

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Image 1: The Hoshodho map of the Hosong-Xho region, a priceless artifact commissioned by a later Haxyeen king. The projection and geography is highly inaccurate outside of the core region depicted and many fanciful monsters are illustrated as well.

Image 2: Modern recreation of the map showing archaeological sites identified as potential human settlements. Names used are translated from the map. Tribal affiliation of these sites are also drawn from the map with some historical backing.

Image 3: Illustrations of Haxyeen clothing of the time for nobles, women and the unisex garments of lower classes.

Image 4: Illustrations of Dongobadan clothing of the time for the chieftains, women and ordinary tribesmen.

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A few notes on image 1: The black wall like structures depicted correspond to the spire vellum(see [previous post](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuildersCorner/s/cWP2a2rzQ3)), the wind pattern in the Southeast ocean can be translated as typhoon winds, the wave drawn in the centre of the map seems to denote tsunamis. Finally, except for the wyvern bird in the Western corner, other monstrous illustrations don't correspond to anything real as far as we know.

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...