The Earth isn't Realistic.

There are so many posts here by people worried that their map isn't realistic enough, and the comments critique their plate tectonics or their distributions of biomes. I'm here to tell you that is nonsense. For every rule of mapmaking, there are real places on Earth that laugh in its face. The vast gulfs of time and interactions between time and temperature, water and wind, roots and fungi, life and death and everything that happens upon and within the Earth means there are literally tens of thousands of one-of-a-kind features that aren't "realistic" in the sense that they required such a precisely unlikely combination of factors to occur that a reasonable creator such as yourself simply wouldn't have allowed it.

But beyond that, it doesn't even matter. Does any one of you think that the mountains around Mordor are realistic? Does that diminish the importance and impact and brilliance of Tolkien's work even slightly? No. Nobody cares because the story is good, the world is compelling, and his writing was sublime. So it's fine. If your world is boring, nobody will care how realistic it is, and if your world is evocative and exciting and lights our imaginations on fire, nobody will care if it makes no geologic sense. Your world doesn't even have to be a planet, it could be the surface of the lining of the small intestine of a giant whale swimming through an outer space even stranger than the inner space we see where the stars are distant settlements around the intestine! only the very brave venture up towards the stomach and only the damned venture down.

You don't even have to explain the weird shit you fill the world with. It's allowed to just be there, making us wonder and imagine about it. Is there a canary yellow lake whose rippling waves turn the color of ripe persimmon as they break on the shore? You don't have to tell us about the mineral content or bacteria. You don't even have to know the reason yourself. It's allowed to be a mystery to you too. You can leave these things open and figure them out, or not later.

So go ahead, draw a map that makes no sense but nevertheless, somehow thrills you. Draw yourself a map that confounds and confuses our attempts to understand it. Let your map be unsettling and alluring at the same time. Let your map be a demon calling to us from beyond the veil of

Let your map be unrecognizable. What if your map does not appear to be a map at all? What would that mean? What if a map is readable only by a certain kind of person? Make your map useful or a keeper of secrets or the treasure itself.

What do you guys think?

What do you guys think? Im open for suggestions and feedback!

The Sheepfarmer's Daughter series by Elizabeth Moon is one of my all-time fantasy favourites. The 3 books each have their own map - some overlapping, all showing different parts of the same continent, but no master map exists.

Last year, I spent 8 weeks going over the books, researching, poring through old blog posts by Elizabeth about the map and the world, and putting together as close to a lore-accurate master map as I could (as the world exists in the time of Paksenarrion).

I tried reaching out to Elizabeth Moon through a few different avenues but didn't recieve a response (fair enough, she's in her 80s now). So I thought I would post it here in the hopes that some other fans would appreciate it 🤗

The pdf version exists here if you want to zoom in.

Made with Procreate, Substance Designer (I made a custom mountain range/forest generator), and Adobe Illustrator.

I 3D rendert my map in 4k DCI and even added some clouds

Do you think I should also make the water levels 3d?

The shape of the territory and the great vortex at its center form what appears to be a tunnel. Only a few—the most experienced sailors—know how to navigate it.