New here, and I have some questions!

[DrewsBrew]

Hello all,

I'm working on a graphic novel in the fantasy genre and I am in the world building stage at the moment. The thing is, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to creating maps and land masses. Design work isn't usually an issue for me, but how exactly do you go about designing continents? Especially continents that are realistic and believable? I guess it would be helpful to have some basic rules to follow in terms of how to design the shape of continents, how to decide where the mountains go, etc. Those are the two main areas I seem to be stuck on.

Also, I have a more specific question, though, I'm not sure if this is the right place for it, but here goes! I don't know a great deal about military history (especially in the ancient world) and I am looking for examples of cities that were never successfully sieged due to natural defenses. If I could get a few examples, that would be great. I'm looking for more than the obvious 'cities/castles on top of mountains were harder to siege'; where there cities in other types of terrain (snow, desert, forest, etc.) that were also hard to siege because of the terrain?

Thanks for anyone who takes the time to read this and respond!

[niekell]

Hello DrewsBrew,
Welcome to Cartographer's Guild!
World building is a massive and complex topic. The way I see it you have a large set of choices to make about how you go forward with developing the world. From the simple where it looks right at this point in time, to the complex where you can tell someone how mountains formed and which tectonic plates have moved where since the world's crust became stable. There are a number of software tools which will throw out randomly generated world maps (Fractal Mapper for instance) but I'm not sure how much history they take into account. I'd be tempted to go the manual route of super-continent + tectonic activity + time(erosion) = current landmasses. This way you can tell where mountains will be due to plates pressing up against one another. Mountains can also be formed by tectonic hot-spots creating active volcanic mountain ranges.
As for the places which have never been besieged due to natural defenses... I would think it would be a game of disincentives where the possibility of a successful siege was so slim that no-one felt inclined to bother with the attempt in the first place. The problem with that is you don't (generally) get history written about sieges that never took place. I think you're more likely to find historical references to places which resisted siege for extended periods (or altogether) as that would be a noteworthy event. What are you trying to glean from such information if you don't mind me asking?
Best wishes, niekell.

[Korash]

Ahhhh yesss...the age old question of to tectonic or Not to tectonic... and yes it is a real question.

I would say that it all depends on your scale for your GN. For example, if you are only going to travel over a small portion of the world, I would suggest that you would only need one or two mountain ranges and that would NOT require going through all the trouble of a full on tectonic study of the planet. If however, the novel does indeed cover the planet or a vast proportion of it, I then say that you should at least give a nod to one. Even then, I would question if you would really need to go too far into it. I would suggest looking at maps of Earth and figure out places that are similar to what you want to have on your planet and place stuff accordingly. You might get some things wrong, tectonically speaking, but would be close enough that only the real hard core detail people would pick up on it.

That is my 2 cents anyway,

And Welcome to The Guild, The Mappiest Place on the Web

[Diamond]

Hey Drew, welcome to the Guild! I can't give you much help on tectonics, but I do have some 'hard to besiege' samples:

- Murud Janjira, an island sea fort off the coast of India, south of Mumbai. A really pretty place!

- Constantinople (the obvious answer). Besieged dozens of times (if not more), only sacked twice.

- Mt. St Michel in Normandy. Another sea fort (sort of); inaccessible for most of the day due to quicksand/mud/shallows surrounding it, impossible to bring ships in close for the same reason.

[DrewsBrew]

Thanks for the replies, they were helpful and sorry for the late response... I thought I'd get an e-mail notification... Doh! My bad. Anyway, niekell, the main reason why I asked about the 'never besieged cities' is because there is a region of the world that I wanted to have a lot of natural defenses, and occupied by a very militaristic people. So, in terms of natural defenses, I'm looking for real life examples to base at least some of the cities on.
Korash, the GN actually will cover the whole world, but just not right away. I'm starting small and working my way outward in terms of storytelling. But I hope to make this a series, and I'm even toying with the idea of making a game as well. So, eventually, I'll have to have and entire world map and I'm trying to get that done sooner rather than later.
And thanks for those examples of cities you provided, Diamond, they were very helpful! Thanks again guys!