The South Indies: Lemuria

[Klaus van der Kroft]

Hello, fellow mapping enthusiasts!

After finishing a series of alternate-history world maps for a roleplaying game I've been writing for some time, I started working on the last three landmasses that are entirely fictional, collectively known as the South Indies ("Indias Meridionales"): Lemuria in the South Indian Ocean, Mu on the South Pacific, and Hiva in the Central Pacific.

I started with Lemuria: the idea was to have this vast continent that joined Australia with Antarctica (as was one of the prevailing theories in the XVIII and early XIX centuries), but keeping most of Australia in place, fusing it into the larger landmass.

The intense red here shows the fictional land, while the faded one has the real surface:



And then after adding some colour and coastlines:



While I'm trying to ignore some of the more egregious climatic issues having such a big chunk of extra land would imply for the world at large (no more El Niño!), I tried to aim for a bit of realness: Lemuria is slowly splitting in the middle, creating the vast region of craggy mountains and deep, elongated lakes, which have allowed vegetation to expand inland, in contrast with the hot northern deserts and the cold southern wastelands. This region is inhabited by a series of Aboriginal-inspired cultures, in a more sophisticated degree of organisation that is just beginning to come into contact with the outside world, as the European trading companies have begun marching inland.

To the west the continent breaks up into a couple of big islands and multiple smaller ones; this region is called Lesser Lemuria, and is inhabited by all manners of megafauna (ie, ridiculously big creatures). Here's where you go for your King Kong and Godzilla extravaganza. As a result, this region, while fertile, is sparsely populated by humans; most of the locals remain in island-states surrounding the bigger, more perilous isles, after having sailed hundreds of years ago from India. The Great Powers have found it extremely hard to make their way in (as getting eaten often does), so they have started to rely on the more knowledgeable locals to understand the region.

To the east extends Cook's Bay, which separates Greater Lemuria from Mu (which is further east and comes in the next map, hopefully). A fragmented Maori-inspired group of civilisations inhabits the region sandwiched between the sea and the suspiciously unnatural mountains that make it nigh impossible to access Inner Mu; the great trading companies have been playing these peoples against each other (in the manner of Cortés and the Mexican nations) in a bid to dominate the region, while the local leaders eagerly await assistance from the mighty kingdoms of Hiva, far to the north. But no ship nor emissary has been seen.

The south is an unknown wasteland, growing colder and colder until the imposing glaciers of Antarctica cut far into the sky. Tales of mysterious civilisations and strange, oversized humans abound; there are legends of a Chinese fleet oddly trapped in the ice somehow, and of mad geniuses conducting their superscientific witchcraft in these trackless expanses.

Now working on distributing the territories among the various local and foreign nations, and naming stuff.