The South Indies: Mu and the Hivan Archipelago
Hello once again!
As part of the series of regional maps I'm making for a homebrewed RPG set in a fictional XIX century (the most recent entry being Lemuria), I've begun working on the seventh of such pieces, this time focusing on the eastern half of the so-called South Indies: the legendary islands of Hiva and the mysterious, nigh-inaccessible continent of Mu.
Hiva is vaguely based on the Polynesian legends of their mythological birthplace, sometimes also called Hawaiki. In this particular version, Hiva is not just real, but a thriving subcontinent populated my multiple realms, currently caught in a sort of cold-war caused by a succession crisis and the alarming sinking (as in "going underwater right this moment") of a very important territory. While not entirely unknown to the outside world, contact with Hiva only truly began with Cook's expedition in the late XVIII century, so there's still a lot of doubt and guesswork surrounding these civilisations.
Mu, on the other hand, has two overall subdivisions: the parts that can be visited, and the parts no one has any idea how to access. Immense sections of its mainland are walled-off by seemingly impossible mountain ranges, and whatever is going on beyond them is anyone's guess; those who try to reach it tend to disappear, with only a few exceptions speaking of changing landscapes, distances that don't seem to make any sense, and time that behaves in manners altogether unnatural. That Cook returned from a trip into the mostly-uncharted Gulf of St. Gaspar in southern Mu carrying what appeared to be both Mesoamerican and Nubian relics hasn't really helped at all.
Despite this, the western, nicer reaches of Mu are populated by a wide selection of Polynesian cultures, though many are starting to bear the brunt of the Great Trading Companies' voracious hunger, which have taken advantage of the political turmoil caused by the crisis up in Hiva (from where the pre-eminent regional powers hail) to start playing the smaller local realms against each other.
Okay so, this is the first draft of the continent, which occupies a big chunk of the South Pacific. Hiva is the multitudinous archipelago around the top, while Mu corresponds to the larger chunks of land that extend between that and Antarctica. The consensus is still out there regarding where one ends and the other begins, since most of this land remains unexplored, even to the locals.
Since this part of the world had very little real land to begin with, most of the territory is made up from scratch, but trying to preserve the few islands available (most of New Zealand can be spotted in western Mu).
I tried to somewhat simulate the distortion caused by this projection by making the southernmost coastlines simpler and more elongated along their east-west axis. I'm not sure how it'll look once I add more emphasis, though, so I'll have to keep an eye out for that.
Does it seem to make sense?
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