Map 40 - Ondeet

[jbgibson]

From The Guildworld Almanac of Geographical Trivia and Vital Knowledge, e.c.1405 edition

Several centuries ago when people from the south and east traveled here, they would ask "what do you call this place?" The locals spoke a language with very uncommon orthography - written letters and combinations sounded a lot different than much of the rest of the continent. Too, the place names were many-syllable constructs. So a typical answer might be "one says Pond'TAR-lay-chicz-ah-noscz-IE-lay-tor, even though you see it spelled like it is Pehntor Leigncika Nozeleeghtur". This would be rattled off quickly and would make little sense to a non-native, and the bulk of the utterance would seem unpronounceable. But the phrase always started "One says..." so the term for the whole region became just that (mercifully short and pronounceable) -- "Ondeet". Today's Ondeetien people speak a greatly different tongue, so the old mistake doesn't even seem unusual to the locals.


The old tongue was sort of like our French... SORT OF, so don't think my labeling wrong. It's part Old Ondeet, and Latter Ondeet and Middle Ondeet are each different as well. Meanings may not be at all what they seem. But if you speak a little French, you will be able to pronounce places here. *I* certainly am not going to correct you!

As for the land itself - when the lot was cast I received this territory #40 that's a red tint below. Wanting to see clearly what lay across the modest ocean to the west I split and rejoined the world map to be centered on Ondeet, and I sketched in some climate clues. The orange tint bands would likely be drier than average, and the green ones wetter. Super-generalized prevailing winds are the arrows. This is half the width of the Standard Guildworld World Map, since 8000x4000 tends to make my laptop balk.



Ondeet stretches from maybe 25 to 70 degrees latitude - well longer than Chile. Our northern cape is similar to the northern edge of Iceland or Norway. Indeed - here's an overlay of Guildworld with Earth, showing biomes.



Not that ANY of us are bound to take notice of the similarities - the comparison is merely to spark ideas. For instance a lot of grain would figure into one cultural idea I have for Ondeet, and it looks perfectly plausible for my central area to be decently well watered, trailing off to maybe grasslands at the south. I wouldn't put desert on my east border unless Amonite wanted 37 to be dry along there too. It would make sense for there to be a warm current like Earth's Gulf Stream pushing mild climate further up my east coast than otherwise might be expected - maybe the coastal areas are more like the UK and Ireland than Canada's Newfoundland. The winds make it look like a triangle trade route for sailing ships would work, southerly along [What Shall We Call This Continent?!?], west toward Shireland or Kettlelea, then up past Khagramor to home.

[jbgibson]

Aaaaaaand now I see the world grew and the climate & winds would be different. That's ok - first iteration of anything is throwaway anyhow, right? :-)

Oooooh, and phantom lands to the west, ready to sprout out of the sea at the slightest provocation. That'll make my sailors work a LOT harder to get ahold of Shireland leaf or Sliss'Ash'Schtuvian Dragonwing hides.... SPLOOOOOOSH. Okay, there comes a southern landmass. The one right next door I guess will wait till there are prospective tenants. Okie doke - I'll leave my peoples' navy and trade fleet nice and vague for now.
Soooo - I guess I'll tinker a similar overlay at this world size. I agree with Robbie - to each his own about climate and weather - I'm just needing some rationale to make my brain work right about my own leetle land :-). Anyone else's mileage may vary.

[J.Edward]

Sorry about that JB. I'm having to hand draw all the new lands as we get more people that wish to join.
So it complicates things. Time is not an infinite commodity, so some lands have yet to manifest, and should the need not arise, may not manifest.
I imagine I'll know that in a few days. We've been getting about 2 to 3 requests a day so far, but that's bound to trickle off... eventually.. right?

[jbgibson]

So here's a bland start with accurate lat/lon grid and a selection of scales. These are accurate (bottom to top) at the equator (well off the bottom of the map - that southernmost gridline is 30 N), 32 N, 49 N, and 67 N. I'll stick a copy in the main world thread if anybody wants to use them. The equatorial scale is also accurate north-south everywhere.

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That said, after enjoying the oriental vibe Goombac has going with Wuqiong, I will be going for something like the delightful so-called Gabor Map that is explained nicely in Gari Ledyard's paper. Long story short, it is the only known example of an early Korean map labeled in Hangul instead of classical Chinese (the court/intellectual language of Choson at the time). Go look at the linked jpg - I can't tell if it's public domain so I suspect it isn't and I won't reproduce it in its entirety. Here's a snip though:



Those are mountains i can probably pull off :-). And if anything the rivers will be harder by their roughness. This map and dozens like it make me wonder if all such were hand-made instead of printed. On some the circles (place indicators) are colored in, say, by province or by function (naval base/port). On this Gabor map their rims were tinted - faded to almost sameness. A nice effect of tinting the circles by province was it eliminated the need to draw lines for borders - letting roads and mountain ridgelines stand out. Korea is MOSTLY mountains; any real topo symbology would overwhelm the view.

So yeah - my folks have a strong infusion of the Chinese-analog society to the SW. Too, I'm claiming the dwarves elsewhere on {whatever fine name we're calling this continent} have cousins on Ondeet.

Hangul is super-phonetic - I could maybe name stuff both in roman script and hmmmm ... call it Ondeet-Dwarven :-). Or to be honest, I could throw anything in and it would be plausible to 99 & 44/100 of the Guild :-).

[Goombac]

Glad I could be of some inspiration, can't wait to see what you come up with! And your Ondeet dwarves sound really interesting too, looking forward to some lore.

[jbgibson]

Don't have a tablet. Tried drawing mountains with mouse - not too good. Tried drawing with a Sharpie and scanning - somewhat better. Now I have to decide if it's worth it to get the sizes more consistent, or if I can call the size differences a 'feature' not a 'defect' :-).

Don't have the rings with Hangul labels right, but I've proved I can get fairly small and still be legible - so long as two-syllable names will do. Hmmmm. We'll say the city Hyeongmangieup-si is always Hyeong-si for short. Again - a feature not a defect.

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[Abu Lafia]

That is a great idea you're working on jbgibson. The "Gabor map" is a wonderful piece to take as inspiration. The mountains and ring-labels look very promising already. If the Mountains in the west and in the south are the ones scanned, i'd agree, they look more "worn" like the original mountains on the gabor-map (maybe duplicating the layer in the end to darken them a bit more?), though i think with tweaking your brush a bit you could come up with a similar effect using the mouse. I wonder how it'll look like with a parchment background. Also the etymological excursus is really fun and interesting. Keep up the good work!

[Chashio]

Keep the size difference on the mountains - that's part of the style map you're referencing and I think it gives a great feeling to the map and a sense of personal perspective on the landscape / terrain. Having them all equal in size would be too uniform. I like how this is coming along.

[jbgibson]

Each of our maps will be snipped out to mosaic one large world map. I have fun reconciling neighbors' differing maps though - probably been doing that in group worldbuilding context for 18 years. So as a tool for me (and any neighbors that want to do similar reconciling/ cooperative border-work!) I've stitched together this from Ondeet and five neighbors. I can't spread too far or I'll crash my computer :-). Goombac, Carnifex, and Will - I'm afraid downsizing your maps to puzzle-fit with Ondeet didn't do your marvelous work any favors - sorry! But it's enough for me to "accurately" lay in mountains and rivers outside my borders. My own map won't be anywhere near as broad as this patchwork reference, but I couldn't bear to slice your work in half to show only what some narrow-minded Ondeetien cartographer cares about!

Amonite, since your features are still vague I'll propose my best understanding of your layout. One thing I can't tell is which direction those Southwestern lakes drain into the sea - north past Ondeet/Wuqiong, or southwards?

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Obviously I've got oodles of mountains, rivers, city-rings yet to do. I am constantly in amazement of how fast some of you work!

And thanks, Abu Lafia & Chashio!

[Redrobes]

You know that we have the composite map in the sticky on this topic.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...l=1#post297895