Extrasolar colony world

[jshoer]

I've had this idea slowly developing for some time, and I realize I have a question that I could use the community's help with, so I'm making a WIP thread!

The idea is to make a map of a future colony world in another star system, a la Allen Steele's Coyote or John Scalzi's Old Man's War series (though without the alien adversaries). I will do this by hand because I just like that better, and style is still a little up in the air, though obviously I will try to put more sci-fi elements into it than fantastical elements. The map will depict the time just over 300 years after arrival (AA). I've plotted out a bunch of initial world-building, to try and model the populations of each settlement by 400 AA. Basically, there's an exponential growth from the natural birthrate at slightly varying rates in different locations. I also hit the populations with a couple settlement collapses, plagues, and a major war - though the colonists are generally too busy adapting to life on another world to have many wars. By 400 AA, the population is 303,130 people - from an initial generational ark carrying 8000 aspiring settlers at the time of landing.

The world has been unsupported since the original landing. After initial surveys, within about 50 years after arrival there are no more active orbiting spacecraft relaying information to the colonists. They have plenty of data and technology; but they are limited to the resources they can find on the planet. (Rare Earth metals are particularly troublesome, which is bad for electronics manufacture.) They are also limited by their population. So, while technologies such as aircraft and computers are present (and more prevalent as time passes), they are not common. More fruitful investments were technologies that could benefit many sectors over the long term, so, for example, radio is common and the primary means of long-distance land travel is by solar-powered train (you only need a few locomotives to serve a lot of people). Most residents live in wood or stone houses, farming and herding are major sources of food, and so on.

Here's the question: I drew inspiration for the placenames I will put on this map from American frontier imagery, which is what I am used to. However, I'd like to have this world settled by a realistically multicultural ark ship, who would name places in other languages or with different metaphors. I would like to replace about half of the current set of major settlement names, and also add some names to minor towns around them. Can I get some suggestions from speakers of non-English languages or students of non-Western cultures?

Here is my sketch map:



A brief summary of major events on this world follows.

0-20 AA: The 8000 initial colonists found the settlements of Colony, Prospect, and Transceiver Tower. An accident in orbit causes the ark ship to crash on the planet after all the settlers are down, on a different continent from the settlements. The rough location is known.
75 AA: The colonists begin to build solar railroad lines connecting their settlements and establishing routes into the wilderness.
75-160 AA: As the new towns expand, additional settlements are founded. The culture is generally peaceful and focused on the problems of colonizing the new planet.
160 AA: Prospect embarks on the project of finding the ark crash site, and founds the town of Expedition Point from which to launch ships. Emigrants pass through Expedition Point to found New Outpost on a second rugged continent. The effort of founding another overseas colony is extensive for the young nation and takes more time than expected by the projects' proponents.
225: A major plague strikes Colony and Landing Field, precipitating the secession and isolation of the Homestead Compact. Colony becomes more isolated from Prospect, as well.
240: After the plague, Colony attempts to recapture Homestead militarily. The effort fails due to lack of support and resources, but leaves the town of Homestead as a disputed territory.
260: The town of Timber collapses, the largest settlement collapse to date.
265: New Outpost locates the wreckage of the interstellar ark, and establishes the town of Arksite there.
300: The map is produced as a symbolic gift to somebody or other.

The list of major settlements and populations in 400 AA, some of which I would like to rename, is:
The nation of Colony

• Colony (est. 20 AA; pop. 21,100)
• Landing Field (est. 135 AA; pop. 9300)
• Homestead (disputed) (est. 35 AA; pop. 2200)
• Quarry Town (est. 40 AA; pop. 5100)

The nation of Prospect

• Prospect (est. 20 AA; pop. 24,100)
• Expedition Point (est. 55 AA; pop. 5900)
• Xeno Station (est. 60 AA; pop. 1400)
• Harvest (est. 90 AA; pop. 6500)
• Timber (collapsed) (est. 110 AA; pop. 0)
• Downriver (est. 130 AA; pop. 2500)

The nation of The Homestead Compact

• Homestead (disputed) (est. 35 AA; pop. 2200)
• New Frontier (est. 80 AA; pop. 2000)
• Portage (est. 110 AA; pop. 3000)

Unaffiliated

• Transceiver Tower (est. 20 AA; pop. 8200)
• Greenmount (est. 235 AA; pop. 4800)
• Enclave (est. 280 AA; pop. 1500)
• New Outpost (est. 160 AA; pop. 8300)
• Arksite (est. 265 AA; pop. 5300)

[Diamond]

Awesome world-building idea; I'll follow this with interest.

[jshoer]

Thanks, Diamond. Any name suggestions?

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[Jasa]

Awesome world building. Absolutely love it, giving me great ideas! Can't wait to see more!

The only issue I have is with the rivers around New Frontier being a little confusing. Also the ~150 year search for the Arksite and it seems kinda close, but thats only the perception I took from reading about it first.

As far as names go I kinda like what you have. Maybe Frontier is settled by predominantly German? Translated to 'die Grenze' or just Grenze?


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[jshoer]

Oh, that's probably just my terrible sketch map. New Frontier is on the shore of a lake, with two rivers feeding in from the north and east, and an outflow heading south.

It takes about 100 years to find the ark crash site, once Prospect decides to go for it. They know that it's on the Eastern continent, and they have a search area within the forests there. They know they need ships, which means they need a shipyard and associated infrastructure, so they found the town of Expedition Point. This takes time to get going. Then, they decide that they would rather establish a settlement on the Eastern continent than send ships out and back, so their first major effort out of Expedition Point is to found the settlement of New Outpost. New Outpost takes a while to get on its feet before they can really find the ark in earnest. All the while, other things are going on - setting up industries from scratch, politics with other settlements, that plague, and so on. The population also takes time to grow. That's why I thought it might take till 260 AA to discover the ark. Sound reasonable? I could always move events around, our place the crash site farther away. I thought I would make the terrain of the crash particularly rugged.

I like the idea of translating some of the place names. Grenze sounds cool! There are also some smaller towns that will need names, I can demote some of the existing ones to smaller settlements and give new names to some of the bigger cities.

Thanks for the comments, Jasa!



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[jshoer]

Here's a little study I drew on a sticky note for top-down shaded relief mountains. I'd love to get a good style in this vein for this project.

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[jshoer]

On the name front, my latest ideas are to:

(1) Grab a map and pull names off of it, reasoning that the colonists would have named things after their home places, so there are settlements named maybe "San Cristobol" or "Hyderabad."

(2) Grab lists of people's names in various languages and name towns after them, such as "Liu's Copse."

What I would really like, though, are names in other languages that evoke the settings of settling another planet. I'm still open to suggestions!

[jshoer]

I've decided to go simple on the names and just play with Google Translate. The new list will be:

The nation of Colony

• Colony
• Landing Field
• Khet <formerly Homestead> (disputed)
• Quarry Town

The nation of Weilai

• Weilai <formerly Prospect>
• Expedition Point
• Xeno Station
• Shoucheng <formerly Harvest>
• Timber (collapsed)
• Xiayou <formerly Downriver>

The nation of The Khet Compact

• Khet <formerly Homestead> (disputed)
• Grenze <formerly New Frontier, thanks Jasa!>
• Porteo <formerly Portage>

Unaffiliated

• Transceiver Tower
• Haraaparvat <formerly Greenmount>
• Enclave
• Naya Chaukee <formerly New Outpost>
• Arksite

In addition, I've been coming up with minor town names to appear here and there on my map. The former names that I've replaced will appear here, too. So, the current minor town name list:

• Homestead
• New Frontier
• Harvest
• Downriver
• Beaumont
• Casa de Piedra
• Arbolitos
• Rocas Amarillos
• Bi Fengyu
• He'an
• Kade Patthar
• Valle Ventoso
• Cielo Abierto
• Ortigas

You'll probably start seeing some more art development next, as I steal time here and there! I was planning to try and do top-down (satellite view) mountains, but that is turning out to be more challenging to do by hand than I expected. I just can't get a thing that really looks right. So, I might go back to iconography and isometric-ish views. I was standing next to where this map hangs on the wall the other day, and I thought those might make a good starting point for a sci-fi, hand-drawn map. Any thoughts?

[jshoer]

Hey everybody,

I've been stewing on this one for a while - interrupted by a few challenges! - and hoping to post an update once my linework is finished. However, I have made a number of dumb mistakes and now I hate this when I look at it:



I was doing great with the road and rail systems, I found a mountain style I liked (lower left corner of the sticky note), I liked my lettering, and I was going along doing mountains, rivers, and coastline, but I noticed:

- The southwest river going into the lake was supposed to be the outflow.
- I spelled "peninsula" wrong.
- I spelled "Prospect" as "Prospet," and then tried to fix it, urp.
- I had no idea where to go with all the rivers, roads, and rails going into Colony. What is that bridge doing?

So I think what I'm going to do is flip that paper over and use it for something else. But in the meantime, I'm going to start a digital version of the colony map. Stay tuned...

[Diamond]

Well, I like where you were going with it, for what it's worth. Everything is legible and easy to decipher, and I just like it, gosh darnit.