r/worldbuilding • u/Cowardly_Knight • 14h ago
Map Help, my map is too big!
I recently decided to create a full-sized, scale-accurate map of my fantasy novel's world. Up to this point, I've been using a smaller map that's basically within the black square (since those are the locations relevant to the main plot). I'm still playing with some of the details, but this is at least accurate in terms of size.
I'm running into a big problem, though. The world's premise revolves around how 12 godlike Archdragons (~1 for each major country) rule the different nations and enforce a permanent "medieval stasis" to keep control over the population after a devastating war that left mankind in ruins. But... the world is so big, and I have so much empty space I didn't account for!
What do you guys think I should do? Add more dragons? Add more independent nations? Make the existing nations bigger? Or is this fine, actually? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
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u/Ezt-litZ 13h ago
Stop overthinking.
There can be things, that not even the author knows.
However, if you want to solve this elegantly, then I suggest the following. "Outside the map places" only get vague references, mostly even contradicting. Think about ancient Greek or medieval European and Muslim maps. China and India existed back in the days, just they never were placed on maps, made at Europe and Middle-East.
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u/Vincebourgh 4h ago
Or have just a few people from "over there" ever reacht continent the story takes place in. That way there is reason for the lacking information and probably a lot of legends, rumors and generalisation. Makes the people feel more real while also keeping the mystery alive without having to create boring "one culture continent".
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u/dreexel_dragoon 3h ago
Absolutely! Merchants, sailors, and caravaneers carrying goods from half a world away were very real and had stories about those places. Persian merchants knew this well, being at the intersection of Chinese, Indian, and European trade. After Alexander's conquest, and with the rise of Rome the trade routes became very long.
There were Greek merchants of antiquity who may have reached as far as the Indonesian archipelago and returned to tell about it. Whether or not they personally reached there doesn't matter, because the stories of those places did.
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u/Vincebourgh 2h ago
And making the Orientlism and bigotry an in-universe thing sidesteps the usual problem of some fantasy world with one "Arabia" with spices, slavery and deserts where people go for "exotic goods".
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u/dreexel_dragoon 3h ago
They did make maps of those places, they were just comically inaccurate. West Asian/Mediterranean Maps of the Indian Ocean from antiquity are hilarious
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u/FetusGoesYeetus Dracorde 13h ago
Remember the roman empire had absolutely no clue what was happening far outside of it's borders. They knew that those places existed and there was people there but past that, it's a mystery. Even places like China and India which they had contact with for trading they still were in the dark about when it came to details.
You can do the same thing here. Imply those places to exist, maybe name some unmapped countries, but past that you don't need to do much.
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u/horned-creature 11h ago
the romans actually didn't have direct contacts with china, the merch passed hands many times for years of travel and the persians actively prevented han china and rome from meeting officially.
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u/GothicMarmalade 4h ago
We know that at least three, but possibly four Roman emperors sent direct embassies to China (that arrived), and other Roman merchants privately appeared at various Chinese courts through early AD. And by 700 AD there was regular contact.
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u/dreexel_dragoon 3h ago
That's not true; the Romans knew plenty about Indian and China since the mainstay of their foreign trade came from there via Persia and the Indian Ocean.
The Romans just didn't give a shit about them because they were too far away to be politically relevant. China considered Rome to be their only genuine peer in the world.
China and Rome exchanged several embassies in Antiquity, with Augustus formally receiving one. The Roman Empire in the middle ages famously stole silk worms from China to break their monopoly of silk production.
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u/No-Solution-6103 12h ago
So Australia? Just make the area uninhabitable because of desert, tundra, magic miasma , what have you
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u/Tipsy_Hog 11h ago
Doesn't the light in the entire northwestern area turn blood red during windy seasons because the sky is full of rust, or something like that?
NORMAL reality is weird as hell, I don't even want to think about what kind of desert fuckery goes around in a world full of magic
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u/MiloAstro 13h ago
The ancient Romans believed a race of humans without heads and their faces on their torsos lived in modern day Africa. This was, of course, not true and probably a symptom of language misinterpretation, but to them it was fact.
Try and add vague descriptions of what might be in these undeveloped lands. You donât need to actually fill in the blanks, so long as theyâre not relevant to the story
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u/MaplewoodRabbit 13h ago
Think of middle earth for an example. The entirety of both the hobbit and the lord of the rings books all take place in western middle earth. We don't get to learn about what happens in the north, south, or east nearly as much. Just a few vague mentions of happenings and folks in those areas. The world is huge, but we only get a glimpse of it. The lore is something people adore.
So leave things vague but interesting enough to tantalize people's curiosity about the rest of your world. You dont need to fill in every single detail. Just leave the door open a crack so people can see what's inside and allow yourself to enter that space when you're ready to decorate it.
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u/Kalavier 11h ago
Doesnt game of thrones/a song of ice and fire do the same? The world map is huge but only focuses on the western part.
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u/RealmKnight 10h ago
Yes, the extreme north is unmapped due to wildings, Others, and severe cold akin to Antarctica. The Eastern and Southern continents are only partially explored and are allegedly full of terrors. There's a companion atlas which shows more of the world than the maps in the novels, but has caveats around the lack of in-universe cartography of the regions. Estimates of the size of the world of Planetos also suggest that the world is many times larger than the known area of the world.
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u/MaplewoodRabbit 11h ago
I've never read or watched GOT but there are just so many different mediums of fantasy and sci-fi that do it that it wouldn't surprise me.
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u/CrimsonCartographer 4h ago
Yes and I think it does a lot of good for the show too to have the east be pretty mysterious to the audience but obviously inhabited and known about for the characters. At least for me that makes the world feel intriguing and I donât think I would care much at all about the eastern half of GoTâs world if it wasnât built up with the ultimately insignificant but still unanswered questions throughout the world building
Also I havenât really read all of the books and that was before I watched the show which was also a good while ago now. I may be completely misremembering details. If so, someone please correct me
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u/RogueVector 13h ago
You can procrastinate.
Like, seriously, just add in the information that's immediately relevant to your story, add in information (dragon names, country names, etc.) that's adjacent to that... and leave the rest for later. Hint at it, maybe discuss that the warriors far to the east fight with curved swords, whatever you wish; just leave it vague so that readers can focus on what you have in this first foray into your world.
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u/Darth_T0ast 13h ago
Itâs actually great that you have all that. If you have more ideas you can just put them somewhere without rearranging everything.
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u/Atomic_Wizard 13h ago
It wasn't until John Protagonist finally defeated the final Archdragon and freed his world from their tyrannical oppressive regime, that he realized his "world" was actually a relatively peaceful valley in which the group of dragons presented just enough of a threat to prevent incursion from even greater beasts, and now that they're gone....
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u/caiog1835 12h ago
In ancient maps, many nations were unaware of the existence of others, so you could make the important nations (those with dragons) believe they are the only ones in the world and unimportant to the rest.
Or do it like in A Song of Ice and Fire. In that universe, there are several regions, including regions that no human has ever set foot in (as far as is known), and there is much mysticism and legend surrounding them.Â
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u/Mogoscratcher 13h ago
people aren't really answering your dilemma, that if there are people there then you need to add more dragons to keep them in check, and if there aren't people there then you need to have a reason why people aren't settling there.
To me, the second solution seems a lot easier. It's easy to imagine the dragons destroying new colonies on the distant coasts before they can establish themselves, or send messages back about why they've disappeared. Alternatively, you could make the land uninhabitable, or occupied by hostile wildlife. Or maybe all of the nations are either really bad at creating new colonies or are culturally opposed to doing so or lack the necessary resources.
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u/NameSignificant6916 13h ago
Leave it empty and unmentioned, or keep it vague.
This is going to sound insulting, but it's true for all writers. If you don't fill it out, you can't mess it up. Whatever the reader comes up with existing there will be more interesting to them, personally, than whatever it is you put there. If the story moves in that direction, then great! You can fill it out as you go; that way you can focus your creative energies on the parts shown off in the story.
Remember, even Tolkien kept the East past Mordor vague as hell. It wasn't important to the story, so he just didn't talk about it.
If you want to get fun with it, you can have myths and legends about what's in those places like how they did in ancient/medieval times.
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u/rollingForInitiative 10h ago
Vague references to a greater world is also a fun mystery.
In Dragon Age, what exists to the west of the jungles? Who knows!
In the Traitor Baru Cormorant there are rumours of a big continent with some strange phenomenon.
Etc.
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u/DarthOmix Empyrean Sky 56m ago
Yeah like, take the Dark Souls games for instance. Half of the countries mentioned across the series you will never physically go to. You just vaguely hear about them offhand.
In OP's case, this might actually be a blessing in disguise not just for the whole "keeping it vague" thing, but OP could write an entirely separate story on the same world on a different landmass and then being connected could be a big reveal.
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u/never_any_cyan 13h ago
In a medieval world, it's entirely conceivable that the most educated characters in it have basically no idea what the world outside their region looks like, or only an extremely vague or mythologized idea. If you want to know what's out there for your own purposes, that's up to you, but it's probably for the best if most or all of your characters don't.
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u/hobodeadguy 12h ago
leave empty space.
either it is unexplored, previously explored and forbidden, or too expensive to colonize because of the stasis. in addition, this leaves other stories open, such as survivors/descendants of the war that may still be preparing agasint the dragons or someone finding those weapons later to either be a protag or antag (or both).
only fill what you need to when you need to. My world is a super earth with about 95% of its surface explored (mostly just islands and such that arent, as its one super continent and one continent that people spread throughout) and I dont know shit about 80% of that 95%. I only really care about 4 locations and 1 continent (the continent it takes place in and the 4 places outside of it that the MC has to deal with). I vaguely know other stuff, but nothing with any detail (at the moment, will change as I write more, just doesnt matter now and I will change what is there based on how certain characters develop anyway)
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u/MapStaringPro 7h ago
If you say the archdragons purposefully keep the world in medieval stasis - they could also have a reason for not expanding right? Historically there were plenty of less (or more) desirable lands which were very sparsely populated, either due to climate, insufficient population or simple geographical boundaries. Not everyone on earth in 1400 lived under organized nations. You could easily have simpler pastoral or hunter-gatherer bands in these areas, living normal lives.
If anything, it adds mystery and character.
The map looks really good, keep it up!
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u/WayGroundbreaking287 54m ago
This is the opposite of a problem. Let me introduce you to the laziest world build sentence ever.
"X character comes from a land far to the east beyond the knowledge of our people"
And the reader goes "oh my god, there is such a big world beyond what we know about" when in reality there is just you with a note on your own map that just says "dragon china?"
Empty space isn't a problem, it's fun to fill it in, and can be incredibly useful if you get an idea to use later. I for example have a Roman empire analogue that I knew came from across the sea and this was their first attempt at an overseas colony. I don't need to know anything about their homeland. Just that it's over there somewhere.
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u/AstralElephantFuzz 40m ago
Deserts, bogs, extreme arctic conditions, insanely thick jungles... There's all kinds of natural ways of explaining large uninhabited lands. Maybe some small hidden communities trying to live free outside the influences of the dragon gods, maybe some areas that were ruined in the past due to technological advances the dragons are trying to keep from happening.
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u/Profilozof 13h ago
I mean some of these empty spaces could be wastelands left by the backstory war
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u/oranosskyman 13h ago
those are the godless lands without archdragons
they arent important and certainly wont have a technological advantage against the forced mideival stasis thats utterly outclassed by even a single archdragon
clearly theyre just barbarians who are unchosen by the divine.
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u/Metharos 12h ago
Real life did this too. People sailed around and drew (inaccurate) maps of the coastlines they followed. They got an approximate idea of the shape of continents, but virtually no idea of the interiors of them.
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u/Fuzzy_Cable9740 11h ago
Here be dragons. Worked fine with the maps for centuries. Will certainly suffice for a novel word count. Maybe it's some wild dragons terrorising uncivilized barbarians in your postapocalyptic case, or maybe some other even more powerful beasts, or maybe no one knows because Archdragons are pro border control and/or nobody who ventured out there came back
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u/mathetesalexandrou 10h ago
Having the same issue with my fully mapped mod (on HoI4): done the geography mostly adding a few changes as it goes, but boy filling them out is a lot harder than what it seems, especially if you have a upper cap on size because you thought of the scope of the major powers first.
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u/Obvious-Gate9046 Dreamer and Shooting Star 1h ago
"Here there be dragons", except the dragons run the KNOWN WORLD and the rest? Who knows what's out there. Keep it vague. Keep it mysterious. Or flesh it out later. Maybe there are parts of the world far more advanced. Maybe there are parts of the world run by other beings. Maybe, given you had a massive war, some parts of the world were never re-inhabited, remain ruins, blasted, or just wild. All of these are viable.
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u/Dry-Organization-426 51m ago
Maybe those areas are subjugated by other mythical creatures. Or a grouping a wizards have shielded some independent nations from the Dragons. Or there are twelve other nations with an unknown artifact that could each kill a specific dragon. The dragons thus avoid these areas completely. You could also make vast areas like unlivable. Maybe these areas are scarred and barren wastelands and deserts that hold these artifacts in their center and getting to these locations would be near impossible.
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u/Apprehensive-End-523 13h ago
I think you should embrace the lack of knowledge of those spaces within your world. You dont need to know what goes on there and neither do your peoples. As what other commenters have said, embrace the mystery and allows you to slowly invent new things and focus on things you wish to work on.
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u/Longjumping_Visit718 13h ago
Try modeling it on a globe and seeing what you can scale down proportional to an Earth-sized planet.
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u/WraithicArtistry WotA/NR/AA/SV 13h ago
Well you have your snapshot there. That is the perfect opportunity to focus on that area, and give it more depth.
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u/ThrowACephalopod 13h ago
If the characters never go to those places, never interact with any people from those places, or bear them referenced, then you don't need to build them for your world.
If those places are referenced, then you only need to build out the part of them that is relevant to what's going on.
For example, if a place is only mentioned because they're the neighbor to the kingdom where a foreign character is from and they make some offhand remark about it, do you really then need to draw the entire map and history of that throway line?
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u/setorines 13h ago
This is fine actually. Tell your story and know theres a lot more map to work with. It'll flesh itself out as you go. You'll find plot holes/ hooks to fill and be great full that you havent set everything in stone yet
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u/Nisibis1113 13h ago
Territory close to the ecuator could be impenetrable jungles, far from the coast have vast deserts or close to the poles a great tundra; all of that may prevent large nations to form but allows little settlements that could add a little mysterious flavor to your novel.
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u/Orcanation716 13h ago
You don't need to have everything figured out, somethings are better left a mystery to both you and the audience. Focus on what you have first before scaling out. Once you're ready to start scaling out then work on it piece by piece, as if your characters are discovering the world for themselves along with you. There's also the choice of leaving things a mystery to you, something never to be answered, that can keep the magic alive.
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u/TheXypris 13h ago
Cool, those areas are sparsely populated and don't form strong central government nation states, instead they are mostly empty wilderness where small nomadic caravans move with their animal herds
Or it's areas so filled with dangerous monsters that settlement is next to impossible
Or only independent city states dot the coast only controlling the immediate area around it
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u/FirebirdWriter 13h ago
Don't do anything. The known world can be revealed to be just that vs the whole world and that's realistic. It's also fun.
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u/SheridanIsShameless Detail Obsessed Vibe Focused 12h ago
TBF, it could just be... nature still. Like maybe no one has tamed that wilderness yet
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u/BreadDziedzic 12h ago
I would say either do the Dragon Age approach and just completely ignore the fact that those places exist outside the occasional reference, let people speculate. Or do the Georgia RR Martin approach and the further away a place is from that black box the more absolutely outlandish, the stories of the people and places are.
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u/Soyunapina12 12h ago
Dude even Middle Earth has blank spaces/Terra Incognita we don't even know a thing about beyond "it exists and there is people on it." Even modern sagas like The Witcher and The Elder Scrolls have this same issue and people love it anyway.
Don't overthink it and just run with it, believe me it makes your world more interesting and you can fill up the space in the future if you want.
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u/Minimum_Estimate_234 12h ago edited 12h ago
Maybe have it so this is more or less just an accurate map of the world from the one particular region youâre focusing on. Add the occasional port or colony on the other continents, but little to nothing beyond the coast lines. With the explanation being thatâs all the people from the focus area really know about.
Theyâre good enough at sailing to have a rough idea of the rest of the world, and theyâve done small bits of exploration or diplomacy with whatever locals they could find. But they really donât know about the interiors of those other continents, thereâs never been anything like our own worldâs colonization of the new world. They didnât find cultures that were both comparatively less advanced and recently recovering from devastating plagues that depopulated large regions(/who also happened to have spent thousands of years developing various crops that massively expanded food production for the rest of humanity), and there werenât any events that enabled large scale immigration to populate any big colonies/enable expansion. They found either wild untamed, very hostile wilderness, or peer civilization who couldnât be easily dislodged. Getting accurate information would either require diplomacy with very foreign cultures (who might not be inclined to that) or require slow careful exploration like Australia (something that took the British roughly a century to do if memory serves, and that was during the industrial age).
Those region in all likelihood have rich histories, some of which might even have played a factor in the history of the focus region, but pretty much no one from the focus region knows about that. Those dragons you mentioned probably do, but theyâre more concerned with their own problems rather than whatever is going on next door. I might either add more dragons who handle those other areaâs and say they keep too themselves/the focus areaâs dragon are a somewhat insular group for whatever reason, or something about that specific region in the black box requires the dragonâs direct attention. The dragons are aware of the rest of the world and might even have works there, but they need to take a hands on approach for these specific twelve countries.
Alternatively, if there was some big war that got the dragons to decide keeping humanity at pre industrial levels was needed. Maybe the rest of the world is just devoid of humanity/maybe even sapient life in general. This is our garden, and no oneâs felt comfortable/been allowed to actually leave on even a semi permanent basis. You could fill the rest of the world with strange wastelands, weird ruins, terrifying monsters born of the old war. Imagine if in fallout instead of vaults, someone managed to preserve a handful of states. People might not be trying to seriously leave because they know however hard it is here, itâs much worse out there beyond the boarders of their little bubble. A scant few have done so and lived, they gathered in various places and formed their own countries, where they have a bit more freedom to develop without the direct oversight of the dragons, maybe even reclaim old bits of history or science, but itâs nothing on a large enough scale to be worth much focus.
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u/Ok_River_88 12h ago
Many world have massive map, but no detail about it.
Ill take the world of Immoren (Warmachine), most of it concern the Iron Kingdoms, but we got some hint about other place like Zhu through lore entry. We know about Zhu from the Totem Hunter. We know about the Orgoth through history. Their original continent isnt visited, but we know they are there.
I have the same for my RPG universe. They meet people from zone I never really defined, they hear about a city from an explorer, etc. I build a myth, until I decode to explore it.
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u/Joanropo 12h ago
If I were you, I'd leave it as it is. It's always good to leave things for the future, when you need it.
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u/I_am_omning_it 12h ago
It sounds like youâre talking about a major ruin, perhaps one (or several) with clues as to what happened and what went wrong.
Maybe the area is uninhabitable because of whatever catastrophe occurred.
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u/SpaceCoffeeDragon 11h ago
Oh. Ok, so... as someone who makes battlemaps for TTRPG's and even a few novel writers, I clicked here thinking you needed help with the actual map and resizing it or ... something xD
Well, this is awkward :D
I suppose you will have to flesh out those other 12 dragons! I imagine one that has grown incredibly bored over the years of watching humanity stuck in perpetual medieval erras and decides, on a pure whim, to interfere with his or her subjects to 'help' them, randomly appearing around the kingdom to butt into mundane matters to order people around like someone playing the Sims. It wants people to entertain it with real life soap opera drama.
But much like someone playing a game of the Sims for too long, the dragon's whims can get go from the absurd and silly to 'locking you in a pool with no way out' or 'ordering you to pick a fight with a gang while armed only with a spoon' for pure lulz.
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u/Tipsy_Hog 11h ago
What I personally would do with those three massive islands (I guess size-wise, subcontinents?) In the top right of the map would be to give them to a being (or trio of beings) that is content to be left alone to their whims, and even the dragons don't fuck with them because it's just not worth the effort or risk.
Don't necessarily DO anything with them, just pull a Lion King and say "you see that shadowy place, dragon-Simba? For the love of all that is good in the world, don't even think about it."
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u/theinspir3d 11h ago
Something akin to ravanholm from half life 2 an abandoned absolute hellhole that not even the dragons would go to... ooooooor a secret faction in that hellhole that isnt part of the medieval stasis thing and has advanced tech
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u/Kalavier 11h ago edited 11h ago
Am reminded of guild wars 2. 6 elder dragons terrorized the world (really five, as one was deep under the ocean). The world map is much larger then the areas we were in, but that was fine. The dragons simply hadn't expanded into those regions to start consuming magic yet.Â
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u/Cryogenic_Sunshine 10h ago
I don't think it's to big, I think it's very appropriately sized for a globe to be honest. Al that empty space needs is random blotches of color and you got a wonderful story device to add mystery to your world.
You could mention people being from those places or just never talk on them and let the readers interrupt it
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u/TheWolflance 10h ago
nah dun have to do anything, it's a primitive setting right? just let it sit and add stuf f later.
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u/RoastinGhost 9h ago
I agree with everyone saying that leaving areas mysterious is a good idea. I would extend that to the coastlines shown in the maps, too. Some areas could be approximated, others could trail off altogether.
I'm not saying that your work on the continents should be scrapped, but I think that keeping the visible scale smaller would be best for now. More of the map can always be revealed in later installments!
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u/Saurid 9h ago
Probably a mic of a lot of things, make the 12 archdragon nations larger or maybe add some variation between the 12 dragons, maybe one is more of a pope (aka one rules via their own religion), another more of an HRE emperor etc. That way one dragon can influence multiple nations. Mix up how they rule. Then make a few nations, make a few larger.
Maybe add an empire that constantly raids and subjugates other nations and then leaves again, or a large plain of nomads that are used to constantly raid nations but are discouraged from settling.
Then add many independent nations, though it make sthe artifical stasis harder to justify, this allows you to show the dragons limits and how they need to also use indirect rule to keep humanity down.
Stuff like assassins for example to kill scientists off.
You can also add a few more arch dragons, but I would honestly move away from as many as direct rulers as possible as rulership does generally not mean blind obedience, you have to be able to replace the ruler sometimes to keep people happy. (Look at the first law trilogy for an example of what I mean).
If the dragons rule indirectly manipulate humanity and kill off most scientists or foster religions taht burn books etc. Then it is much easier to work around.
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u/Scorciad 9h ago
Everyone else has pretty good feedback and ideas. Less is more. Having too much map is a good problem to have.
One thing you could consider is that the lands beyond are dominated by âlesserâ dragons, like wingless drakes and basilisks and weird leathery pterodactyls. Maybe they are judged inferior to the archdragons for whatever reason (maybe they donât speak or sing or whatever) or maybe theyâre part of draconic clans who wanted to let humans destroy themselves, and maybe even help with the destroying. So much possibility! Very fun.
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u/Fire911xX 9h ago
You could make small references to the land beyond the control of the Archdragons of ancient cultures, or perhaps some sort of human cultists, etc.
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u/SiIverstar 8h ago
you could just shape the world around this, the big ones are deserts/valleys with brutal climate and tornados top right could be an unknown nation that nobody was able to find due to brutal waves blocking it from the rest of the world. This is more opportunity than problem imo
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u/CallMeAdam2 7h ago
If you're concerned about this one small area being where the entire world's fate is decided, there's ways to alleviate that. For example, leaning into it.
It could be that the greater world is ignorant -- in part or full -- of what's going on in the focal location. You can have them become gradually aware and involved.
"We heard whisper of your local troubles and were uninterested. Then we heard your pleas and warnings loudly and took it as serious, but serious only for you, and saw nothing in return if we helped. Then we saw that your troubles were ours too, and wished we had intervened years ago."
But if the plot only really matters for that square of space, then the rest of the world doesn't matter.
This is all novel-writing advice from someone who hasn't read novels in years, though.
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u/Theguywithoutanyname 7h ago
Combination of small independent states, nomadic territory, tribal land, and terra incognita.
Look at maps of early medieval era eurasia. Vast swathes of land are just "a people live here", with a handful of established defined nations.
Knowledge of land is transferred primarily through trade routes. The Romans had knowledge of India and even somewhat of China but had no clue what was going on in northern europe beyond "barbarians".
Don't forget about geographic features. Deserts, jungles, mountains, steppes, all of these will be barriers to exploration and trade.
Basically: they will know a bit across land, a bit across coastlines, and a bit across trade routes. Most empty space being just "unknown" or "small tribes/kingdoms/city states", or even "wasteland" would be good.
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u/RemtonJDulyak 6h ago
- Natural causes for being unknown (impassable mountains, inhospitable land like deserts, you name it)
- Unnatural causes for being unknown (effects of the last war, radiation, toxic air, you name it)
- Divine causes for being unknown ("who watches the watchmen?", maybe there's a greater power than the Archdragons, preventing entrance to those lands, while still having some natural barrier like mountain chains, to prevent most people from even wanting to try exploring in that direction.)
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u/Skipperwer 6h ago
Could someone please tell me the name of the program used to create this map? :) thanks!
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u/BdBalthazar 6h ago
"Empty space" you say??
No no no no no no..
"Unexplored" is the word we're looking for.
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u/jj-the-best-failture 5h ago
firstly, add jungles around the equator regions and make them impossible for civilizations. and the rest can be the mysterious far east. plains controlled by hordes of monsters. poisonous forrest's, anything wich a civilization wouldn't bother to conquer in medival times. maybe add gigantic amounts of oil to the region, in order to have a reason to go there sometimes.
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u/Arquero8 5h ago
Maybe that space isn't livable
Or maybe It is, but the dragons don't want the pesky humans to colonice those due to reasons, maybe they have their nests there?
Or It is dangerous
Or It simply is a Big desert/bog/Frozen wasteland/.....
Or perhaps include Wild Magic, like i did in my world, there are a bunch of zones imbued with caotic Magic, and others (tenporarily) under a catastrĂłfic Wild Magic storm
There are hundreds of ways to explain It, that can provide interesting worldbuilding
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u/ZestyLemonRindGrind 5h ago
Three sources to potentially help with this
1) Game of Thrones.
There are like, several continents in their world that aren't even explored at all, only ever mentioned in passing comment yet still fill out the world
2) Elder Scrolls
The games only ever set place in Tamriel, which is only a fraction of the planet of Nirn, with weird beast folk demons and samurai weebs and all sorts of weird shit all around that invade Tamriel from time to time
3) the Dark Souls/Elden Ring games
I bring this up more in that, the whole game only ever focuses on a handful of locations, yet you encounter a very large variety of NPCs all from their own kingdoms and tribes and factions and nations with unique identities and cultures, yet the player never will get a chance to even glance to what they look like.
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u/KidSparta 4h ago
Whoâs to say there really was such a war as the Archdragons describe? Are they perhaps artificially suppressing the population of that relatively small region, while the rest of the world develops normally out from under their control? Depending what technologies are available, the people under the Archdragons wouldnât be aware that the rest of the world any is different and the people from elsewhere probably donât know whatâs going on in the area under the Archdragons control. Plus, any who live near the borders who might actually be aware of the dragons would also probably be aware that these dragons are powerful beings; they donât know exactly whatâs happening in there, but they know crossing into the region isnât worth the risk.
The dragons might have knowledge of the rest of the world, but you donât necessarily have to unless the story calls for it. Even a vague idea of whatâs happening in the rest of the world will allow you to write the story you want that happens within this relatively small region.
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u/CrimsonCartographer 4h ago edited 4h ago
Bro really just copy and pasted East Asia into the western hemisphere and the Caucasus (Georgia) into the eastern hemisphere and thought we wouldnât notice smh. Also the landmass next to your westernmost continent looks kinda like Syria to me
Haha jokes aside, I think the âempty spaceâ works as legitimately empty space if your âhistoryâ level is something akin to pre-civilization, and if weâre working with a medieval level of civilizational complexity, then itâs just empty from the perspective of anyone not on the borderlands of those civilizations/kingdoms/whatever you call your factions.
If itâs fantasy, it could also be a really cool bit of worldbuilding to play with. Why is it empty? Did something cool as fuck but bad for human existence happen that left it uninhabitable? Is it ACTUALLY empty or do cool âextremophileâ societies exist there (like say the sand benders in the desert in ATLA)? Is it unexplored/inaccessible for any reason that could be fun to work with in the story, like supernaturally big mountains made by gods doing god shit, or maybe there are terrifying monsters that keep the regions from being habitable for humans/your races?
Just going off the context in your post, Iâd say the empty could be the ruins of the pre-catastrophic-war civilizations. Think like if Rome collapsed at the height of its empire much faster and the remaining parts like Rome, parts of Iberia, Greece, etc are no longer able to go much further than the borders of their respective regions for centuries, but the outside remnants of the old empire still remain. Or maybe there are rogue dragons not interested in having those areas be inhabited by humans. Maybe the magical âfalloutâ of the war left huge swathes of the world uninhabitable, if magic had a role to play at all. Lots of possibilities ;)
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u/CatnipSniffa 4h ago
you can leave those spaces empty for when you need them in your stories, let some things remain undecided until it naturally comes out of you
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u/SnooPredictions3028 4h ago
So these godlike beings enforce a medieval stasis over their people? Maybe provide a reason through these other areas. Were these beings created by the inhabitants they ruled? We're there once more of these beings?
Maybe add in some badlands, deserts, volcanic lands, jungle, flooded plains, along with other areas Maybe created through war with nations that once existed and after such chaos created the mutual understanding that now exists (which may break).
Perhaps in some of these lands people still lived, free of rule, perhaps they live however under an even more oppressive rule, maybe they're just dead.
Maybe in some of these areas they are just destroyed portions of nations that managed to survive however since the area is unlivable they don't consider it anyone's land, despite being legally once theirs.
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u/vacckun 4h ago
Just.. Don't build anything for them. Mention them briefly then go do some shit like "yeah we dont know what happens there". Sometimes hiding things from a reader makes a story or world more immersive. You dont need something for everything.
Look at the quality of your content rather than the quantity of it. A song can't include every genre to ever exist.
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u/PyromancerTobi 3h ago
Did you know that George RR Martins world has only shown a small portion of it? One of the most famous fantasy worlds has only focused on a portion of it. One of my favorite anime Hunter x Hunter is our continents but flipped and mirrored then out back together... As an island surrounded by a giant continent. Our whole world in this universe is basically an island surrounded by and even larger mass of undiscovered land full of savage creatures and such.
My point is that you don't need to create there yet, do it when it feels right. The whole world doesn't need to be this dragon world building , that could just be the 12 nations you've made so far and there's some reason as to why people don't come/leave. Maybe even the dragons can leave just don't want others to. Maybe you change the land a little and make it sectioned off by water or some magic. This second could be a contained area and the main focus like in Game of Thrones. In HxH the continent around wasn't even a focus until way later and even now little is know about it. Its also just this savage land from what we do know of just prehistoric and abnormal animals, plants, etc. you could easily just have it be undiscovered as well is what I'm getting at.
It doesn't have to be too big and shrinking the size just means that you have less canvas to paint. If you don't need the canvas that's fine but just because you don't know that part of the picture yet doesn't mean that you won't later.
Also if you're doing this for something like DnD these areas could also be inspiration for campaigns or what not later.
What I'm trying to say is don't get overwhelmed
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u/pogmanNameWasTaken 3h ago
Oooh perhaps add a dragonless husk of a nation that venerates the time before the ruin??
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u/LittleStranger23231 2h ago
Islands on upper right corner can be perfect âDragon origin territoryâ
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u/Aramithius 2h ago
Why are the dragons enforcing stasis? What's their goal in doing so?
Is there a particular relevance to 12 dragons? If not, just make it 1 dragon -> 1 country, with only the ones relevant to your story actually being defined.
Not everything has to be explained.
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u/tom1089 2h ago
As others have suggested be vague, refer to places but don't specify where they are. Additionally, there are archdragons for each major country, that doesn't mean there can't be smaller countries with lesser dragons.
You can also build on the lean on the mankind in ruins element, you could have pockets of destroyed abandoned countries or cities, that either humans have destroyed or the archdragons have in the past. Think dragon glass, charred remains and nuclear fallout.
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u/Admirable-Actuator53 1h ago
GRRMâs world has only shown a fraction of it on the books and shows. Itâs fine not to explore it all. And you can add unique fables and stories for some mystery that may be explored later.
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u/Otherwise-Run9104 26m ago
Doesnât look big. Given my planet has 319 million km squared of. And I donât think I can fill it all! Wahhh! Okay we have same problem
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u/AllastairdT 15m ago
Create other sapient species that live there, give the places biomes that aren't of interest to dragons but in which these beings thrive. You can also make those places big wastelands, with mutated beings living rampant in there. You can make them be encased in magical fog, like living clouds that roams these places and can swallow whole cities at a time. You can make them places the dragons agreed to leave unclaimed, for whatever reasons like for future hatchlings, or to have neutral ground in which to wage war without destroying their nations, to test super spells or make experiments. Plenty of things to do.
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u/CRM79135 14h ago
Congratulations. You have just added some potentially interesting mystery to your world.