First thoughts about your map is that inlet, widening out into a larger sea-lock with the island in the middle, could well be an not-too-recent (but not yet ancient) volcano caldera and central granite plug. And/or a meteorite crater, with central peak uplift feature poking up above the what is now water level.
I've made a number of attempts (albeit dominated mostly by pure thought experiments) to create various fantasy maps, over the years. When hand-drawn, I tend to work on some aspect of existing geography that I know (at least from map, but better from actual experience). The fjords of Norway, the craggyness of the Great Glenn in Scotland, the expanse of the East Anglian coast, a given valley campsite in the North York Moors, Alum Bay and The Needles from the Isle Of White, Manhattan Island, the sheer continental expanse of Australia, or even taking the topography of the Moon or Mars (indeed, I was quite impressed with KSR's maps of Blue and Green Mars).
I like to think about the processes behind the geography and geology. I have a mostly-in-my-mind project regarding a largely ocean-world with one (known) small land-mass breaking the surface. But while I'm happy enough that this might be the last product of a planet's internal techtonic action, featuring an uplifted limestone layer at one end and a volcanic ridge at the other end (and, as it happens, a meteoric crater/lake/bay feature in some ways similar to the one noted above off to one side), I'm a little nervous about how the interactions between the hydrosphere and atmosphere should be all rights generate an almost unimpeded hurricane belt all around this island, and spoil all my other little justifications for all the little features on this one island. (I've played with the idea of
very shallow seas, possibly even with other land-masses lying between high and low tide marks (I may need a Luna-scale moon as well, if the star this planet orbits doesn't give the right effect... did toy with two slightly smaller moons, but doesn't seem to be as logically stable[1]) that allow weather systems to be dampened. Perhaps allowing alternate species of life to prosper
en-mass than pure sea or ground creatures.
It's much easier when dealing with a single valley, or even an archipelago, beyond which there might be all kinds of real lands one isn't attempting to map. Also one can largely ignore the spherical geometry (and arbitrarily assign the required climactic variations, rather than have to go on fixed equatorial and circumpolar zones, with variations in-between), something which a more recent attempt to create fully procedural worlds (based upon dividing the world up into equal area triangles, give or take certain spherical aberrations, then divide these into triangles, and these into further ones) has had to contend with.
But while you can say "that's the shape" and use it, I would still take the rough outline and apply some common sense to it. (Yes, we're intruding upon DF's worldgen here.) If you end up with a valley with no outlet end, what happens to the water that falls into it? Is there a lake at the bottom, that has filled until it has breached an end? Is there porous or otherwise cavernous (e.g.
lava tubes taking the water out beyond the valley? (Could adventurers get into or out of that valley, that way, or is it basically unnavigable?) Unless you have a good reason, let the water build up (in your imagination), find the point at which it most easily escapes, wear away that bit of valley wall/end and call it an outlet. Handwavium some form of subterranean leakage if you need to, though. (Or just deny that the valley gets any rain, due to being a microclimate within a rain shadow.)
Some might say that your map doesn't have relief information on it. But it does have at least one. The coastline. It's still open as to what shores (...is mine, what's mine is... whoops) are bounded by cliffs or salt marshes. Which sea-ward sides are deep enough for harbouring large vessels (of a contemporaneous nature, naturally) and which lead out into mud flats. Depending on the scale of the map, the variation could be great, or just "one side is rocky, the other is sandy" for any particular island. If that. But you know that there must be ground rising out of the sea. Extend this to mountain peaks (or a hill, if it's a very minor archipelago) or swathes of fenland. Work out the water, much as already mentioned. Are those inlets, with rivers having them carved out, or merely "where the rock isn't"? To counter that, the extended parts of land could be a massively extruded silted-up delta, or "where the rock still is". Were the islands previously separated by low-lying land that has since been flooded/eroded below sea-level, or are some of the island masses actually reef-built areas (given the right scale).
All kinds of questions, there.
And I've not even covered "who (and what!) lives there?". Bays for anchorage. Fishing communities or pirates? Where there woods and forests, a settlement may occur. (And there may no longer be a wood or forest!) Or it could be jungle, much like some versions of Robinson Crusoe's island, or Treasure Island. At least up until the tree line where the bigger, barer rock hills (or mountains) jut up beyond the any decently arboreal level. And within those jungles could be all kinds of monkeys/primates (new-world or old-world, or
your-world), and the civilisations who have learnt to live in those areas. To understand the nature of the poisonous plants and possibly cat-like predators. Or is it even a modern enough setting to have had a city grow up (even by the base of a semi-active volcano!), or die (perhaps by the hand of that volcano!). If it's very modern, and in the right SF context, perhaps you have a handy mountain there that can be base of a space-elevator, even before that there's the concept of trade routes, from basic regularly cut-and-clear tracks through the wilder parts through to actual roads, freeways (by whatever term you know them) and the possibility of anything from a handy staging inn to an actual full-grown new city at either the intersection of two main highways, or at a point roughly a day's journey from either end. Again, would depend on scale. Although until fairly recently (say the last four or five hundred years) journeys from one end of Britain to the other would be as likely to have been made by boat as by land. At least until the regular provision of maintained toll-roads, and even then travel around the Scottish coast was always a bit easier (and safer, if you avoided the rocks) than humping oneself across various clan territories.
So much to think of, sorry, and I don't want to start yet on several of the other sub-categories of thoughts I have: Agriculture, full territorial claims, artificial landscaping, historic features long buried (including the "ark-type" spaceship that might have brought the currently pre-industrial population to this area)... you get the idea. I'm sure someone else has already replied by now, and I don't want to be so terribly ninjaed.
[1] Although the rule is probably is that if it's lasted long enough to be an accepted and natural feature, it must be stable, and stop nit-picking. Still, I'd need to model this properly before I could totally accept that gravitational resonance wouldn't send one or both towards/away from this water-world and cause significantly more trouble than an eternal hurricane might.
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Topic: Fictional map-making! (Read 2344 times)