All speculative fiction writers know about building worlds with words, but what if you need more than words to visualise the space in which your story takes place?
I’m a bit of a perfectionist yet even so, I recently discovered that a guestimate right at the start of Vokhtah was not only wrong, it was very wrong. That, plus needing a distraction from my first jab of AstraZeneca, lead me to Inkarnate, a brilliant, fantasy map making app.
Within the first week of playing around with Inkarnate, I had a map of Vokhtah that was a million times better than the dinky map I’d made using only Corel Draw 8. The trouble was, the more I worked on the map, the more I noticed the gaps in my worldbuilding. You see, the eyries of the Vokh don’t just appear as haphazard dots on a map. They are chosen for very specific requirements, such as:
- the security provided by the cave system,
- the proximity to water [and hence to food animals]
- and the distance from other Vokh [the greater the better].
But if eyries have pre-requisites, so do the Trader caravans that service them. All iVokh can fly, including the Traders, but few can fly well. As for the Plodders who carry the bulk of the Traders’ goods, they can barely fly at all. And this is where biology and terrain combine to create problems, because if eyries need to be near water, but Plodders can’t fly over obstructions like rivers, how do the caravans travel from gather to gather? [A gather is like a human market place.]
In book 1 of Vokhtah, the only river the Traders had to cross was the Little Blue, and it had almost stopped running by the end of the dry season [Tohoh]. The ford across the river was dangerous but doable. But then what about the other seasons?
In my current WIP, I sidestepped that problem by saying that no caravans could travel during the wet season [Kohoh]. Neat. Unfortunately, when I came to filling in the Inkarnate map, I could no longer avoid the issue of terrain because the story of Vokhtah continues on past Kohoh into Tuhoh [the season of new growth] and beyond.
How in heck was I going to solve the problem of river crossings?
The solution to the problem of rivers required a complete rethink of the map, starting with geology and basic physics. Water always flows downhill, and depending on the slope and density of the material it flows through, it either slows down and spreads out:

… or it runs swiftly and carves out gorges. And sometimes it creates land bridges that span the gorge from side to side:

Or sometimes the bridge is actually the rim of a pool that sits high above the river. When the level of water goes back to its normal level, the rim provides a way from one side of the river to the other:

When there is too much water in the pool, it cascades over the rim and becomes a waterfall that feeds the river below:

And yes, I spent a couple of days just researching rivers and terrain here in Australia. π Much of the info. I discovered came from these videos:
The middle video was shot by an amateur so the helicopter noise is quite loud, but it feels real, as if you’re sitting in the helicopter, experiencing the trip along with the pilot and sightseers. Videos 1 and 3 are professionally produced and provide better visuals.
One of the things I learned was that Katherine Gorge, which is where most of the images were shot, is actually a deep cut through a plateau. All the images I’d seen before this were from the river level and made it seem as if the gorge had cut its way through a flat plain. Not so.
The realisation that the gorge was part of a plateau changed my whole perspective about the Inkarnate map, and how the eyries and caravans [of Vokhtah] would interact with the geology. The end result is this:

Click the image to zoom in closer. The legend on the left identifies the icons used in the map, including the eyries belonging to the Vokh, from the most powerful [large purple] to least powerful [tiny white].
The fuzzy purple areas represent the native vegetation of Vokhtah. As the planet is quite different to Earth, I had to re-imagine the evolution of plants without chlorophyll [the thing that makes Earth plants green and which they use to synthesize food from sunlight, water and minerals in the soil]. I pinched the idea from Earth plants that don’t have chlorophyll of their own. They’re basically parasites, but hey… π
To be honest, I can’t remember exactly why I chose purple/lavender but you’ll notice that most of the water sources on the planet are shades of purple as well. A trick of the visible light off water in a binary star system maybe? The notable exceptions are The Eye [the lake at the top of the map], and the two rivers flowing out of the Eye [Little Blue and Big Blue]. The Eye is a maar lake and it was formed from a volcanic eruption.
This is a photo of Blue Lake in Mt Gambier [Victoria, Australia]:

Click the link above to discover more about volcanic activity in Victoria.
All of the photos and videos in this post are of Australia, and this ancient land was my inspiration for Vokhtah. Thanks for coming on this little journey with me. π
In my next post, I’ll start posting tips and tricks I’ve learned about Inkarnate, and how to use it with Corel Draw 8 to achieve special effects.
cheers,
Meeks
October 10th, 2021 at 11:05 am
Wicked cool.
When are you moving there?
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October 11th, 2021 at 10:01 am
When? I’ve been living there since…2004. π
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October 10th, 2021 at 3:08 am
Your worldbuilding is amazing and so meticulous! I love the thought that goes into it and the research. It makes the world and the story so much richer. Nice map-making!
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October 10th, 2021 at 9:38 am
-blush- thank you. Mine is nothing compared to some of the pros on Inkarnate. They’ve turned the software into an artist’s tool.
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October 11th, 2021 at 12:31 am
Cool. I might give it a look.
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October 11th, 2021 at 9:51 am
As Widds famously said – be warned, they’re addictive. π
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October 11th, 2021 at 10:07 am
I just went over and looked. Oooooh. Do you have the free version? I’ll have to go play around. I noticed that they have a tutorial too. π
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October 12th, 2021 at 9:22 am
There are lots of tutorials on youtube and yes, there is a free version but for $5 you can play with the whole package for a month. Cheap entertainment. π
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October 13th, 2021 at 3:17 am
I need to make a map for the next book, so I might play around. It looks fun. Thanks for sharing!
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October 13th, 2021 at 5:09 pm
Mwahahaha…I mean, you’re welcome. π
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October 8th, 2021 at 1:46 pm
That rabbit-hole just keeps on getting deeper and deeper and … π
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October 8th, 2021 at 4:07 pm
Tell me about it! Now I’m researching caves…-sigh-
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October 10th, 2021 at 7:59 am
OK, a rabbit-cave then! π
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October 10th, 2021 at 9:35 am
Ah hah…a rabbit-cave for a caverabbit. π
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October 10th, 2021 at 10:42 am
Were-Cave-Rabbits! π
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October 11th, 2021 at 10:03 am
-giggles- don’t you start! I already owe you for that ‘careful it might be addictive’ link. Bad Widds. π
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October 11th, 2021 at 3:07 pm
Heheheheheheh! π
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October 7th, 2021 at 11:19 pm
WOW! I’m in admiration of your world building ambitions and methodology. Me? I’m sticking to places I can walk around… hahahaha…
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October 8th, 2021 at 4:20 pm
lol – but you have the flip side of the problem. When you write about placed readers may know, you have to be so careful not to jar their expectations. World building has pitfalls for every genre.
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October 7th, 2021 at 4:55 pm
As usual you leave nothing to chance.. Your OCD is showing. But your work is always better by having the extra research that brings your story to life. It’s probably why I loved being an early reader of your manuscripts because you make it easy to connect with your characters and their environment.
Huge Hugs
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October 7th, 2021 at 6:45 pm
-giggles- I’m not that bad yet…am I? I prefer to think I’m…ah…careful. π I’ll take the kind comments with grace though!
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October 7th, 2021 at 3:53 pm
Wow, Meeks, you have certainly taken on a task and doing it very well…
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October 7th, 2021 at 6:47 pm
lol – thanks Carol, but you know how it is, when you’re loving what you’re doing, it feels more like play than work.
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October 7th, 2021 at 10:24 pm
I do… My weakness is research.. X
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October 8th, 2021 at 4:20 pm
-grin- Caves. I’m researching caves now. π
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October 8th, 2021 at 4:42 pm
Ahhhh happy spelunkering…(in case) you didn’t know “A spelunker is an explorer of caves”….I know I can be a nerd…lol
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October 9th, 2021 at 4:18 pm
-giggles- High Five fellow nerd!
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October 9th, 2021 at 4:27 pm
Haha.come on WP we want a haha button …
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October 10th, 2021 at 9:49 am
Yes! I second that. π
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October 7th, 2021 at 3:48 pm
That is a very cool map! And bringing real geological principles into it creates a great deal of depth. I might have mentioned a few dozen times before what a fan I am of fantasy maps. I often feel the classic skeumorphic look of mountain ranges in fantasy maps (baked into a lot of the tools!) has something to do with Christopher Tolkien’s 1940s sketches and the 1960s Pauline Baynes artwork that riffed off his Middle Earth visualisations. I always did like the look (the idea of Mordor being surrounded by a square mountain range was rather silly, but that’s another matter altogether).
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October 7th, 2021 at 6:52 pm
Thank you, thank you! Many of the parts of the map you now see have not even been mentioned in the story yet, but they will be. That was a big part of the reason for the need for accuracy. This map, and maybe others, will be reference material for the books to come.
And yes! I love Tolkien’s visual material. J.R.R. is one of my heroes – language, graphics, history, culture – his world has so much depth it feels as if it should be real. π
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October 7th, 2021 at 3:46 pm
You have done a lovely job with this map, Meeks, you have also convinced me to stick to writing historical novels and not try fantasy [smile].
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October 7th, 2021 at 6:54 pm
Oh no…..! Robbie, you create fantasy worlds already! With your fondant stories. I know you probably don’t see them as your ‘serious’ work, but you should. They’re original and quirky and bring joy to everyone who sees them. Just not sure how you’d make a map of fondant. But you could try. π
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