I love creating worlds. Helevos is my fantasy world project,
The first maps I drew of Helevos were related to stories and games I played when I was a child, based around cities and islands. Besoa was in fact the first island I drew, a fantasy kingdom of nobles, monsters and whirlwinds. Antyokplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigAntyok
Antyok or Antyoq [ant-YOK, uhn-CHOK] is an island in the Natorn Archipelago, due east of Besoa. It was formerly an independent nation, the Principality of Antyok, but since 1086 ME, following the Bizoan War, it is now under Hartheran dominion.
Antyok
This is in a series of articles about Antyok, an island nation in the HartheranHartheranHartheran was second, then later Anrel. At first all these stories weren't much related to each other, but I eventually needed some kind of context to link them together, so I drew a roughly rectangular island continent, which I called Anásthiasplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigAnásthias
Anásthias [a-NAS-thee-ass / ænæsθiːæs], or [an-ass-THEE-as] is an equatorial island continent, heart of the Civilised World. The north straddles the equator and is hot and humid, while most of the equatorial centre is an upland plateau with fertile river valleys, and stretches of arid plains and desert in the shadow of the mountains. The south is temperate but more wild, separated from the civilisations of the north by the almost impassable Harthera, and positioned some of my cities and stories in this land, with the islands as a group to the northeast.
As I got older I realised that my creations were pretty simplistic without existing in more of a realistic society. Starting with Anrelplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigAnrel Isles
Anrel [ANN-rel], or the Anrel Isles, is the most northerly island group in the Natorn Archipelago. It consists of three major islands and numerous smaller ones. The largest, colloquially if infrequently called Mainland, is divided between the kingdoms of Trésard and Narette. The island, I began to fill out the details of the various countries, their societies, culture and history, drawing maps for what is now the Natorn Archipelago and Anásthias.
At the same time I was also creating a scifi universe with many other worlds and interstellar societies, so I came up with the name Helevos for a seemingly backward planet in a binary solar system. In that context I wondered, how come Helevos is so technologically backward? I came up with the idea of a cycle of ice ages which dramatically changed climate and sea level every few thousand years, destroying advanced cultures and making it difficult for human civilisation to advance.
By this point Helevos only consisted of one island continent and an archipelago, so I decided to place them in the context of a wider globe. I created the “New Lands” of Retzayk, which was originally a group of island continents far to the west of Anásthias, as well as lands at the poles.
More importantly I scanned most of my existing hand-drawn maps, and created full colour, atlas style maps of the whole world. Although the current shape of the world has changed significantly, most of the islands and cities are muuch the same shape as the hand-drawn originals.
Despite having a full scale world finally, I didn't think it all fitted together very well. So I revised the whole planet by creating a full electronic world model, with a more realistic continent structure.