Map Thread XXII
- Thread starter Balkanized U.S.A
- Start date
Yeah having zombies around seems odd but necessary to justify city states. I like to imagine them as perhaps more developed than the zombies we are used to. Maybe halfway between a zombie and an orc? Idk I didn't really flesh them out, zombies are always more background setting than anything
I actually jotted down each city's original branch, but didn't differentiate them in the map.
I like to imagine the Marine cities as being particularly militant, obviously the Navy ones as being particularly thalassocratic, and so on.
Trade ways honestly I drew and differentiated it more by aesthetic feel, didn't really research it thoroughly. Hence any oddities. Like I imagine someone knowledgeable in rivers would spot riverine trade routes I drew that wouldn't actually work.
Not really only losing, more was able to regrow to that size. San Diego turns out to be a really military heavy city OTL, hence its size.
I imagine some places don't make much sense. Like army bases in the middle of the desert hosting huge populations. But well I used the data I had
You could have Mexico under the Habsburg-Iturbides and the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia.
Presumably the "Imperials" are Manchu, but are the Xi'an-capital people Hui? And I have no idea who the Nanjingers might be (Zhuang? Yi?).
I just finished and posted a map on Female Leaders around the World in the Political Maps Thread if anyone wants to check it out and/or comment over there.
The Russian Republic of Transnarva (Russian: Российская Республика Транснарва) is a partially recognised country located in Eastern Europe. It borders the Gulf of Finland to the north, Russia to the east, Lake Peipus to the south and Estonia to the west.
Transnarva is only recognised as an independent state by five UN members: Russia, Nicaragua, Syria, Venezuela and Nauru. It is also recognised by the de facto independent states of Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The government of Estonia, along with the majority of the international community, consider the country's land to be sovereign Estonian territory. According to the Estonian government, the territory of Transnarva constitutes the Estonian county of Ida-Viru and they maintain an administrative government for the county, but Tallinn lacks effective control over the region.
The origins of Transnarva's de facto independence lie with the incorporation of Estonia into the Soviet Union in September 1940, as per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler and Stalin. After the Soviets took control of Estonia they swiftly set about cementing their rule over the Baltics and reshaping Baltic society to their liking - and one of the main ways they did this was by deporting a large number of Estonians from the country - around twenty thousand. The deportations would be halted following the Nazi conquest in 1941, but the Soviet reconquest of 1944 allowed them to resume until Stalin's death in 1953.
At the same time ethnic Russian workers from Russia proper were brought into Estonia in droves. By 1989 ethnic Russians comprised about 30% of the country's population. These Russians were especially concentrated in the northeast of the country, around the city of Narva, whose original population was displaced by the Nazis and subsequently barred from returning.
Following the Singing Revolution and the restoration of Estonian independence on 20 August 1990, concern spread across the Russian population of Estonia that the newly independent government would perhaps deport them or forcefully Estonianise them, and so the Russian population of northeast Estonia quickly organised an unofficial referendum on whether the Narva region should secede. Held between 25 and 26 August 1990, the referendum's proposal of counter-secession was approved by 97% of voters (the ethnic Estonians of the region boycotted the vote). A constitution was quickly drawn up, and on 31 September 1990 the Russians of northeast Estonia formally announced their secession from Estonia as the Russian Republic of Transnarva.
The Estonian government swiftly condemned this act of secession. It moved its military in in a bid to recapture Transnarva. Still, Soviet support for the Transnarvans allowed them to beat back the Estonian attempt successfully. The war would rage until the UN stepped in and arranged a ceasefire on 3 February 1991, which effectively confirmed Transnarva's de facto independence.
Transnarva remains heavily dependent on military and financial aid from the Russian Federation and acts like a part of Russia in many ways. Recently the Transnarvan government has made overtures to Moscow about potentially joining the Federation itself, either as its own oblast or as part of Leningrad Oblast.
This is great. Looks great. Love the complexity. I have nothing else to add.
@TheHoaxOfMithras, is that map yours? Because if not, then the etiquette is to give credit to the original author. I say this because I've seen it before. Either way, welcome to AH.com.
Id really love to know what software you used to make this map and such! It honestly inspired me to work on my own for a Twilight:2000 campaign I plan on running with a few players.Cross-posting from the MOTF thread, as usual. Comments, questions, anything is welcomed!
the former United States of America
100 Years After the Rise of the Dead
Basically, my idea for this scenario is the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, where zombies are still very much a threat and force most people to live in well-guarded walled communities. Hence fulfilling the goal of a city-state world after a global disaster. And I decided on the mainland USA because it is a region without a real history of city-states, but that I could envision as having an interesting one to tell.
The question then became - from where would those cities arise? Building them simply from already existing cities is not only somewhat implausible to envision but, worse yet, would be quite boring, essentially making it a copy of the OTL map of the US. So I decided instead to look to military bases, forts and outposts as the centers of this new civilization. It is somewhat sensible, I think, that military bases, already secured and already well-armed, would become, in a zombie apocalypse, more likely to withstand and to maintain themselves going.
So, I went it with. I researched through hundreds of military bases in US soil, and used their active duty personnel as a baseline for their population-in-setting. I listed, researched and placed in the map almost 300 different places. Hard work, but I think it benefited the map. This allowed for an interesting diversity, with some cities becoming quite more predominant than others, and some regions seemingly surviving better than others. And, through working with trade lines (through existing highways, railways and rivers) it created an interesting map, with a lot to explore.
In fact, what I like the most about this map is the lore potential. Imagine the amount of stories that might exist beneath the surface. What is life under a very militarized society, constantly vigilant against the living dead and about the risk of infection? How might relationships between neighbouring cities be? And this society wouldn't be at all static - from the map already it is possible to imagine probable regions bound to be united as regional states in the future, in ways we probably wouldn't foresee looking at a OTL State boundary maps or just from OTL city demographics.
Another interesting question would be - what exists beyond the cities, besides the dead? I can only imagine that there would be countless communities living outside the jurisdiction of these militarized cities. I have come to call them "hillbillies", a term like the Greco-Roman "barbarian" in sense, and I imagine there is a lot to say about their relations with the city dwellers, between trade, raids and whatever else.
Finally, there is how culture would evolve and diverge in this world. How might language evolve? I could imagine the various languages of North America becoming the foundation of their own language families. And of course, there is the question of how religion might deal with both the zombie apocalypse and its aftermath. That Utah exists quite isolated from the rest of the continent, for one, is quite interesting from a religious perspective.
You might be asking: what about Canada? I'm afraid Canada didn't make it(Ok, kidding, really my base map didn't include Canadian landmarks and I didn't have the extra time to research it enough)
Anyway, this is my map, I hope you liked it. It was a fun project to make up, even if researching and then proceeding to meticulously write down military bases and their personnel size probably put me on some list.
If you want to do zombies as orcs, may I recommend the Hater series by David Moody? The titular Haters range in temperament from mindless berzerkers to quite intelligent, although they happen to be living people afflicted with some unknown malady, united only by their urge to kill every person who isn't a Hater. Another setting with zombies that end up pretty threatening is the manga I Am A Hero, which has zombies that agglomerate together into massive zombie kaijus, as well as intelligent zombies. Either of those would be pretty good inspiration for zombies that are threatening enough to last a century.
So, a while back there used to this alphabet ISOT series by Beedok, where they'd make maps of scenarios with every country starting with a specific letter ISOTed to a virgin earth.
But the project seemed to have died after the letter R, so I decided to make a continuation of it. It accidentally ended up becoming quite long tho.
Will I do World T? Maybe, maybe not.
But the project seemed to have died after the letter R, so I decided to make a continuation of it. It accidentally ended up becoming quite long tho.
Will I do World T? Maybe, maybe not.
!!! Loved this series, pretty awe-some of you to continue it.
So detailed!
I don't know why, but when I use the same font, it's not only bigger, it's much uglier...
You can only use it in font sizes that are multiples of 6, otherwise it distorts. The one big flaw with it.
See this little test image I threw together (and doubled in size to make it more legible). Font sizes from 7 to 10 are especially bad.