How do you handle elevated areas in maps? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by IndigoGollum@lemmy.world to c/worldbuilding@lemmy.world

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My world doesn't have many mountain ranges in a way that's easy to draw. Rather, the whole center of the continent is raised like one big mountain island.^1^

I'm drawing a map of an area about 200x219 km, to give an idea of the scale i'm working with, ranging in height from sea level to about 50km above that.

Single mountains or mountain ranges like the ones in the maps in The Lord of the Rings aren't too hard, but when one side of a mountain covers the entire map i don't know how to show that.

A map of Oz on Wikipedia has little hair-like lines to show elevation at Happy Valley (bottom left). Is there any other strategy for showing height differences on this scale?

^1^ This is because instead of tectonic plates, it has something like geophysical cooling that forms mountains. I won't get into that just now.

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[-] MantisToboggon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Does it have to be from volcanism? Couldn't it just be magic fatasss demon crashed made a mountain?

[-] IndigoGollum@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

It's not from either of those. Imagine a hard ball wrapped in cloth in space. Now imagine the center shrinks but the cloth doesn't, so it buches up and wrinkles. Those wrinkles are landmasses.

If that's too easy, imagine the same thing but inside-out and you'll be closer to how it actually works.