The first time I sketched a fantastical world was in 7th Grade Social Studies. We were given a large sheet of paper, perhaps 24” x 20” and told to draw a map that included various geographical features such as a strait, an isthmus, a river delta, a mountain range, and so on. I went nuts drawing an island chain perhaps somewhat reminiscent of Hawaii with one large island and a string of smaller ones. When the assignment was done, I began writing a history of my new world and its lineage of kings just for fun. I was into the Middle Ages at the time, so it’s not surprising that the monarchies were all heavy with Anglo-Saxon names. Yet, as is the nature of youth, after a while I set my imaginary island chain aside and moved on to other things.

Nearly a decade later, when I was home on leave before my Firstie year at West Point (aka senior year), my mother asked me to go through some of my old school things to clear up space in the attic. I came across my old 7th Grade map and a creative spirit came upon me again. I don’t believe I had shifted into a desire to write novels by that point, but there definitely was a creative part of my mind looking for an outlet. I dabbled a bit more with that island chain, but I realized that I had grown a lot from the days when I first created it. It didn’t quite fit my creative ambitions so I moved on. After that, I continued to dabble in various projects, the most serious being a sci-fi setting spanning dozens of solar systems that I was working on up to the point the Isfalinis project began. The discussion of how the world of “Tears from Iron” began was already covered in the first article of this series so I won’t go into that aspect in any more detail here.

During the initial, cooperative, period of Isfalinis’ development, we never really moved tangibly beyond the Lost Age. This was sketched, perhaps with lingering impressions of Antarctica, as an oval shaped continent with modest coastal features. Its interior was protected by a ring of mountain ranges. We knew then that the final product would be set in a later age and, thus far, that has been true of my novels as well. Since that time, I’ve added some embellishments to the Lost Age world… a few more lakes and islands, some additional rivers, shifted national boundaries… but it has remained largely what it was in the beginning.

The bigger project of developing the modern era began after I forged out on my own into the great unknown. How does one draw a map of something that has never existed before and doesn’t yet possess any stories or history? The Lost Age didn’t really serve as a solid source of inspiration because the Cataclysm largely rearranged the face of the world. That being said, once I had my ‘before and after’ maps, I expended hundreds of hours plotting the shift from one to another. But I, perhaps unwisely, didn’t begin with that morphing in mind. No, I had a completely blank slate. When it comes to creative enterprises, such a lack of direction can be daunting.

Without any guides, I drew the map largely from whimsy, inspired by interesting geographical features and vague impressions of stories and regions I eventually wanted to exist. There is a rugged northern frontier that would serve as homeland to some of the rough ideas I had from our early Scandinavian endeavors (as discussed in the first article). I wanted a vast steppe reminiscent of the great Asiatic plains. I envisioned a ‘hinterland’ of rugged untamed forests nestled between two mountain ranges. I had the idea for a complex of islands that would become a homeland for a corsair people. But mostly, I just doodled and came up with the history afterward.

This first map was drawn in 2000. This was about the same time I was laying the initial groundwork for my first (unpublished) novel that is set about three thousand years after “Tears from Iron.”

With that in mind, I also worked on political geography, for the story period at least. I doodled locations of possible kingdoms such as a rough land of interconnected minor princedoms vaguely reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire, sophisticated arid realms somewhat like Egypt, eastern realms somewhat akin to China and Japan… and various nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples like the Bedouin and the Mongols. Being a historian at heart, it was an enjoyable task.

I also asked myself about the history of all these places. I made copies of my map and sketched approximate realms every hundred years or so, much like you might see in a historical atlas. Most of these ideas remained vague sketches with only a few warranting brief notes in the margin. The rest only bore undeveloped exotic names like Merania, Nileta, and Kyeris.

This set me in good stead for my early writing projects including my first attempts at a novel. Setting often informs plot, history, and culture, and I had enough groundwork to achieve that. I occasionally dabbled with my maps as whims took me to chart trade routes or religious regions, or whatever else caught my mind. This included the aforementioned project where I charted the changing of the world from the Lost Age through the Cataclysm to the Modern Era. These were fairly simple sketches, only following coastline shifts with a vague impression of mountain ranges. The core of the change centered on the death of Henji upon the Bridge of Vasyr where she split half the continent down through the crust of the world. This rift formed the basis of the Osenjian Sea which lies to the south of the Kayrstaran Empire of “Tears from Iron.” With that project complete (around 2006), I considered my major geographic work to be done. And so it was, for nine years.

But there were nagging feelings in the back of my mind. I liked the world I’d developed and was particularly fond of certain regions, but something was off. Next week, I’ll discuss how I took Isfalinis back to the drawing board in 2015 and how “Tears from Iron” emerged from it.