The World Beyond the Ice Wall 2.0

First off, I'm not a flat earther. 

USING THIS MAP

Consult me about it.
This map is NOT free for commercial use
 All Rights Reserved. This worldbuilding project and all of its accompanying material, including but not limited to text, images, graphics, audio, video, and any other intellectual property contained herein, are the sole property of Ohawhewhe and their collaborators. No part of this material may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact me via deviantart, Email (Ohawhewhe@gmail.com), or discord

Want to join the BTIW team and help us flesh out this world? Looking discuss and learn more? Join us on discord, just ask me through the comments or DMs, and I'll provide a link.

Why I made this 

    A little over a year ago, I had made a fantasy world map based on <u><b><a href="www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comme…">this flat earth map</a></b></u>, which I have yet to track down the original creator of:

    Yes, the original map seems to be made a flat earther, showcasing a model of the earth some flat earthers ascribe to: that beyond Antarctica, which acts as a sort of barrier surrounding the known world, there are many vast undiscovered continents, which are habitable and rich with life, there could even be multiple barriers, concentric rings of glaciers which lie at the edges of their sun’s light.

    Lets disregard the sheer absurdity of actually believing that our world is like this for a moment, and instead treat it as a fictional setting. Isn't this idea totally fascinating? Just think of the possibilities for fantasy stories, alternate history, speculative evolution and all the in-depth worldbuilding that could be done here! That’s what inspired me to make the enhanced version I put out last year.

    What I wanted out of it was to provide other creative people with a resource that they could use in their own projects. I was excited to see what other people could come up with, and all I asked was that people would link me in the things they create with it. Unfortunately, 13 months later I’ve yet to see anyone appropriate the map for any purpose, despite it being my most popular post by a huge margin, with over 40K views.
   I think this can be attributed to a few errors I made when creating that first map. The labels implied certain countries colonizing the various landmasses, the anti-aliasing made the map harder for others to edit, and I didn’t put my name on it, so when this map started to get reposted on other sites I not only missed out on all of that attention on my work, but also those who saw it wouldn’t know what its purpose was. So two months ago I set about correcting those mistakes and making further improvements on my work, and this is the result: The world beyond the ice wall 2.0, 400 million pixels of free real estate for world building.

    There is one other mistake I noticed and seek to rectify not in the map itself,  but in how I showcased it. With a world this massive, no one person could fully flesh it out on their own. To give this planet the worldbuilding treatment it deserves, I seek to organize an ongoing collaborative project with whoever is interested in submitting their ideas. Whether it be elements of alternate history, species to populate the far off biomes, art, stories, ideas, calculations, etc. All ideas will be accepted and showcased by myself and fellow collaborators, and if we decide it fits, it will be incorporated into the primary cannon of the BTIW universe. Does that mean you shouldn’t create or share work that you don’t want to be part of the collaboration? Of course not! I’ll showcase every idea and timeline others create with the map, and anything inspired by it is valid and cool in my book.

This map will be updated regularly*. 

*Depending on what people are interested in seeing. Please answer the polls, comment on this post, or join the discord to help determine where the project should go from here.
    This map is still very much a work in progress. I plan on regularly updating it with such things as:

    Details: Rivers, more specific land biomes, more labels for regions and landmasses, ocean biomes such as coral reefs, sunken continent biomes and seagrass meadows.

    Alternate versions: Topography, ocean currents, fantasy-style map with sea monsters and other wildlife,

    Alternate history points of divergence: I plan on creating on a few base maps showing the political borders of earths nations at various points in real world history, to serve as references for alternate historians, since it would be difficult for those of you without the proper editing software to trace them, and its undecided what the point of divergence will be for human history in this world in the main cannon anyway.

    Community ideas: New geographic features and biomes will be added or changed based on comments and discussion on the Deviant art group, Discord, Reddit, YouTube, and wherever else I decide to host this project.

    Here come the links:

Geographic features rundown

The Ice wall gates:

    “Antarctica,” if you can even call it that anymore, isn’t a single unbroken ice sheet, instead there are a few major gaps, one in each of the 1^st worlds oceans. Because of their polar conditions, these passages are frigid and infested with icebergs, so it would be quite rare for any pre-modern sailors to make it through them in one piece.
    The Pinniped Pass is a gap in the continental shelf that sits beneath most of the ice wall. While the ice sheet on the surface is permanent, the water beneath it could provide passage for submarines.

Toth, the moving continent:

    Thoth and the islands that follow it are extremely fast moving landmasses by plate tectonics standards, circling the ice wall approximately every 2000 years. It goes in an almost perfect circle, so its seasons remain stable, while its weather patterns are apt to fluctuate as it moves through and disrupt the ocean currents of the second world. Aside from the regular climactic disruption, Thoth’s rapid movement also spawns earthquakes and volcanic eruptions along its path, so whatever continent or island chain is in close proximity to Thoth has to deal with environmental turmoil for a few centuries as it passes by them.

    There is one other critical way that Thoth disrupts the environments of the second world, one which far more sporadic and unpredictable: the distribution of its wildlife. Whatever species happen to raft, swim, or fly away from Thoth could end up becoming stranded on nearby landmasses and make a new home for themselves there.

    Due to their large area and proximity to the ice wall Thoth and the follower islands are the most likely landmasses for humans to first discover upon entering the second world. I’ve been playing around with the idea of peoples like the Yaghan, Carthaginians, and even 11^th century Greenlanders finding their way to Thoth and settling it, but I want to hear what the community thinks first before I develop those ideas any further.

The Montane Ring:

    Instead of just having another ice wall at the edge of the second world, I decided to surround it with a mind-bogglingly vast and ancient mountain range, whose surface area dwarfs that of the entire landmass of the 1^st world. Unlike the Ice wall, there are no gaps, and with the exception of the canals of Aken, there is no way to sail or swim through them. Its surface is mostly desolate montane deserts and shrublands, with most of its forests sitting along the inner coastline, with a few significant fertile regions like Apisia and Shangri la. The polar circle and border between the second and third worlds is mostly within the montane ring, so much of its interior is permanently glaciated and almost uninhabitable for almost any complex life. Even flying and terrestrial species could almost never make it through to the third world.

Shangri-la:

    A system of enormous lakes entirely enclosed within the montane ring, which support regions of lush vegetation along their shores. I’m not entirely sure what the most interesting history for this lake system is, were they once part of the ocean that became enclosed by the montane ring? Did they once flow out to the sea and were later cut off, or did they form and remain in complete isolation? I’m leaning toward the second idea, but I’ll leave it up to the feedback I receive.

The Canals of Aken:

    Technically a gap in the montane ring, but entirely beneath its surface. A vast system of caves cut into the landmass, the largest of which can be sailed through and stretch for thousands of miles. Due to its unique ecosystem, any species arriving from the outside is forced to undergo extreme adaptations to inhabit the canals, and since their lengths are so vast and there are no strong ocean currents to push a rafting creature through quickly, no lineage could be able to make it to the other side without first evolving to suit the canals first.

    It is indeed a hard barrier to cross in trying to reach the third world, but once this maze of tunnels is charted out and the shortest path is discovered, it could provide a useful passage for humans to reach the third world, well technically they’d reach the bay of boudin first, and then they’d need to navigate another maze of tunnels to access the rest. It would be quite a tedious and tumultuous undertaking, but I believe humans could find a way to do it.

    Also, I imagine the tunnels to have a dense distribution of hydrothermal vents and volcanic flows that keep the tunnels from freezing.

Nidavellir:

                While the Canals of Aken are connected to the outside oceans, the huge cave system of Nidavellir is entirely closed off from the outside world. As I imagine it, it would have been that way for hundreds of millions of years, hosting perhaps the most alien forms of life to be found anywhere in this setting. It possesses both submerged and unsubmerged regions. Think along the lines of Trollman’s Diyu project for the kinds of wildlife and ecosystems that could dwell here.

Horus and the Ascending Isles:

                Like the walls of Asgard, the coastline of these landmasses are sheer cliff faces that jut out of the water. They are much more habitable however, since they’re located well within the tropic and temperate regions, and their surfaces sit a few hundred meters above the sea level rather than over one thousand. The continent of Horus itself is more or less uniform in elevation along its coastline, while the ascending isles increase In height the closer they are to Horus. The faces of these cliffs host a variety of unique habitats, such as vertical forests.  

The Cup of Poseidon:

                This island can be thought of as a giant cone of an extinct volcano, filled almost to the brim with water. The surface of this enormous lake would lie several hundred meters above sea level, and extend down to beneath the ocean floor.

The Emerald arches:

                Nearby to the cup of Poseidon, the Emerald Arches is a unique geographic feature composed of hundreds of arch-shaped islands of varying sizes. There’s not much to them other than cool imagery and interesting possibilities for the plants and animals that inhabit the undersides.

Sunken continents: 

                Sunken continents are a unique set of marine biomes consisting of wide areas of shallow waters where the floor was previously unsubmerged and hosted terrestrial ecosystems. Unlike other sunken landmasses, these biomes are characterized by a high concentration of previously terrestrial plants and animals which were able to evolve to live in a submerged environment. Basically, entire terrestrial ecosystems would make the transition to marine environment together.
                The sunken continent biome is extremely variable within itself and especially between each major region, as each of them developed independently from a different set of terrestrial organisms. So in future iterations of the map they should be split up to better reflect that variance.

                There’s plenty of room to experiment with different ideas here. The various environments would be determined by: depth, which types of land plants are the primary producers in these ecosystems, how they adapted to survive submerged, the properties of the soil/substrate they’re sitting in, and the extent to which they’re integrated with other marine organisms like corals and sponges. I could imagine something like a shallow coral reef with scattered tree-like plants that jut out of the water supporting a dense tuft of small leaves, or a forest of trees who have many wide buoyant leaves, attached to limp, spindly branches that float on the waters surface.

Muspelheim and the Sea of hell:

                Muspelheim and the Sea of Hell are a region located in the Abyssal ocean, characterized by constant and extreme volcanic activity. Lakes and rivers of lava that stretch on for as far as the eye can see, and submarine eruptions that bring much of the water to near boiling temperatures.

                I have not thought much about how this would affect the environment of the nearby lands of Seth, nor how/if any wildlife could develop in this area.

The Frozen Wastes:

                The frozen wastes are exactly what they sound like, a gargantuan plane of frigid ice and rock that lies beyond the edge of the third world. While frozen, it is exposed to constant light from a single stationary “spotlight star,”  like the rest of the wastes are, as opposed to the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd worlds, who’s “spotlight stars” move In a circle and shift their path with the seasons. The frozen waste is the way it is because its light source is farther away. Because of this constant source of light, life could exist even in the deepest depths of this icy world. Especially so, in fact, since the deepest parts would be those receiving the most direct light.

    Maybe we should put a patch of exposed ocean water there? I’ll leave it up to you.

The Abyssal Ocean:

                Another vast area with a stationary light source, characterized by having almost no land above sea level, a seemingly endless ocean whose average depth is comparable to the trenches of the first world. I imagine the center of the abyssal ocean directly under the light source to host a massive eternal hurricane, big enough to conceal a continent….

    Should we put a continent there? I’ll let you decide

The Scorched Wastes:

      Same deal as the previous two, stationary light source over a huge, mostly uniform area. The scorched wastes are mostly above sea level and are exposed to constant light from a low-floating light source. I'm thinking maybe there should be two of them, one circling the other, and perhaps with a moon that orbits the second star, sometimes blocking one or both of their light, producing a strange 4-part one light, two lights, one and a half light, no light cycle.

Should I add some oases within the scorched wastes? Perhaps some mountain ranges or valleys that can provide some shade from the light and host life? Tell me what you think

The Walls of Asgard:

    Finally we have the last and strangest of the wastes, the walls of asgard, whose surface is mostly a flat plateu that extends over a thousand meters above sea level at its lowest point. Its surface is desolate and cold, dimly lit by a small, low-floating starlight. Unlike the other wastes, I’ve already implemented a large habitable region hidden deep within, a land called Valhalla.

The Skycaves:

    The Sky caves are a system of large tunnels that only exit several hundred meters above sea level. Like the other cave systems of this setting, they host unique ecosystems teeming with bizarre and highly specialized life forms. I think it would be most interesting for these caves to have always been elevated, meaning the only life that could fly, climb, or be blown into the entrances would come to inhabit them.

Valhalla:

    Directly under the starlight that floats above the Walls of Asgard, there is a great depression where the plateau suddenly drops off and at the bottom sits the greatest bastion for life within its confines. A single moon orbits the starlight, casting a shadow that gives the landscape some reprieve from the otherwise eternal sunshine. The climate of Valhalla is fairly temperate, a bit warmer near the center and colder as you move outwards.  

Flying landmasses:

Flying landmasses are exactly what they sound like, landmasses that float in the air, detached from the surface of the world. As of this update, there is one continent, Olympus, one large island, Elysium, and one island chain, The Chinvatian Isles, that fit into this category.

    Some flying landmasses are the result of “uprooting” events where a previously normal landmass/part of a landmass rises into the sky and remains floating for anywhere from a few days to thousands or millions of years. I imagine Elysium would be such a case, where a large section of the amazon rainforest rose and flew away to its current position in the 2^nd world ~10 million years ago. The nearby islands are pieces of Elysium that broke off and fell into the ocean, a few of which fell onto the montane ring, introducing Amazonian wildlife to the Niflheim region.

  Other flying landmasses may have risen and remained that way for far longer, perhaps before complex life even arose, and are thus only inhabited by the descendants of airborne organisms, or organisms from other flying landmasses that it crashed into and merged with. I think it would be cool for the flying continent of Olympus to fall into that category. 

    An enormous thanks to GPMAsss2 and Lediblock2 for their valuable input and encouragement. This world owes a lot to you, without the interest you showed I would never have considered taking the path I did with this project.