One of my creative paths is fantasy cartography. Here’s a work in progress.

A few weeks ago I discovered that data from the Magellan spacecraft’s survey of Venus is available from the USGS. For years, I’ve been seeking ways to make “realistic” fantasy worlds. Randomly generated terrain just doesn’t cut it, and I thought that the real terrain models we have are limited to one planet which most people are already quite familiar with.

When I saw the elevation data from Venus, which is remarkably free of craters, and about 90% complete, I knew I had found something I could use. After a bit of data fiddling and amateur climatology, I came up with the above map.

This is not a representation of a terraformed Venus. It’s a fantasy world derived from Venus. The name comes from the Sumerian goddess associated with the planet. That name, what we can guess of the planet’s history, and a world-building idea I spotted somewhere on a forgotten tweet, led to the scenario in the caption.

This is the first draft, and I expect the final world will not look like this, as I have other ideas of how to make this more imaginary. But I have other things I need to work on for now. I hope I can return to this later.