Placing Geographical Zones: Part II

So, in the end, I’ve set these islands to look similar to something you might find in the Caribbean. They’re not just a single big hill sticking up out of the water. Instead, they look like a standard landmass with its ups and down. Rather than forest, there’s mostly grass and beach, with just the occasional coconut or palm tree.

The NorthWestern Islands

It’s much less peaceful in the islands to the northwest. In the image, you can see a reddish arc drawn through them. This addition represents the line of magma vents creating the underwater volcanoes that have slowly built up this island chain. So, the islands you see may be rounded or flattish like mountaintops; or, they may have a great crater in their center. In fact, the entire area might have an underwater crater of immense proportions. It’s all up to us.

I’ll start by building a crater onto the southernmost landmass in the island chain. This island is a single volcano unto itself. The other two are both above a large underwater crater. They could have been built by leaking lava or small eruptions, or maybe they were once part of a larger landmass that was fractured by a blowup long ago. In our world’s case, we have to go with the first option due to how the continents and islands were initially formed. Of course, this means that there could be a big eruption at any time. Since it’s our fiction world, that’s code for “whenever we want it to happen.”

What does this mean for the weather and general climate? Generally speaking, much of that will be determined by where the islands are actually located. This string of islands reaches an immense distance, practically from the equator to the pole. That fact ensures that each is going to have a unique climate and personality. After another 50,000 or 100,000 years or so, these volcanic building projects might eventually have enough landmass to merge into a new, if volatile, continent.

There is also something particularly tempting about lava-enriched lands. The soil created once everything cools is incredibly nutrient-rich. Perhaps it’s a sadistic twist of nature that the lands that might seem so appealing just happen to be sitting right on top of one of Earth and our fictional planet’s most destructive natural forces. Let’s say that this area has not erupted in quite some time, and so flora and fauna have

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