Hi(gh)!

Of course I know that I can use procedural functions to generate terrain 
reliefs and even entire planets (like I did back in 2010 with my 
Ghurghusht project)... but when I want to have full control over the 
distribution of land and sea, of river networks and terrain forms, there 
is no other chance but doing it in the old-fashioned cartographic way 
(like I did since I was eight years old, long before POV-Ray and modern 
computers).

The main problem arising is: I want to paint my planet in a mostly 
undistorted fashion, but then have to convert this original map into a 
simple cylindrical projection. So I started with two circular 
hemispheres (west and east), painted the landforms and then stretched 
each line of each hemisphere to match the full diameter length, so that 
finally I got a 2:1 ratio map to be wrapped around a sphere.

Even for a map of only 802 by 401 pixels (attached here) this is 
cumbersome work when done manually with an image processor (I used 
GIMP), so I will write a C++ program which does this work automatically.

Afterwards I made a few renderings of the planet: the second image 
(after the map) shows the "water hemisphere" with Ktemalg, the central 
continent, framed by Ramgalg, the outer continent and Xallalg, M 720s 
"Antarctica" in the deep south. North of Ktemalg lies Elmialg Xuleel, 
the "northern sea", while for the southern sea, I have not found a name 
yet (though it also would start with "Elmialg", as this is the 
Ilthanalgut word for "sea"...).
The third and forth images show the north and south polar regions 
respectively, the fifth one the planet how it would actually appear in 
space, with its regular axial tilt of 21.37 degrees.

Currently all this is not really sophisticated, but I will add height 
and depth colors (to be expanded to full-fledged 16bit heightfields 
later on, of course on a much greater scale), also "satellite views" 
with terrain patterns gleaned from Blue Marble images.

But what is M 720/Ilthanalg about? Here is the story:

###

Way back in the 1970s, when Afghans merely were long-haired sighthounds 
to me, my deepest desire was to travel on the Kli-Kla-Klawitter bus [a 
1970s German children's TV series] to Krempoli [also a 1970s German 
children's TV series; it was about a ficitious self-organized adventure 
playground in Munich], the Place for Wild Children [the sub-title of 
"Krempoli"] and frolic about with the other Krempoli boys in the Isar 
river. half-naked in smooth shiny knee-length Bavarian leather pants.

Unfortunately, there was no Krempoli in Cologne, let alone an Isar 
river, and play friends were hard to find, as nobody wanted to deal with 
such an awkward goggled bookworm and sports failure like me.

So I dreamed me a world where all things were entirely different... nine 
lightyears from here, in the Sirius system, there was a planet were all 
people were my namesakes and nine years old... Jörgiania, also known as 
M 720.

Properly, the Jörgianians weren't really nine years old, but just looked 
that way... in fact, they were blessed with immortality and eternal 
childhood, but their intelligence surpassed that of most Terran adults.

The Jörgianians were descendants of the Terran Atlanteans, whose 
super-civilization had been annihilated by a global catastrophy in 
prehistoric times; 720 of them escaped on an interstellar spaceship and 
finally reached the small planet in the Sirius system.

Barely landed there, they were attacked by Andreatic space troops under 
their supreme commander KDZ 666, who controlled the Sirius system by 
means of a gigantic space fortress known as the Steel Death; the 
Atlanteans took refuge in a cave, but, under the influence of the 
Andreatic regression ray weapons, developed back to children. Soon after 
that, the Andreates enclosed the whole planet in a regression force 
field; but an unintended effect of this force field was that, from now 
on, the Atlanteans experienced no aging anymore, and thus were, apart 
from death by violence, practically immortal. However, KDZ 666 hoped to 
exterminate the Atlanteans sooner or later, as they now also were no 
longer able to reproduce.

But in that cave where the Atlanteans found shelter from the Andreatic 
attack, a natural radioactive substance was found which stimulated the 
brains of the regreded in such a way that soon the mental devolution was 
more than outweighed and the Atlanteans were able to start developing 
sophisticated strategies of survival, artificial reproduction and 
military resistance against the Andreates. Eventually, they expelled the 
occupants from the planet and built a civilization which even surpassed 
lost Atlantis. Nevertheless, the war against the Andreates continued, 
with the theatre being now in outer space. At least, KDZ 666 had been 
able to erect another field of force around Ilthanalg to prevent the 
Jörgianians from practising space flight beyond close orbits around M 
720, so gradually a delicate military equilibrium evolved, albeit a true 
peace never ensued.

On M 720, the economy was fully automatized, so that its people could 
devote themselves entirely to science and arts - as long as they were 
not conscripted every 100 years to 25 years of service in the space 
fleet. There were glittering futuristic cities with all imaginable 
amenities of a hyper-civilization, and as the Andreatic force field was 
penetrable from the outside and a treaty existed to let civilian traffic 
to M 720 pass unharmed, from a circumference of many thousand lightyears 
intelligent lifeforms came to the planet to trade, to study at its 
universities renowned thoughout the galaxy or simple as tourists 
marvelling at the wonders of this astonishing small world.

Irrespective of its small diameter of only about 1,800 kilometres (this 
is hardly more then half of the Moon's diameter!), M 720, because of its 
core comprised mostly of platinum and iridium had an Earth-like gravity 
and thus also an atmosphere suitable for higher developed lifeforms. 
Also the distance to Sirius was appropriate, so that a multifarious 
endemic flora and fauna developed. On M 720 all climates and landscape 
types familiar from Earth, from rain forests to ice sheets occured, 
thanks to the more rigid crust material its mountain ranges towered 
twice as high as the Himalayas.

Hundreds of thousands of years passed by without any change to the 
military stalemate between M 720 and the Andreates... but by the second 
half of the 20th century CE it appeared that the Andreates were short 
before breaking through the Jörgianian fronts and directly attacking the 
planet. Meanwhile on M 720 the secret research in technologies to 
penetrate the force field from the inside had evolved far enough that 
for the very first time it was feasible to send emissaries to other 
planetary systems, looking for allies in the struggle against the Andreates.

So they sent a volunteer in a small spacecraft with warp drive to a 
yellow dwarf star nine lightyears away, where recently signs for 
beginning space flight had been discovered. Unfortuately, also the 
Andreates noticed that, so they aimed a focused regression ray at the 
spacecraft, which caused the emissary to even re-develop back to infancy.

The spacecraft automatically found its way to Earth and went down in the 
early hours of July 19, 1969 at the edge of a large city in western 
Germany, where it was found by a young couple on a morning stroll. They 
decided to adopt and raise the crying baby in its space capsule...

While the battles between M 720 and the Andreates escalated, the boy 
grew in his Terran exile and pretty soon learned about his true story; 
eleven years after his landing on Earth he was reached by an emergency 
call from M 720, he instantly knew what to do. Back then, LEGO (tm) had 
issued the Space series, and among the construction kits also was a 
mobile rocket launcher who could sent rockets using warp technology on 
interstellar trajectories.

Therefore, on the morning of its 11th "birthday" one of these rockets 
was launched, covered the nine lightyears to the Sirius system within a 
few hours - and the incredible happed: unnoticed by the Andreatic 
defense radar, the rocket made its way to the Steel Death, entered an 
open reactor vent and started a nuclear chain reaction which caused KDZ 
666s space fortress to explode within seconds into a giant fire ball. 
The nightmare of the Andreatic siege, lasting 518,400 Terran years had 
come to an end, from now on a free Jörgiania should confidently find its 
place among the community of galactic civilizations.

###

Many years later, inspired by a fellow history student who also 
daydreamed of a sophisticated sci-fi/fantasy project, started to re-work 
and further develop my childhood fantasies of M 720 under the name of 
"Ilthanalg"... but this is another story. To those of you capable to 
read German, I recommend you to read this: 
http://www.assoziations-blaster.de/blast/Ilthanalg.html - later on, 
there will be also an English version of this text!

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