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tomme23 — Midgard: A Fantasy World Map
#asongoficeandfire #crossover #elderscrolls #fanfiction #fantasy #fantasymap #gameofthrones #hobbit #lordoftherings #lotr #map #middleearth #midgard #norse #olympians #tes #thelordoftherings #tolkien #westeros #justdont #pleasestop #tamriel #howtotrainyourdragon #crossoveruniverse #themidgardproject #satellitemap #actuallyterrible #equalearth #equalearthprojection #theelderscrolls
Published: 2018-12-28 01:48:18 +0000 UTC; Views: 21941; Favourites: 241; Downloads: 977
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Description
The fantasy crossover world you never wanted and didn’t ask for!
High Praise for the Midgard Project
“True, grade A, world redefining lore.“
“It is the stupidest thing I've ever seen but also the most wonderful.” ~ /u/Zinitrad2“It's beautiful. Please don't ever stop!” ~ /u/InfiniteQuasar“I am also exceedingly impressed, like someone should have told them it was silly 6 years ago, now its grander than the sum of it's parts.” ~ /u/LordNancy94“Midgard > c0da, suck my muatra n'wahs” ~ /u/SuicidalPlantpot“This is what /r/teslore strives to achieve but never will.” ~ /u/Shnatsel“It's either the most awesome dumb thing in the world, or the most dumb awesome thing in the world. I both love and despise the creator.” ~ Kunzsasaurus ”What the fuck?” ~ /u/hidden_heathen
Hold on to Your Butts, Backstory Incoming
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, I saw a map. This map to be precise and, while I enjoyed the concept, I was rather annoyed that the lands were all out of scale with each other. So I made my own, because I’m just that sad.
This didn't start out as anything serious but smashing together incompatible fantasy worlds and adding enough real-world geography and original content to make it work turned out to be really fun, so it grew and grew into the Midgard Project.
A couple years later I was unhappy with the first map as I felt it was a bit naff, so I started work on a bigger one. That was like three years ago, and finally it is here... in the glorious Equal Earth projection no less! Wow; I have wasted my life.
Map-Making Assumptions & Principles
It was assumed that all the established fantasy maps used in the making of this (Middle-Earth, Tamriel, Westeros, Yokuda, Pyandonea, Narnia, and some easter eggs) were in a Mercator projection as it fit better that way. But when projected into equirectangular and then onto a globe this led to some interesting conclusions. For one, Westeros' 'northern' kingdom is neither larger than the others put together or even a third the size of the continent. It turned out to be just a bit bigger than Dorne. The Reach was about the same size too. I tried putting the original Westeros shape onto the equirectangular file, but the result was just... the worst. Tamriel looks better, if a little pinched in the polar provinces. Argonia is rather large compared to Skyrim, and Alinor was about four times the size of Vvardenfell, but that's fine and adds important rainforest area. Middle-Earth looks great on the globe though, not gonna lie.
What I hope differentiates this work, a crossover fan-fiction, from other such works that plague the likes of Tumblr is the amount of research and dare I say care that went into it. While the overall map isn't canon to anything, I strived to make sure that each individual region from an established franchise (Tamriel for example) is depicted as accurately as possible. Likewise I have left the canon lore mostly intact, at least that which matters to the timeframe of the source materials.
Main Legendariums + Some “Important” Changes from Source Material
The plot-lines, characters, and recent histories (within a few thousand years) of these three have been left mostly intact. The year this map is based is 4E 204 (Tamriel), FoA 218 (Middle-Earth), and 311 AC (Westeros) - or rather, just after The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ended, a decade after A Song of Ice and Fire, and a couple centuries after The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien Mythology
- Rhûn is much smaller than the Gondorians believe, only referring specifically to the lands around the Sea of Rhûn, or rather between Rhovanion and the Orocarni Mountains. The lands beyond the Orocarni are much much bigger than they thought too.
- The creation stories from The Silmarillion are myths spread by the Ainur who have long forgotten their own history. The events of the First Age in Beleriand have been embellished in the retelling - the land was considerably flatter than it's said to be.
- Hobbits are a subspecies of humans.
- Elves aren't naturally immortal. Eru Ilúvatar gave them that.
- The elves of Ennor are also 20-40% human, due to interbreeding. Dwarves are similarly around 10-20% human.
- The original elves were most reminiscent of the altmer of Tamriel.
- Forodwaith is divided into several kingdoms of the Norse, who would definitely be able to kick Mordor's arse were Sauron still around.
- The continent to the west of Ennor was never the home of elves, it was first settled by humans and the population is still almost entirely human. It is known locally as Terra.
- Likewise Aman was always offworld in a separate dimension (hence the straight road). The Ainur moved there after living in Terra for a while.
- No one is really sure where or when the ents came from. They are certainly daedric though and predate the Ainur’s arrival into that part of the continent. Older still are the nameless things that gnaw upon the roots of the world.
The Elder Scrolls
- Most of what is known about the Dawn and Merethic Eras are complete myths, because it’s all really dumb.
- The stars are really huge balls of plasma that undergo nuclear fusion to produce light and heat. ‘Holes in Aetherius’ is stupid, screw all of you.
- There is no cosmological distinction between Aetherius and Oblivion . Aetherius is itself a plane of Oblivion, run by the Eight Divines.
- There are EIGHT Divines, as reducing mighty Talos to a god is HERESY. Talos was a MAN, and you will PRAY TO HIM AS SUCH. ALL HAIL THE MAN-EMPEROR OF MANKIND!
- The hist are daedric. I’ll explain why below.
- The khajiits’ relatives of Ennor do not have separate morphs that are determined by the moons, that was all Azura's doing.
- Likewise saxhleel that have had no contact with the hist are still sapient but resemble their monitor lizard relatives.
- The et'Ada are only around seven thousand years old.
A Song of Ice and Fire
- The rest of the world (Essos, Solthoryos, Ulthos, etc) are actually a plane of Oblivion that was opened (but not created) by R'hllor (the 'Lord of Light') in a bizarre experiment to see how long it would take the Westerosi to figure it out (because R'hllor is thousands of years old and has achieved a level of senility that you mere mortals could not possibly comprehend). Here's why from a behind the scenes perspective. TL;DR: it doesn’t work!
- The First Men did not come from Essos, rather they came from Atmora.
- The children of the forest were descended from the now extinct sloths.
- The Seven and the Drowned God don’t actually exist, but were loosely based on certain figures from the Olympian pantheon.
- Westeros' 'seasons' are climatic shifts (the rest of the world has ordinary seasons) caused by the fluctuations in the thermal output/input from the ridiculously enormous portal to Oblivion just off the coast.
- The dragons used by the Targaryens were originally created by R'hllor and were based off those created by Morgoth (the two knew each other quite well) and the æsir, which in turn were modelled after actual reptiles.
Other Legendariums
Elements have been taken from these, though little remains of the original stories or characters. What I hope is a full list of credits can be found here.
Pokémon
The pokémon were the earliest known daedric beings to be created. Japan (their homeland) was populated solely by relatives of the khajiit. Arceus dominated the world for around 90,000 years (~100,000 - ~10,000 years ago) in what is called Arceus' Eden. It(?) made the world more homogeneous in climate and lowered sea levels (though not evenly), allowing animals from Ennor to spread into Tamriel and Westeros.
When Arceus' strength gave out, nature took over again.. And so the khajiit of the first Chinese Empire declared war on the pokémon. After years of fighting and several more regions joining in, the pokémon were driven into their plane of Oblivion (the world from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon ). Arceus was banished atop Mount Coronet using an elder scroll by Olghis Khan, the first great general of Mongolia. The climate still hasn't fully recovered, especially in Westeros and Tamriel. The pokémon are Arvalis' versions, because they're cooler.
Greek/Roman Mythology
Greece and Italy are moved to southern Terra under one nation state, Olympea, because it takes a fantasy world for those two to get along. The Olympian pantheon (and the associated others) come from here. Olympian = a resident of Olympus (a plane of Oblivion), Olympean = a resident of Olympea. When Gaia rose again around 3,500 years ago, seven demigods banished her with an elder scroll.
Norse Mythology + How to Train Your Dragon
The dragons are daedric beings. Berk is one of the Viking Islands. The other realms of Yggdrasill are planes of Oblivion. Asgard and Vanaheim are friendly towards Midgard, the others not so much... at least until the crushing defeats suffered by Jötunheim and Svártalfheim in their respective conflicts with the Midgardian Collective. The Norse range covers Scandinavia, Forodwaith, the Viking Islands, and the British Isles.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Aslan and Jadis (the White Witch) are daedric lords who were given Narnia as a gift for their help in the war against the pokémon. The talking animals are animals that were uplifted (given daedric souls) by Aslan and the other inhabitants (fawns, centaurs and the like) are Olympian species.
The Lion King
Aslan once visited a wild savannah in Far Harad and uplifted many of the mammals and archosaurs there. A lion pride declared themselves to be the rulers of their new society, and the Lion King eventually happened. Then they all slowly died out, because it turns out regular lions were better at being lions than the talking lions. Go figure.
Hunger Games
Panem (or rather, the Paneali Republic), it's 13 districts, and the Capitol, exist in name and location only (though Terra and Kamchatka are more advanced than anyone else - seeing as the series was based in the future). The events of the series would never happen in this universe. 'Panem' (coming from a Latin phrase) is a more fitting name than America since both it and the Terran/Olympean Empire that preceded it has/had Latin has its official language.
Terra and Kamchatka are at WW1 levels of technology with some steampunk and magical elements (think Bioshock Infinite) and have isolated themselves from the rest of the world, like Japan did in real life before 1854, because they see the other civilisations as so primitive that they may as well be gods in comparison. Also those civilisations haven't invented indoor plumbing yet and so are stinky.
Moana
It happened because why not? Te Fiti has origins that are far spookier than you could imagine.
Life - Aedra vs Daedra
Any organisms that did not evolve naturally or cannot be classified taxonomically are known as daedra, as it is a fitting term - Aldmeric for not our ancestors. On the other hand, many in academia now refer to natural organisms as aedra - ancestors.
Every multicellular organism has a soul. They produce magical energy, magicka, in their cells as a leftover byproduct of their early evolution. This creates a magical imprint of the organism which is released upon death. This imprint can then be captured, because why wouldn’t you wanna catch it? You could use it to light up your bathroom.
Sapience on Midgard is very much correlated with the ability to consciously wield magicka, but isn’t defined by it. Some species, such as the thunderbugs, shalks, and wamasu, can also utilise the magical energy they produce in the most basic of destruction spells, but this is instinctual. Sapient aedric beings have no inborn knowledge of their own abilities and must be taught, much like reading. The ability to learn how to read denotes a sapient being of any kind.
There are 15 extant aedric sapient species, which are ordered here by time of first appearance...
- The Firstborn - high mammoths (Mammuthus rationalis) and giants (Homo maximus)
- The Homeland Beastfolk - children of the forest/wohdaks (Wohdak naggram), renmin (Felirectus sophos), tang mo (Tang mo), and jexezii (Varanus callidus)
- The Middlings - imga (Gorilla sapiens) and great eagles/marahutes (Aquila ingentes)
- The Wandering Beastfolk - saxhleel (Varanus argonium), khajiit (Felirectus multiformas), and ka po’ tun (Felirectus akaviri)
- The Twins - elves (Homo venustus) and dwarves (Homo orientalensis)
- The Lastborn - humans (Homo sapiens) and orca (Orcinus orca)
I did pieces detailing most of these species, but they aren’t very good so I’ll do some drawings and update all that at some point. Humans are still the shit though, and fuckin’ rule E V E R Y T H I N G.
Daedra
The world was not created by anyone. The major daedric groups were created by mortal peoples.
Valar morghulis. Like the elves of Ennor, some of the more powerful daedra (unique daedric lords - basically gods) are functionally immortal but they can be killed with the liberal application of overwhelming firepower.
A somewhat comprehensive list of daedric groups/pantheons can be found here.
Before You Ask...
Yes, I am totally aware that this is an utterly ridiculous premise. Those glorious bastards on /r/TrueSTL once had a field day with it, but I enjoy doing it and I get to parody stuff. The original 'goal' was "there's the UK, and there's Mordor! Yay!". Oh who am I kidding? There was no goal, just an insanity that kinda works.
Ennor really is an alternate canonical name for Middle-Earth. I figured it suited the name of a continent better.
There are two moons; Masser and Secunda.
I've already mentioned Essos. See above for that.
Yes Tamriel and Westeros are "upside down" because Skyrim is a cold place and Black Marsh is a warm place, and it tends to get colder as you get closer to a pole. Also both franchises feature ice-covered land to the 'north'.
The subject of north vs south can cause quite furious arguments in-universe (especially down the pub). Those in Ennor and Terra would place the North Pole in the Arctic, and the South Pole in Atmora. Those in Westeros and Tamriel would reverse that. Some soft saps would declare both poles to be north, and the equator as a southern rim. West and east similarly have opposing definitions, but we're going with the Terran way because they figured out how magnets work.
On the other hand the sun rises in the Terran west and sets in the east, as shown ingame in TES V: Skyrim; from Morrowind to High Rock. For some strange reason the Lion King also has the sun rising from the west. In the "everything the light touches" scene, they are looking towards the rising sun and the Elephant Graveyard, which Scar says is beyond the northern border, is to the right.
That’s all folks... for now. I’m not even sorry. But if you've made it this far, here's a bonus: Google Earth Overlay
Related content
Comments: 60
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Why does it say "CE" when the calendar says Holocene. Holocene is definitely before the Common Era. Shouldn't it be BC or BCE? or does it have a different meaning.
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Oh and you may be interested in what I’m doing, it’s called Pandora. It’s a similar idea to Midgard except I’m adding more stuff and it focuses on kids’ rhymes and tales more than anything else. No Tamriel or Westeros though. The most up to date info on it I have on Scratch: I’m VectorV on there.
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Also: why did you decide to base it off Earth? Just wondering. Also are you releasing an Arceus’ Eden map for this?
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Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise some random group of sapients? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi priests would tell you. It’s a Sith legend scientific theory. Darth Plagueis Some random groups of sapients was were a Dark Lord of the Sith just magically inclined, so powerful and so wise he they could use the Force generically named magicka to influence the midichlorians basic code that underlies the entire universe to create life… He They had such a knowledge of the dark side totally neutral and not at all evil magics that he they could even keep the ones he they cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force totally neutral and not at all evil application of magicka is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He They became so powerful… the only thing he was they were afraid of was losing his their power, which eventually, of course, he they did. Unfortunately, he they taught his apprentice their daedra everything he they knew, then his apprentice their daedra killed him in his sleep them while they were awake. Ironic. He They could save others from death, but not himself themselves.
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I don't know if you are just a blunt kind of person but you're sort of being rude or at least should ask your questions a bit more friendly-like.
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So I see you've used the textures from the blue marble map to create the westeros, tamriel...etc. I was wondering what program and technique you do this with because the way you've done it is so clean. The only way I've learned so far is to use a masking layer and then the healing brush tool to smooth it out. Any tips? this is in photoshop btw
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I used photoshop elements.
While the blue marble textures (South America - the real MVP) were used for parts of Tamriel and Westeros, much of it was actually custom-made using the regular paintbrush.
For forests and grasslands you’d want a nice crystalline brush (under special effects) and set it to a small size, increase scattering and spacing, pick a pair of colours from the biome you’re going for, and increase the hue jitter. Then paint away but don’t fill it all in. After that repeat with a new layer underneath with slightly different colours until you’re happy with it. Then merge the layers, add distortions and noise, and sharpen until it resembles satellite terrain.
For hills you can use the same crystal brushes and add a small drop shadow. Sharpen those a little more too.
I never quite got the hang of mountains (and it shows in the Jeralls IMO), but you can get away with copying the blue marble textures wholesale for those. I’d avoid repeating the same texture and using bits that people would recognise.
I found custom deserts quite difficult to pull-off convincingly too, so mix up textures from blue marble too. Avoid repeating the same rocky areas though.
Coastlines tend to have this dark blue/blackish outline to them on the blue marble, which kinda blends the land and sea a bit, so definitely replicate that. Dark blue brush, size 1-2, hue jitter up, opacity ~50%.
Also don’t leave out coastal diatom blooms on shallow carbonate platforms (like off the Bahamas). They really stand out from the surrounding ocean but I’ve never seen them included in other art like this.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask me anything
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A world without Wales is a world that's not worth living in.
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Well just affix Wales to Middle-earth or something or move it somewhere crazy like you did with Italy and Greece. I mean, the Shire is already supposed to represent Britain.
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Also, I want a new Arceus' Eden map.
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I wonder what would happen if say the Noldor and the Altmir met... I mean their both elves by different... one is Quendi and the other Mir.
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Good question! They’d both recognise each other as the same species at least (maybe*) but what they’d do about that really depends on who’s meeting who, when and where they’re meeting, and if there are any humans around to alleviate the situation (or any dwarves to mock I guess).
*From a strictly line of descent perspective, the Altmer and the Noldor are actually more closely related via human ancestors than elven ones. The two elven populations diverged about 200 ka ago while the humans that eventually interbred with them only diverged about 100 ka afterwards.
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Reprojected into the Equal Earth projection, made the border area look nicer in general. Just aesthetic stuff really.
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This World is Amazing!
but this is different than our Planet Earth.
God Job though.
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Thank you!
Um... yes? Yes it is.
Thank you again!
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Quite cracked, but very inspirational for all us world builders.
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Thank you! 
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...Y'know what? We can go bigger.
Behold - An origin for Skull Island and King Kong: readcomiconline.to/Comic/Kong-…
Hell, I could see the batshit insanity that is Turok, either the game or the comic, being worked into this, or the even MORE insane comic Tomahawk. readcomiconline.to/Comic/Tomah…
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Funny you should mention that. If you zoom in real close to the ocean south of India / east of Sirayn, you’d see a tiny little island there. That be Peter Jackson’s Skull Island there.
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But is it natural? I could honestly see the Skull Island 'dinosaurs' being not daedra, but a bizarre lineage of pseudosuchians.
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Not with that many dinosaurian apomorphies. You'd need a ridiculous degree of convergence with tyrannosaurs (and various other theropods), ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods, and a stegosaur for that to work. Plus they'd have to survive the K/Pg anyways (while durzogs are descended from Crocodylia itself and shares many similarities) and not get outcompeted by all the other animals that live there (which would probably be somewhat smaller than depicted in the film/book).
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I mean, you could easily have Skull Island be part of a larger landmass that was sunk in Arceus' Eden, explaining the size of the organisms, the broken terrain, and the level of competition as all of these animals were forced together. Plus, some non-avian dinosaurs already survived in Tamriel already.
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I’d use their geological explanation for the island sinking more than the post-Eden sea level rise, but even the original landmass would’ve been too small for that much megafaunal diversity.
I made the point that the non-avian dinosaurs in Tamriel were all descended from a single species of squirrel-sized ornithopod under special circumstances (lived in Atmora, hibernated, asteroid struck in the early winter). The diversity seen in King Kong could not have been derived from that. The geothermal explanation the tie-in mockumentary gave I always thought was bullshit.
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Hang on, hear me out.
What if Skull Island was once part of a Lustria-style continent, one that was originally host to a few surviving dinosaurs? Like Lustria, a daedric lord terraformed the entire thing's ecosystem to be as deadly as physically possible to keep out any invaders, modifying those dinosaurs into the menagerie of beasts upon Skull Island as well as stuff akin Warhammer Fantasy's beasts and the ones from Dinosaurs Attack and The War That Time Forgot? However, rather than take the continent by force and feed troops into the meat grinder that the land had become, the powers of the Pacific just sank the entire fucking thing, leaving only the shattered tip of Skull Island as well as a few other small islands. Kong's species would be a remnant from a population of apes getting washed up on the island and catching the tail end of the lingering magicka that caused such mutation.
I mean, it'd explain where the hell South America went, while also giving Moana's gods and spirits an awesome moment of their own to enjoy. Plus, it also sheds light on something that I've been meaning to point out...
Namely, that having all of the daedra be created from nothing doesn't make a lot of sense. Why spend so much energy to make entirely new beings, when it would be far easier to just modify existing daedra or even using existing organisms as stock? I mean, it's already canon in ASOIAF that the dragons were bred from a smaller wild creature, while Morgoth's own beasts were modified from natural organisms in LOTR lore; hell, there's already a bunch of modified organisms in this setting that don't technically count as daedra in the saxhleel and the khajit. It also makes more sense from a practical standpoint - why spend so much time making an entirely new tree of life for each dragon, when you could just take the original naturally-occurring species and modify it in the way that you want, then modify the different daedric lineages that you've ended up with to what you want, like how companies use their base software to make new products? Hell, even using new genes from other organisms wouldn't muddle classification that much - horizontal gene transfer happens all the time in nature IRL.
Even with the Pokemon, it would make more sense to just have one family tree, with all of the Pokemon being modified from a base organism like Mew; just modifying what he had made would have been a lot easier for Arceus, especially without anything to use as a base.
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I'm gonna have to break this down point by point. Sorry.
What if Skull Island was once part of a Lustria-style continent, one that was originally host to a few surviving dinosaurs?I take it you're using Kong: Skull Island's Pacific island here. I'm using King Kong (2005)'s Indian Ocean island. There isn't space there for another continent. Again though, how would non-avian dinosaurs have survived there across the K/Pg boundary?
Like Lustria, a daedric lord terraformed the entire thing's ecosystem to be as deadly as physically possible to keep out any invaders, modifying those dinosaurs into the menagerie of beasts...Over what timescale? The oldest daedra are 'only' a million years old, and haven't exactly been active during most of that.
However, rather than take the continent by force and feed troops into the meat grinder that the land had become, the powers of the Pacific just sank the entire fucking thing, leaving only the shattered tip of Skull Island as well as a few other small islands.Again, over what timescale? You can't sink a continent (in the Mundus anyway) as that...
it'd explain where the hell South America went, while also giving Moana's gods and spirits an awesome moment of their own to enjoy.We don't need a South America. We've got enough landmass already, its species are covered by Westeros and Akavir, and it looks like a decaying fish. The Polynesian gods (the Atua) aren't particularly powerful either, nor important in the grand scheme of things.
Why spend so much energy to make entirely new beingsMagic is easy compared to actual work. In Skyrim for example any random scrub can throw around fireballs with no discernible effort. Also the motivation for most daedra-creators is "well that guy's doing it so I've gotta one-up him because he's tacky and I hate him and I can rub it in his stupid face."
I mean, it's already canon in ASOIAF that the dragons were bred from a smaller wild creatureNo it isn't. That was a hypothesis given by an in-universe source.
Morgoth's own beasts were modified from natural organisms in LOTR loreAgain, up for debate. Tolkien's earliest writings suggested otherwise and he never definitely decided where they came from. The elf origin was published after his death.
there's already a bunch of modified organisms in this setting that don't technically count as daedra in the saxhleel and the khajiitMinor modifications to anatomy (such as gills in saxhleel (expression of latent genes already present) and limb proportions in both species - quadrupedal khajiit forms still have hands in Midgard 'canon') can be achieved by hormones in hist sap and whatever the hell Azura was doing (probably something to do with skooma... I just had a thought and will have to do another write up, but Azura didn't alter anything herself - she just got them hooked on moon sugar! Holy shit.). Said hormones affect gene expression but not the code itself. These modifications are not passed on vertically via the genetic code either.
I've gotta come up with something for Aslan's uplifted animals - watch this space.
why spend so much time making an entirely new tree of life for each dragon, when you could just take the original naturally-occurring species and modify it in the way that you want, then modify the different daedric lineages that you've ended up with to what you want, like how companies use their base software to make new products?
They have time, and modifying a living organism to that degree would most likely result in its death, especially if its more than just a zygote. Molag Bal did something like that to create his 'daedric titans' from the dragon Boziikkodstrun, who was very dead at the time. The titan also only incorporated the bones of the dragon, not any genetic information which would've been created from scratch when the titan's flesh was created by magically-infused goo-water (in a plane of Oblivion where stuff like raw magicka can stick around).
Hell, even using new genes from other organisms wouldn't muddle classification that much - horizontal gene transfer happens all the time in nature IRL.You seem to have misunderstood just how organisms are being created here, and to be fair I haven't actually thought too much about it myself before now (nor written anything down). The creators in question don't know anything about genes or how inheritance works. Nor do they know anything about DNA structure, proteins, epigenetics, cell structure, microbial life and viruses, what organs do or how they work, ecology, evolution, or even the basic concept of a common origin of aedric life. They aren't considering any of that when they do their thing. They just have a mental image of what they want the result to be and use magic to brute force (in computer hacking parlance) the universe until it comes up with a workable solution. All spells follow that same basic principle. It sounds hacky and contrived because it is hacky and contrived. Magic is not supposed to be a thing, but it is a thing because the universe was poorly coded.
Even with the Pokemon, it would make more sense to just have one family tree, with all of the Pokemon being modified from a base organism like Mew; just modifying what he had made would have been a lot easier for Arceus, especially without anything to use as a base.That's exactly how the common Pokémon were created. They are one family tree.
Wew lad this took longer than I thought it would and I've probably left out some of my brain farts. Hope you enjoyed!
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Location: Okay, yeah, I didn't think that one through. However, there is a workaround - the now-sunken continent of Zealandia. Skull Island could just be a big chunk of the thing that stayed above water. It would also allow for a decent amount of speciation, keeping the dinosaurs relatively geographically sheltered... or you could just use something completely different. Mekosuchines and notosuchians were all across the Southern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous, it would be easy for a few of them to survive and diversify. Hell, you could even use lizards for the Brontosaurus' ancestors, going with the Squamozoic route. Flashman had a similar idea on the Speculative Evolution forums with his A Million Years BC project.
So, what would we need on this chunk of Zealandia to get this started? Well:
- A couple of theropod-like crocodilians, maybe an herbivorous one, or a small theropod that rediversified into bigger forms
- One or two big herbivorous lizards, maybe a tuatara that developed a full-on beak like the ancient rhynchosaurs.
- Some large flightless birds
- A few flying multietuberculates
- A myriad of big arthropods, which could likely get to their current sizes in the films via using magicka anyway.
- Some varanids
So far, these are all fairly simple creatures - hell, maybe one or two of Tamriel's ornithopods drifted onto this proto-Skull Island, giving rise to what would become the Ferrucuttus.
Now we come to the next part - modification.
If we subscribe to the idea that Morgoth primarily modified aedric creatures into daedric ones, (Or even that instead of making entirely new organisms from scratch, attempts to create original life just conjured up the closest aedric equivalent to the intended beast and warped it into the desired shape), then modifying this chunk of Zealandia wouldn't take much time at all, considering the rate at which daedric diversity seems to have exploded across the board. Good old-fashioned selective breeding would be useful, too, sped up by, well, magic. If it can turn shape Argonians from lizards to humanoids, or turn one into an eight-foot-tall wolfman, or make werevultures or werecrocodiles or whatever else is in Elder Scrolls lore, it can mutate organisms in ways that can be passed on to their young.
And what happens next? Well, that's obvious, isn't it? Nature takes its course. This chunk of Zealandia is running upon borrowed time, earthquakes gradually sending piece by piece of it into the sea. The daedric lord is pulled away to elsewhere or loses interest in its pet project, and this ecosystem of monsters is left on its own, maybe adapting a bit more over the thousands of years but unable to keep up with the rate at which the island shrinks.
But of course that still leaves the biggest question: The Kongs. For them, I postulate that they were either the product of intense natural selection upon another island like what Den Valdron has suggested in the past, or were bred from already-large apes (Think Mighty Joe Young-sized) by some civilization or another, maybe even the forebearers of Moana's people, through both mundane methods of selective breeding and magicks meant to increase size and healthiness. This civilization attempts to colonize Skull Island, then the big collapse happens, leaving the Kongs stranded upon the only island that had enough resources to sustain them, and even that's not uncertain given how the island continues to fall away.
As for magic, well... it seems a bit boring to me, is all. With my idea of such spells just conjuring up modified versions of existing beasts or ones that are hodgepodges of different creatures, you allow for a lot more leeway. You could have the movie-version of the mumakil be a variant bred by Morgoth when he wanted a variant that was even bigger and badder, but quickly died out in the wild due to there just not being enough food to sustain such titans (Sidenote: The Great Beasts of the movies could just be a warm-weather member of the Elasmotherium genus). You allow for the cold-drakes or whatever the ancestral species was for these dragons to be in Middle-Earth, a cousin to the wamasu with large wing-like sails along its back that it could raise in a threat display and the ability to utilize stores of magicka to exhale fire and warm itself - hell, it could be extinct now, leaving only the artificially-derived daedric lineages behind. You allow for LOTRO's snow beasts to just be daedric trolls, while Morgoth's trolls are either even farther derived orcs or descendants of mutated dwarves or even humans. Sea serpents would be a lineage of fish or marine reptile that were forcibly melded into a new clade that displays traits of both and was further modified into the wide range of forms around now, while krakens would be the result of a fairly large type of squid being blown up into a true colossus.
What's more, you could also give a new origin to Godzilla and other kaiju: rather than being made from a bunch of orca dreams, the Big G could have been awakened and bound to the whales by their spell, rising from his sleep upon the sea bed and being mutated into his current colossal form. He and the other kaiju would be relics of a time when magicka-using giants were all over the place, only laid low by the K-T Extinction.
...Okay, wow, this was an unnecessarily long reply. Apologies if I come across as an asshole...
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