Apostles of the Jovian Moons

They called it the Age of the Golden Earth. It was said that Earth had been united under the teachings of the Prophet Mani, and that humanity was progressing towards their journey to enter the World of Light. However, if simply the followers of Mani were to escape the confines of this universe of matter then the rest of mankind would not be saved. This is what Matthias was taught, and understood, from a young age.

He was not born into Manichaeism, but his family was converted when the New Apostles reached the moons of Jupiter. Six Apostles left from Earth, and while Roger of Euclid did not make it to his destination, the remaining five did. They established communities of Manichaean Perfects and Hearers on the Jovian Moons, giving the teachings of Mani a foothold in its spread across the Solar System. Andrei of Elk reached Matthias’ home-moon of Europa, dissuading the eating of fish collected from under the ice and instead encouraging the cultivation of deep sea plants. This could not be done by a true perfecti, and instead others had to burden the sin of killing the plants for consumption.

Matthias was one of these individuals. Farmers like him were few in number on Europa, but integral to society. Not only was their indispensable work applauded, but their voluntary taking of sin for the health and greater good of the community was respected. Each day Matthias would plunge into the icy depths beneath the ice, into water darker than night, to collect as much kelp as he could. Agricultural equipment was not capable of withstanding the pressure and coldness of Europa, as only recently was their need made apparent. Matthias collected everything by hand, cutting through each stork with a small saw and illuminated by a dim torch affixed to his helmet that could barely penetrate the gloom and microbes of the abyss.

This was an interesting map to make. It is the first proper exploration of this spacefaring-Manichaen setting which I hope to make more maps depicting. I had initially wanted to make a map of the solar system, but I decided that this was too big a scope especially when just stating out with a project. Instead, I chose to focus on Jupiter and how Manichaeism spread to its moons. I was certainly inspired by the journey of the Apostles of Jesus when making this, and wanted the names of these New Apostles to have a similar ring to them.

I wrote quite a lot of background to this map that explains the stories told to one Europan Manichaean, Matthias, who toils in the depths underneath Europa’s ice. Whether or not you choose to believe the integrity of these stories within this setting is up to you…

Manichaean Cosmology

The secret cosmology of the universe was revealed by Mani the Prophet in the sacred books written by his own hand. Earth is caught between the eternal war between the forces of Light and Dark, a liminal space between the Realms of Light and Dark serving as a prison for humanity whose souls must break from their earthly bonds and return to the World of Light. Now, as the Great Yamgate has the scientific ability to leave the confines of earth, the ancient cosmology was consulted to guide the perfects and hearers in their great journey.

I felt like making an in-universe map, as I haven’t done one for about two years. One idea that has always been in the back of my mind for ages is a medieval or manuscript-like map of the universe and space, and this concept partly prompted my Feudalverse worldbuilding project. I had recently finished the HBO series ‘Raised by Wolves’, and the show’s use of Mithraism as a futuristic space-faring church was pretty inspiring, and I wondered how I could do something similar to that. About a month ago I had done quite a bit of research on Manichaeism, and the cosmology of that religion is pretty crazy and fascinating, and I decided a Manichaean view of the universe could be interesting to depict.

I knew that this would not be an entirely accurate portrayal of Manichaean cosmology, as not only was it incredibly complicated but next to impossible to depict without lots and lots of overlapping features, entities and realms. Instead, I decided to boil it down to a very stylistic representation of our solar system with Manichaean ideas that may have been a much later creation in-universe that tried to reconcile Mani’s cosmology with the reality of space. I’ll run down my process and the map’s features

Firstly, the text. I used a font version of Ardashir, a script used to write Middle Persian back during Mani’s time. Not only is this script very beautiful to see, but it also conveys a sense of authenticity to the map. Where I could, I used Middle Persian words I got from a dictionary, but in some places I regrettably wrote in English with the font. For example, the text around the border of the map is a selection from the Manichaean ‘Hymn on the End of the World‘:

We would invoke the gods that they may save us
from this evil age of tyranny, full of strife and unbelief.

Lines 3-4

I thought that this excerpt was appropriate for a map made to guide people away from the Earth, a place that Manichaeans viewed quite negatively. The website where I found the hymn archived had it translated into English from Parthian, and it doesn’t display the original text. Because of this I decided to simply write it in English using Ardashir. Alongside these lines I also included eleven important named spheres. In the bottom right-hand corner is Earth. While I intended to use the Middle Persian ‘Zamig’ for this label, in my opinion the word written in Ardashir didn’t look as pretty as ‘Earth’ did, so I retained English for this instance too. For the remaining ten spheres, however, I took a lot of time making sure, to the best of my ability, that I used the correct Middle Persian words.

In the bottom left-hand corner are five spheres representing the ‘Five Shekhinas’: Reason (Cim), Intelligence (Frazanagih), Thought (Humat), Mind (Axw) and Understanding (Uzwarisn). In this map I decided that these five main aspects of the World of Light should be almost viewed as planets in our solar system. Additionally, Manichaean scripture says that there were five evil counterparts to all of these aspects, so I looked up antonyms in the Middle Persian dictionary and represented them in the top right: Without Reason (Abecim), Stupidity (Dusagah), Evil Thought (Dushumat), Body (Kalbod) and Ignorance (Adanih). The reason I decided to contrast ‘Mind’ with ‘Body’ is the belief that physical things are not good. These five elements of Darkness would also be viewed as five planets in the solar system. There are of course eight planets in the solar system, but I thought that the Sun and the Moon would also be included in this ‘rationalisation’ of the cosmology, with the Sun as a world of Light and the Moon as a world of Dark.

I denoted these Light and Dark halves of the cosmos with lines on the Dark half and leaving the Light half empty. The extra circle around Earth also has a Dark half and a Light half that I chose to use to represent how Earth was found in an area where Darkness and Light were mixed. I think the symbology also evokes the Taoist Yin and Yang image, which actually is appropriate for Manichaeism as though originating in the Sassanian Empire, it was a very expansive and inclusive religion taking in aspects from Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism.

Lastly, there is a pathway that cuts through the Light and Dark halves of the cosmos which is the ‘Column of Glory’. This was said to be the path souls took from Earth to return to the World of Light. Even though in my map it bisects the two realms, I wanted it to represent how human souls have to escape the confines of the divine war between Light and Dark through a journey rationalised after an increased understanding of the solar system, mainly a stylistic depiction of space travel and leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. This setting of an ‘advanced’ Manichaeism would entail Manichaeans seeking to leave Earth in ships, like a space exodus, taking the Manichaean scripture and applying it to real-world physics in a way I think is quite interesting to think about.

I hope to be able to make more stylistic and cosmological maps like this in the future, as it really was a lot of fun to make. Now all I need to do is think of a new subject and style.

Parandu Islands

The Parandu Islands were found to the south of Chugoru, the mainland, and was home to many important ports for trade and travel across the Sea of Pearls and the Emerald Sea. While not fully under the control of the Chugoru Emperor, many of the settlements were appointed governors that taxed the goods that passed through the archipelago. However, several of the islands were used as bases for pirates that preyed on merchants and travellers, such as Komatu, Prince of Coin, who was based in Blueshores.

I had decided that I wanted to create a map set in one of my worldbuilding projects, ‘Quotri’. Quotri is a science-fantasy world with reincarnated heroes, supernatural abilities, dyson spheres and robots, and I haven’t worked on it for over two years. With the setting decided, I wanted to explore a new location in this world prompting my decision to make an archipelago located south of the mainland as it was more or less completely new.

There are a few important real-world influences and inspirations for this world that I want to set out. First of all, the ‘main’ location, also named Quotri, is an island chain inspired by feudal Japan though with several elemental tribes. Quotri is ruled by an emperor in a very similar system to the Japanese shogunate. Secondly, the mainland, named ‘Chugoru’, is inspired by medieval China, also with an emperor of its own but this time fitting with the Chinese system. Because I wanted my map to be located south of the mainland I wanted it to be linked in some way to its influences, and that is when I remembered the incredible and interesting histories of the pirates of the south China coast. This map was going to depict the bases of the pirates that plagued the southern coast of Chugoru.

I have made a few maps of archipelagos and islands before, such as Zando, Toslam or the Kingdom of the Sonder Sea, but in truth I was never wholly happy with how they looked. For me, the sea has always been a tough thing to depict, running the risk of being a bland expansive blue that covers most of the image with little detail. The only time I had made the sea interesting, in my opinion, is when it was completely stylised like in my Iliac Bay and French Guiana maps, or in my map of Usea from Ace Combat when I included the depths of the ocean. I decided that I would prefer this map to look like the latter, but I am not the best at crafting that effect myself so I looked at maps of locations in the real world for inspiration.

If you look at satellite maps of reefs and islands like the Marshal Islands or Micronesia you see these beautiful blue hues and an amazing natural flow of colour. It was this that I wanted to convey, or at least the same idea. However, since I use the vector programme Inkscape I would not be able to blend or merge the colours in the same way, as vectors do not allow that. While many other digital cartographers might use brushes on photoshop to create the same desired effect, I don’t have that programme nor do I yet have the skills needed.

Instead, I thought about how mixed colour paint could have a similar ‘whirl’ effect, and if the hues were slightly changed and edited then it could look almost like a tropical island chain. That is when I decided to look up free-to-use images of mixed colour paint, specifically hoping for blue and white since that would already look more like the sea, and I was lucky enough to find one that fitted exactly what I wanted. On Inkscape I was able to colourise the image to get the desired effect and I used several duplicated layers with different colourised versions and opacities to do this.

With the sea taken care of, I moved on to the islands, settlements and labels. The islands were simple enough as I had already made sketches of shapes in my notebook that I wanted them to resemble, and then I plotted those in appropriate places on top of the sea image. The greeny blues served as shallow water, while the darker blues were deeper parts of the sea. I spent a while toying with the symbols to denote settlements, specifically their colouring, but decided on white to better fit an almost sci-fi mystery aesthetic. The text, however, couldn’t be white as it wouldn’t show up when placed over parts of the sea, so instead I made it dark blue as not to be too jarring if it were black.

In all, this map was an exciting experiment with a new style that used images of mixed paint to almost emulate satellite views. I am tempted to continue this kind of mapping in the future but I would prefer to be able to make the sea myself, as even though I colourised the image the fact that it is from the internet means it doesn’t have the same creative fulfilment. Regardless, I am quite happy with this map, a first look into the world of Quotri in many years, and a very enjoyable experience.