what's next? Atlas Elyden

Ok, so now that the Almagest map is ready, I’m thinking about what to do next. The next logical step is to continue with that general region. Now that Almagest, Azazem, Korachan and Pelasgos are done, All that’s left to complete the N-E part of the Inner Sea coast are Skaros (S of Almagest) and Laaskha (S of Skaros and W of Azazem), and I’ll have a continuous string of nations stretching from almagest in the N to Pelasgos in the E.

the Inner Sea - finished maps so far

If I also complete the nation of Vaalk (S of Laaskha, across the Inner Sea) that will complete what’s known as the ‘Seven Tribes of Korachan’ - basically the first 7 nations (Pelasgos, Azazem, Laaskha, Skaros, Vaalk, almagest + Korachan) that were taken over by the Archpotentate Malichar in the first decades of the Korachani empire’s rule, 4 millennia past (of course the Seven Tribes are no longer recognised in the present day – Vaalk is part of The Sarastroan empire, and Almagest gained independence 1,000 years ago, for instance).

There’s a few other regions I’m itching to map.

The first is Khamid, which is probably the oldest region in terms of my writing – Khamid was a campaign setting a I had devised for D&D about 12 years ago – an Egyptian-themed setting, heavily influenced by Stephen Sommers’ the Mummy and the Mummy returns, amongst others. Even in that old iteration it was a region shaped by a massive magical calamity that sundered thousands of square miles, reducing the landmass of Khamid, leaving the entire region flooded and peppered with cliff-sided archipelagos – the remnants of the land. Only a small hooked peninsula remained in the west, enough for the region to not go entirely extinct and to remain, embittered by the glories and hubris of the past. (the setting was basically transported into Elyden as I started fleshing it out many years ago and remained one of my favourite regions since. I have mapped this area before, as part of the Venthir and Tzallrach map, though it’s never been the focus of a single map before.

Another region I’m interested in fleshing out more is Saviud, or the Surrach as it is known in the Korachani empire. It’s a vast dry region of independent city-states, each ruled by charismatic individuals – tyrants, otherworlders, sorcerer-kings, theocracies, mystery cults, etc. Each city is unique and tends to control a particular resource, making trade an important aspect of life, with merchant caravans and caravanserais a common sight. It’s the setting of the serialised novel I’m working on at the moment and deserves to be fleshed out more. The problem is its an even larger area than Almagest was and the the A3 format I’m working with seem a bit too constraining. I might work on a larger map and then divide it map in two – Surrach north and Surrach south – for more detail, with the larger one featuring in a generic overview of the region that concentrates more on territories and resources.

Any feedback?

Korachan Atlas map 'finished'!

The first map in my Atlas Elyden series is finished! Now to start work on the next...

Korachan - Atlas Elyden 'finished'

I spent far longer on the topography than I was hoping to but, I can justify it by saying I was working on a large area that sees the basis for around 6-8 maps largely done, so that will save me a lot of time in the future.

I updated the colour scheme, and went for a simpler scheme for the water (no wave lines any more), though there’s no topography for the water (yet… not sure if I want to do that for now, but its easily something that can be done at a later time). I still need to add some spot-heights (and depths) but they’re not essential to the map and can wait for later. I also had to go over the roads and paths to make them fit in with the elevation better (no roads in steep inclines, for instance).

I removed the greyed out ‘focus’ area in favour of a washed out near-greyscale background for areas outside the borders of the focus nation (in this case all lands not part of the nation of Korachan).  

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the end result and am already on the Pelasgos map, which shouldn’t take too long now that I have the base ready. If I can keep up the pace I might try make some encyclopaedia entries for the regions I’ve finished. 

www.patreon.com/elyden

More Topography

I've continued working on the topographical map over the past few days and, with the help of some comments from fellow cartographers (thanks to AzurePlanet over at the Cartographer's Guild) I've revised the levels of the topography, making the map overall shallower and more realistic.

Inner Sea topography - take 2

I still feel as though there's room for more work - polishing off certain parts of the sections as well as altering the edges to make them more realistic. In general I wasn't to continue making the maps shallower until I only need to add 1 or 2 more level of steepness (level 6 / 7) as I don't want this region to be too high in a global sense. The highest peak in the world is something around 10,000 meters (as a contrast Everest is 8,848 meters), I'd like 10,000 meters to be the 12th height level on the maps.

Speaking about height maps I'm still working on the scale for them but will likely settle on something similar to this (though it's far from final):

12  - 10,000 meters
11  - 8,000 meters
10  - 6,000 meters
9    - 4,000 meters
8    - 3,000 meters
7    - 2,000 meters
6    - 1,500 meters
5    - 1,000 meters
4    - 750 meters
3    - 500 meters
2    - 250 meters
1    - 100 meters


I'm now looking to a final map that's hopefully a stylistic cross between this and this (colour of the former and the clarity of the latter), and though my hopes of finishing the map in December have been thwarted I hope to not take too long on it. though I am keeping in mind that the topography above will be useful for quite a few maps, which will save time there (hopefully!) As I work on the topography I notice that some roads and other routes currently pass through very rough and steep terrain - those will need to be revised.

As I said at the onset - this was a 'proof of concept' map showing me what can and cant be done and I've learnt a lot about the order in which things need to be done, so work on the 2nd map (Pelasgos - half of which is already done thanks to the orientation of the Korachan map) will hopefully be completed a lot quicker. I'm tentatively hoping for at least an average of 1 map per month...

We'll see :)

#topography #elyden #fantasycartography

Korachan Topography

I've been quiet for a while as I work on the Korachan map for the Atlas Elyden. 

I spent some time deciding whether I wanted to keep a Portrait orientation or whether I wanted to switch to a landscape orientation. The reason for this was largely scale - witching to landscape would have given me a bit more legroom in terms of scale (increasing the map size from 100% to 108%), though this would have been at the cost of having to remove Hoamm from the map. Here's the 2 maps next to each other:  

Korachan - Landscape

Korachan - portrait

I settled on the second of the above maps, as a compromise between the two as the portrait orientation was more pleasant given the vertical shape of Korachan - I kept a portrait orientation, though would not include Hoamm as a 'focus' of the page, which gave me a bit more room in the bottom, at the 'cost ' of making the eastern part of the map stick out of the frame (which is a quirky feature I always liked on atlases).

So that's that. The map itself is largely finished, though I may still add a few labels here and there (largely geographical features once the topography is ready - more on that below) and I need to go over the icons again as the resizing left them somewhat blurry. 

Speaking of topography, that's what's been occupying most of my time lately. Of course, since this is me and I have to complicate things, I had to use a top-down approach, rather than bottom-up (start ith the world and work my way down to regions, rather than the other way round) so had to determine things like highest peak and so on before I could start work on the topographies. So far what I have is this: 

The world map will use a maximum of 10 levels of height, each representing 1-mile (the highest peak on Elyden is just under 8 miles (compared with 5.5 miles for Everest, keeping in mind that Elyden is larger, with slightly less gravity and, well, created by gods), though I may change this. So far the map below has 5 layers of elevation, so there's room for 3 more, though I need to revise the topography to make most of the map 'shallower' as it's turning out too high, given the limitation on height I've set myself - Korachan is not meant to be a particularly high region so I don't all available topographical heights, if any of that makes any sense.

I have no idea how accurate or realistic my topographies are (if you spot anything wrong with them please let me know!), though I have to say I'm really enjoying making them. They are a bit time-consuming, especially as I need to try and make the map fit in with features and regions that are already established, though they're very relaxing to make! If anything I need to try and limit the amount of time I spend on them as I could get carried away, though hopefully, more time spent on the map means a better end product.

A note on the colour - these colours are just a temporary feature while I work on the map, and I have a few options in mind - colour gradient, just the topographical lines, or use the topographical lines to help me make a relief map in greyscale. I'd like to try all 3 options and see which fits in the best.

partial topography map - Korachan

EDIT: the entire N-E part of the map is unfinished as yet - just the 'coastal' regions, so far. Also the attached map is larger than the Korachani maps in previous posts as I figured i might as well work on a larger area, in preparation for the next map.

I also settled on a portrait aspect with inset maps on the right, as shown below:

Korachan Atlas Map

So work on the Korachani map for the Atlas Elyden is close to completion. There’s still work to be done with the mountains and some other physical features, but more on that after the map:

Atlas Elyden - Korachan & Hoamm

I’m quite pleased with the map overall though there’s still work to be done. The labels are clear (though I already notice some labels, like the mountains and larger geographical features are too dark, especially compared with the nations), the colours are what I was aiming for (though the actual printed map in the Atlas Elyden will be missing the weathered look to make printing easier) and the overall style is what I was aiming for. One down, about 100 left to go… To give you an idea of what that means: this map alone ended up with me adding over 150 new entries to the Encyclopaedia Elyden. Imagine what the whole Atlas will add to the Encyclopaedia!

I’ve come up with a symbol-based resource key that’s going to be used across the Atlas, which explains why there isn’t a key in this map – the complete Atlas will have a 2-page spread at the beginning of the Atlas detailing the key, labels and other details so they don’t need repeating across all the maps thereafter. In a nutshell I’ve come up with a few dozen symbols pertaining to resources and industries – pickaxe for mining, fish for fishing, grain for farming, etc.  think most are pretty intuitive, though some, though want of better design, might not be. One particular symbol I’m having trouble with is the symbol for dross (a slurry-like food that’s a staple amongst the lower classes and slaves of most nations, made from everything you can think of – discarded veg & fruit, insects, grizzle & animal fat, human & animal corpses, and other things), which is a bowl. Hopefully its good enough as I really can’t think of anything else to use as a symbol.

Map symbols

There’s various roads and routes – main roads, roads, pilgrimages (the Shadow March) and sea routes. I was thinking of adding distances to the sea routes (which I can’t do with the land routes, due to there being so many labels!), but I’m not sure they’re necessary in this map (other than for my own ease of reference when writing fiction based in those areas)

This particular map will be presented in landscape orientation, with each individual leaf sized at A4 (for a total size of A3). Once all the maps are done I’ll have to add a gutter (3mm per page half) to make it easier to read the map (something I notice most modern atlases seem to ignore), which is why the border on the top and bottom of the page are larger than the left and right.

The page borders have not only the standard graticules and degrees but also an alphanumerical grid (A1, B2, C3 etc.) which will be used for the index in the back of the Atlas, listing every entry alphabetically. I'm going to start work on that now that I've finished this map, to give me an idea of hiw long the index will be. I'll post that once i'm ready with it.

I also added a ‘focus’ the map. In this case the focus is Korachan and Hoamm, so I faded all other territories by greying them out, as well as their labels and keys. I’m not sure if that comes across well in the finished product – any feedback on this, or anything else in general?

Obviously this leaves me with mountains and other geological features (marshlands, deserts, salt pans, reefs etc.). The mountains, as always, are giving me a hassle as I just cannot settle on a style that I like and feel fits in with atlas style & time period I’m aiming for. I like coloured topography maps but fear they are too ‘modern’ for the relative time period I’m aiming for (1880 – 1900), which leaves me with my nemesis – the hairy caterpillar ridges, which are very time-consuming. Though if I spent as much time drawing them as I spent complaining about them I’d probably have done them by now!

#Atlaselyden, #Encyclopaediaelyden, #Korachan, #Fantasy cartography, #Elyden

Atlas Elyden

So, work has continued on the Atlas Elyden (volume V of the Encyclopaedia Elyden). Though I haven't posted much over the past year-or-so regarding the atlas, I've been slowly tinkering away on this between other projects. I've settled on a colour palette I'm happy with, and have decided to rotate the maps to make the longitude lines line up with the page orientation a bit better than before.

Now it's just a matter of adding the labels, which, as always takes time with me :)

Below are the two maps I'm actively working on at the moment: The first is a political map, depicting Korachan, centre of the High-empire:

A political map of Korachan  

The second is one of various 'feature' maps I have planned, depicting not necessarily nations, but particular regions. This is the Shibboleth, one of Elyden's largest rivers:

A map of the river Shibboleth and its drainage basin

The maps were re-oriented and re-scaled from the previous versions so most of the labels need to be repositioned to line up with the latitude lines.

I'm not 100% sold on the fonts yet (so far I'm using various fonts from the IM fell family), though they will do for now. the line running through the middle of the maps shows the crease between pages, so ill have to add a gutter once they're done for printing.

The shaded areas in the maps are the areas of focus and will be described in a small cartouche, though the previous style cartouches wont be used (a generic key will feature in the beginning of the Atlas. The shaded area in the first map denotes the lands of the nation of Korachan (in the north) as well as the Dichotocratic Republic of Hoamm (in the south). Another map will focus on Hoamm in more detail, and another will concentrate on Korachani colonies, in insert atlas style. The second map is the drainage basin of the river Shibboleth and will concentrate on tributaries and other river-related labels in favour of normal places (though capitals and major cities will be featured).

#Atlaselyden, #Encyclopaediaelyden, #Korachan, #Shibboleth, #Fantasycartography,

the Atlas Elyden

I've been working away at more leafs for the Atlas Elyden, trying to get the neatlines and graticules done on as many maps as possible. Its a very tedious process, and possibly the most time-consuming part of each map, other than the labelling, (which, given the fact that only a fraction of the intended areas, settlements and features currently exist may take a while once I get round to them).

the Republic of Almagest

I Got nine done in all so far, including those previously posted. I've tinkered a bit with the degrees outside the neatlines, making every tenth number bigger than the others, to make it stand out more. And I also tried my hand a little characterful thing I often see in atlases - making certain areas protrude from the neatline as way of better using page space. I think they look quite nice, though wondered if anyone has any opinions?

the Haréshk

I've also started coming across areas of maps whose peripheries copy maps that I've already made, though in different orientations and scales. It's been fun challenging myself to make sure I'm not changing any areas and that everything aligns up properly - for instance the bottom right of the new Venthir map includes the bottom left of the Tzallrach (Char Mathi) map; or the entire right-hand side of the Korachan map is repeated in the Pelasgos map. To make sure I don't map the same coastlines twice with different results I'm using the same land layer masks on different maps when they share land area - the best way to make sure coastlines remain correctly proportioned to one-another and properly aligned, which is something I'm very concious of! I'll be coming across this more and more as I go along though look forward to the challenge.

the Heartland of the Korachani High-Empire

Something else I'm also thinking of doing is dividing larger nations or those with lots of different territories, like Almagest and Korachan, respectively, into many smaller maps with more detailed information - like perhaps heraldry or other pertinent details.

the Pelasgosi Free-isles

Included in the new maps is a map of the City Kingdoms of the Haréshk, which some of you might remember is a region of my world I've already mapped. That was a map created by someone from the region. This will be a foreigners' map of the same region so it will be interesting to see the differences. This map also contains a small inset map of an island that's part of the Haréshki kingdoms though which did not fit on the page - I'm pleased with it but I'm not sure it's entirely clear. Any feedback on this? I've also uploaded a resized and re-oriented version of the Korachan map that's been changed to be more in-line with the new pages.

***

On another note I do love it when people leave coments as it shows that people do read my ramblings and often have ideas and questions about certain things. This is very encouraging to me as it also makes me think and question certain things I might have missed otherwise.

Such an exchange of comments led to someone mentioning one of my favourite characters: Queen Hetepheres the Strangler, a sphinx (one of the last, if not the last of her kind). It got me thinking of a short story I hope to post here in the coming weeks. Fingers crossed (but lets not hold our breath)

of Cartouches and Marching

More work on the big map today, mostly getting the cartouche done:

doing the key made me think of the trade-routes (of which there are about 4-main ones) and the Shadow March; the largest and most intrinsic pilgrimage to take place in the old Korachani Empire and its two reformed successors. Here's the entry form the encyclopaedia Elyden:

Shadow March, the: (also the Long Road) the largest and most infamous of all Korachani religious pilgrimages; it circumnavigates the Inner Sea and its major nations, before making its way across the Kharkharadontid desert to the prison Daekyn, where it ends outside the monolithic gates of the Sepulchral Palace. The March covers no less than 20,000–miles, most of which is little more than dirt paths, though its many tributaries and side-courses make a true measure of its length impossible to determine.

                The March originated in c. 400 RM, with the Archpotentate Malichar’s victories across the Inner Sea following return to Korachan as an Æhari and the subsequent rapid spread of the Church of the Machine across its lands. It reached its peak in around 1500 RM alongside that of the Korachani Empire, with thousands of pilgrims, fanatics, flagellants and other faithful from all over the Korachani empire undertaking the road, sometimes spending their savings to buy their freedom from the shackles of slavery, only to spend a life under the yoke of the March and the call of the Leaden Throne. The sundering of the empire in 3705 RM left a deep schism in the Church of the Machine, leading to it fracturing into the Orthodox Church of Rachanael and the Reformed Machine Church, though the March persevered (albeit with occasional conflict between different denominations). Few had the strength or means to undertake the entirety of the March, with most attempting it dying under the adversity of the road. More commonly, pilgrims would take the most direct route available, marching with their fellows for safety, stopping only at the largest and most revered of holy sites along the way.

                All manner of opportunists - hucksters, traders, mercenaries, whores, penumbrists, itinerants, bandits and brigands - gravitate towards the Shadow March in the way insects are insitinctively attracted to sugar. Amongst them would march patricians and other members from the Imperial administration, some on foot in self-imposed chastisement, others riding atop indriks and other exotic mounts or steam-belching ambulants.

                Despite the enthusiasm and fanaticim of those who undertake the March, few make it to the Sepulchral Palace, as the dangers and horrors of Kharkharadontis can attest to. Those that do make it are rarely sane, and their bodies are often withered and corrupted by the Penumbra from years of marching under its corrupting gaze. Those undertaking the Shadow March often wrap their bodies in unguent-scented bandages and pierce their flesh with cathadesms containing prayer and litanies in the hopes of protecting them from the penumbral influences. They rarely succeed.

I also created a new improved version of the Korachani Sigil, the old version of which I lost in a system crash a few weeks ago. Its divided into 7-segments - representing the seven ancient nations of the Inner Sea. each segment contains a circle - the capital city and ruler of the respective nation, with a larger circle in the middle, representing Malichar and the Undying Machine.

of stars and constellations

One thing I notice a lot of people that create worlds (both professionally and amateur. of course, I'm the latter...) is that they tend to leave out certain things, like varieties of flora and fauna, climate and geography (other than the broadest implementations) and the skies.

With Elyden I've created a star map with a catalogue of all the stars and constellations and other extraterrestrial objects (satellites, planets, comets etc.). Like much of the world, I'm still deep in creating these facets of Elyden's skies, though I have completed a star chart. the above map was created in the nation of Almagest in c. 3000 RM (the present day is 4008 RM). Though very far removed from the neolithic stargazing culture of its past (extinct now by around 4000 years), the great city Almagest remained a hub of astronomical knowledge, with astromancers remaining in power throughout its existence. The city was once one of the great gems of the Korachani empire (with over 8,000,000-bodies at the peak of its influence), though the so-called Artifex Wars left it an independent entity. sundered from the empire, it died a slow death of disease and starvation, and the city remains now as a ruined metropolis with the descendants of degenerates populating its haunted streets. These are the constellations as recognised by the Korachani empire. Much like western and eastern constellations bear little resemblance to one another, the constellations detailed here are those as recorded by the Korachani empire, based off of ancient knowledge from people it has subjugated over the years. Also, much like our own constellations,those of the southern hemisphere are more 'artificial' as they come from far later in history and were first recorded by sea explorers (indeed there are far fewer in the southern hemisphere as the exacting requirements of the Order of Astromancers in almagest has failed to recognise most of the newly-named constellations).

on a more practical standpoint, I really enjoyed using noise/levels/hue&saturation in creating the stars in the background. though the constellations haven't been described in any detail yet, most of them are based off fauna that I created for the world (or pinched from extinct genera, in the case of the Indrik - indricothere), or mythological objects/events, that i deemed worthy-enough of making it into the skies in the form of constellations, most of which are carried over from ancient cultures (much like ours).

in addition to the standard map (as i imagine it would have looked hot off the printing presses), i also created an older-style version of the map:

antique Almagesti map

 Took me longer than I wanted, though I'm rather pleased with the end-result.

changes

Another quick worldbuilding post today. I was finishing off the history of a region called Arkos an came up with the gran idea of having the main empire in the world (the Korachani empire, to you) split in two… about 300-years before the present. Of course, I have hundreds of thousands of words written down saying otherwise, but I thought it was a good thing to do and speaks of the worlds’ corruption in a more tangible way.

         This just means I have to do a small spot of rewriting to get all other regions I’ve mapped/fleshed out retconned to go with this change. An lot of painstaking work to get the land in line with my new vision. But is it worth it? Who knows. I had the idea while thinking of ways to have the world further devolve in line with my new ‘crawling-to-apocalypse’ setting and reasoned it made sense and was more characterful (sort of like rome and constantinople) and it allowed me to move away from a few creative corners i had written myself into (yes war for the shadow and the helix im looking at you :p - more on that later)