Sep 12, 2012

More mapping

I've written a chain of short stories themed 'A World in Chaos' earlier - far from completion as most of my literary works. It is set in a violent fantasy world, or more like a dusk of fantasy: the noble races are fading away, once great empires torn apart by selfishness, greed and incompetent leaders. The stories revel around a party of adventurers and a frigate named Judgement's Scream and her crew who are hunting for an ancient weapon in hope of handing it to the Gold Prince, a charismatic noble to change the course of history. There are about 40 or so gods and demigods who all want to act as their needs dictate; the one and almighty, leader of the gods seems to be in a coma of sorts and the search extends far further than the adventurers would wish for...

A complex story needs its places to be set. The first version of the map was hand-drawn and had been destroyed by an evil glass of water. The second version, made minimalistically in MS Paint here:


Pretty crude work isn't it. But this is the third, final version:


The most time-consuming part of redrawing was to place the small map's geography to the big scale one (1400x800). The western continent and the northern lands had been extended. Some tinkering with photoshop - adding textures, shading, then editing the captions in MSPaint and PS again, et voilá... Not a perfect one but it gives a feeling about the whole thing. Took about one and a half hours to make, the improvement, I think, is very visible.

Quest chains and parties can be made in this setting and played with my newest fantasy and campaign rules. I think I'll get some Caesar Fantasy figures soon (the only bad thing is that they are not really available around here nor on ebay and the shipping costs from the UK or the US are creations of the evil).

6 comments:

  1. This cartography should serve you well, Andrew. The story-line is intriguing. Looking forward to seeing your adventures embark on their quest for victory!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The effort for the final map was definitely worth it, very nice results.

    Regards,
    Matt

    ReplyDelete
  3. The second version certainly captures the flavour of a story in High Fantasy - and for some reason archipelagos are almost always interesting (give or take Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, which, probably owing to its very fragile bleakness, I never really cottoned to).
    Cheers,
    Ion

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. Archipelagos have the opportunity to be divided (geographically, obviously, but politically too) and they're as good nests of evil as mountains or caves. I have read Le Guin but admittedly never really liked her books, more of my fault than hers.

      Delete