Oghura

[jshoer]

This is Oghura, the desert realm of a lizardlike people known as the suhurrak. The map was for the February 2021 Guild Challenge.



In this world, magic is present primarily by means of enchanting objects to change or enhance physical properties. A water flask will carry more than it should, a wheel will keep rolling long after it's been pushed, an airship will lift more weight than expected -- the Oghurans even sometimes carry enchanted "rifles" that accelerate projectiles. Oghuran caravans traverse the desert seasonally, and their wardens travel on winged mounts to safeguard the people. The desert was once a lush forest; an extension of the jungle empire of Kalatchal, which is ruled by capricious avian creatures with a penchant for enchanting their own bodies (a practice considered repulsive by other peoples). As the climate of this world shifted, the lands west of the Red Mountains fell into a rain shadow and the forests died out, leaving only barren desert with the occasional oasis. The Kalatchalis retreated east of the mountains, leaving the desert for the nomadic suhurrak to move into from the north. Because of this history, the Kalatchali despise Oghurans and sometimes launch attacks. To the south are human realms, with which the Oghurans maintain trade relationships -- despite the continued encroachment of the desert claiming the city of Biran Tol.

All the linework here is hand-drawn with Copic Multiliners, then I photographed it and colored in Photoshop. I was trying to mimic some of the style from Marc Moreau's Southern Wild Lands, especially with way hatching defines the shape of some of the landscape. Of course, I realized later that I should have been looking at his map more often during my process, because afterward when I look back I see that I missed a number of features from that map. I'm still very happy with the way the hatching came out, the desert textures, and the color palette. If I could go back and change things, I would entirely redo the mountains bordering Oghura on the west to have more varied shapes and see more of the ridgelines; I'd also either delete the statues (or, maybe, try them more carefully...) and work more consistently on the lettering.

[jshoer]

This is a world I did a lot of work on in the early 2000s, and I probably put the most effort into the Oghuran language. Here is the text of the border!



Suhurrak have no lips, so the language is missing sounds like 'p' and 'm' and has many fricatives and sounds from the back of the throat to compensate. Examples: 'q' and 'G' are unvoiced and voiced uvular stops, 'gh' is a uvular trill, and 'lh' is a lateral fricative. In addition, all the vowels are unrounded, so when you pronounce Oghuran words, your lips will barely open or move. This is both more suited to lizard mouths and helpful in a desert!

Oghuran writing evolved from a pictographic system, and now has multiple glyphs for each sound. Sub-glyphs retain some sense of their pictographic meanings, so a scribe might choose particular glyphs to convey a certain meta-textual meaning.

This translates to a poem by an Oghuran artist: "Look to the sky where the stars reside, for the stars guide us when we seek them. Across the expanse our spirits fly, unbound by barriers of dark stone, a journey inherited through time, to an end of our own making. Starlight sweeps over the land below, revealing its contours as we walk. To travel a land is to know it."

As a final bonus, here's the line art alone, from my staged photo!

[Arimel]

Wow. That is really cool. Making languages like this has always sounded cool to me but nothing I would actually attempt. If I have trouble learning Spanish or Swedish how on earth could I make my own .
I really like the linework map as well and the colors chosen for the final product one.

[ThomasR]

I absolutely love the colors on this one, everything works really well together. Don't misread me here, the map is great in its wholeness but the colors strike a nerve with me Great map Joseph !

[jshoer]

Wow. That is really cool. Making languages like this has always sounded cool to me but nothing I would actually attempt. If I have trouble learning Spanish or Swedish how on earth could I make my own .
I really like the linework map as well and the colors chosen for the final product one.

Ha! Well, I only can speak espanol muy malo from high school. But a few linguistics classes in college gave me a feel for language construction, especially the phonetics. Oghuran as a language doesn't exist much yet...I took the biggest piece of text I had on hand to make that border!

I absolutely love the colors on this one, everything works really well together. Don't misread me here, the map is great in its wholeness but the colors strike a nerve with me Great map Joseph !

Thanks, Thomas -- I agree, the colors came out great for a desert map! I'm glad you like it.