Well I won't be counting the castles. I have enough of my own to worry about
Nice start
April 2018 Challenge: The Theocracy of Forline
Generator output:
So here I go again! This time I'm actually putting up my first post before I've really done much to flesh out the setting of the map, but then there's free details in the prompt. I didn't change any of the numbers - they seem like they'll be interesting enough for me as is (although I'm not quite so sure I'll still like the idea 224 castles later... but we'll see).
The Theocracy of Forline, as I see it, is a theocratic (surprise!) state that succeeded a previous substantial kingdom in what is now its territory, the Kingdom of Valle. Forline is also somewhat monarchic; its ruling council of religious leaders is headed by the current head of the divine royal bloodline, who has a preeminent place in the state religion, the 'Fivefold Way'. Its heartland lies between two mountain ranges in a wide basin, although its current extent goes beyond the eastern range. On the other side of the western range is a coastal region occupied by Breccenlan ('Brecken-lan'), a kingdom also descended from Valle but recalcitrantly heathen. Relations between Forline and Breccenlan are generally rather rocky at any given point in time (and that's when they aren't fighting).
A starting map can be seen below:
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The yellow area is a for-now color mainly for those interested in checking my work, as it indicates the extent of Forline (the border lines where they follow mountain ranges may be elided in my final map for the sake of looking nice). I assign 6.29 pixels to a mile linearly, which means that there are 39.66 pixels in a square mile. By my calculations this gives a result very close (-12 sq. mi) to the generator size of 101,000 square miles of area.
I'm experimenting in working in a higher resolution in hopes of having finer linework, so tips in that regard would be appreciated (although for my mountains at least for this map I've been going with a more calligraphic style). My past maps where sections have been hand-drawn with outlines have always had very bold, almost cartoon-like outlines and while there's nothing wrong with that I'd like to be able to do something a little less obtrusive. Naturally what do I do but a bold calligraphic style, so it might not be the most applicable immediately but I'm hoping to have some more fine-detailed things on the markers I'll use for cities, towns, castles and so on.
Well I won't be counting the castles. I have enough of my own to worry about
Nice start
Free parchments | Free seamless textures | Battle tiles / floor patterns | Room 1024 - textures for CC3 | GUILD CITY INDEX
No one is ever a failure until they give up trying
So I see I messed up the image order in my first post so it was showing my generator output instead of my WIP... ah well.
Slow going this month, but here's some progress with hills and forests (the former were all hand-drawn, while for the latter I hand-drew a small selection of somewhat-stylistically-matching trees and brush-pipe stamped it). Also rivers.
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I'm debating the idea of this land having strange, colorfully-glowing pits in the earth in a few places (of geographic size). It struck me as potentially interesting as a sort of strange/magic biome to have tucked in, but on the other hand I already did something similar in Pryme back in January.
I've yet to name the Theocracy of Forline's neighbors, but have come up with some skin-and-bones details about their relationship with the Theocracy. The southeastern neighbor is on friendly terms with the nation (largely on account of most of its populace also following the Fivefold Way). The two other major neighbors of Forline are large kingdoms to the east and to the north. The eastern one is landlocked and has often traded with Forline for goods from distant shores, but has historically flip-flopped on the Fivefold Way and so the nature and general friendliness of its relationship with Forline changes from decade to decade. The northern one has had a more historically rocky relationship, with numerous past wars between they and Forline, but in the current generation that has changed with its current ruler's conversion to the Fivefold Way.
Finally, that island in the south belongs to another kingdom entirely, the rest of which is further south off the edge of the map and separated from the continent Forline and its neighbors are on by a (relatively narrow) sea. A colony and trading outpost, its people and Forline's have known of each other long enough to be familiar with each other's presence, but not with each other's ways - there are many parts of each culture that remain alien to the other, not least matters of religion.
An update with the very important step of castle placement! ...For Forline itself, anyways. Since I made the castles and castle-town icons brush stamps I might as well do them for the neighboring countries too, but this post has just the ones for Forline so they can be checked against the stats in the first post by anyone who wishes to count 161 castles (none of the ruined ones are on the map right now; I'm still debating the value in adding them).
Right now disambiguating the towns with castles from the cities with castles (excepting the capital and largest city near the upper-middle of Fortune's great valley, which should be visibly distinct) is kind of tricky since the cities aren't a whole lot bigger. I might add a bit more to them individually, but there will also be a distinction in the coloration on the pentagon on each one. This will also be used to indicate some other things - extra markings in that pentagon might indicate that a castle is ruined or that there's a sacred reliquary located there, and castles/towns of other nations will have a shape other than a pentagon.
Fitting what my anecdotal and (mostly) secondhand knowledge of castles suggests, towns big enough to be called towns and not villages generally all have one, even if it's relatively small. I also clustered castles along rivers much of the time, since rivers were big transport and shipping mains in these time periods as far as I know and my limited firsthand knowledge of castles seems to bear this sort of placement out.
### Latest WIP ###
In addition to the castles, I did go ahead and add the strange, (soon-to-be glowing) giant pits! These regions are known by varying individual names (the ones in the central valley of Forline are known as the Cerulean Bores, which should be a hint as to the color of the local glow). They're generally considered rather dangerous regions, with strange, monstrous wildlife, and in some tales are said to twist life in them into said strange and monstrous forms, including possibly people, though once in a while someone will risk them for some reason or another (usually riches; while not typically of conventional forms strange glowing crystals and other artifacts from within the depths of these abysses usually fetch a tidy sum) and sometimes even come back. The other 'glowing hole regions' on the map (although some have only one pit) and their colors are the Bloody Maw in the southeast (red), the White Water Vortex in the southern sea (white), the Goldenmouth in Breccenlan (golden-yellow), and the Great Wormhole in the northerly part of the map (purple).
Looks good. Looking forward to seeing a coloured version.
That is looking pretty epic! Nice work on the hills and mountains; they really blend well together. Those Pits are a cool idea!
Thanks! Not all the coloring and shading is done yet, but some preliminary coloring is below.Originally Posted by damonjynx
Thanks! I was aiming for the hills and mountains to be stylistically-connected; all the mountains I did in a two-stroke style and the hills each in one-stroke arcs, with the strokes for both all strong at one end and trailing at the other. Glad to hear the pits sound interesting; I hope in the below update they're glowing nicely enough!
So as I mentioned, some preliminary coloring and shading, most notably probably the mountain shading and the glowing depths. I'm a little unsure about the current plain-land color... I'm worried it looks a little too arid next to the forests that I actually made pretty green (I was kind of surprised they turned out so strongly green; their base color is a deep green applied at only 22% opacity that I might still end up turning down lower). Castles and towns aren't colored yet, though (most of) the castles and towns of bordering polities have been added (I'm holding off a bit on the eastern side of the map for now as, being outside of Forline itself, that's the area I'm planning to place titles and legends in). The inland east-northeastern region is also a bit more arid than most of the rest of the map and I do plan on shading it distinctly to indicate this, but haven't yet.
### Latest WIP ###
Still has a ways to go, but updating now with the castles and towns colored and a legend added to help make a little more sense of the meaning of all the shapes and colors. I decided to make the roof colors different (in addition to the central marker color) for towns, cities, and capital cities to make them a bit more distinguishable.
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Many temples of the Fivefold Way might have a reliquary of holy artifacts, but the locations marked for it are those of the ones given special dispensation and personally ordained as a sacred reliquary by a member of the divine bloodline and these typically amass much more vast, valuable, and/or powerful collections of relics.
Looking great. And your world-building is top-notch.
Thanks - although I feel like I've been having a hard time really getting into the world building on this one compared to the others I've done.
Anyways, here's a possibly-final version, now including a compass rose and labels for the cities, the towns, major geographical features, and the two castles that aren't in towns but are sacred reliquaries (also a visual representation of that more-arid region in the east). Uploading as a .jpg since the .png seems to be too big at ~13MB.
### Latest WIP ###
I had a bit of fun with the calligraphic names - for the town names (the very small ones) I just used a related-looking font though because I was having trouble having the hand-drawing come out as nicely.
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