The Cartomancer's Map

[jshoer]

Thanks, Thomas!

Glad you like the border, Kellerica. It's got a classic look, but pulling it off was adventurous for me and I'm really happy about how well it worked!

[EpicSyringe]

Wow that is really stunning. I've never seen an inside border detailed quite so beautifully. And the design of the forests is something I might emulate! Love the mixture of stand alone trees against the clump versions. Very well done deffinitely!

[jshoer]

Wow that is really stunning. I've never seen an inside border detailed quite so beautifully. And the design of the forests is something I might emulate! Love the mixture of stand alone trees against the clump versions. Very well done deffinitely!

Thanks, Epic, I'm really glad you think so highly of that border and the forests. Please feel free to emulate the style! If you look back through my progress, I originally did the forests without the freestanding trees around them, and they sure do make the overall style flow together really well.

Mappy New Year, everyone! I spent some of the eve invoking all Austable's cartomantic changes in one of my wife's fountain pen inks. Here's a quick photo:



In this style of cartomancy, one starts with a base map containing the incantation to render it cartomantically active. Austable du lo Vellumi printed the incantation along the ribbon on the border. It roughly translates to "let the map show the land, and [let] the land be [so]." Then, one makes changes to the base map - usually by pasting fresh paper over the features to be changed, and then drawing new features upon the fresh material. A wise cartomancer cuts the blank material to limit the scope of the changes they have to implement as much as possible. Finally, one invokes the changes by adding cartomantic symbols around them. Usually these include a border, to constrain the magic to a particular region. Scale bars indicate changes in topography. Windroses help invoke changes to fluid flows, including wind and water. When he invoked the changes, Austable also wrote explanatory notes.

Austable would work with many cartomantic maps at a variety of scales, and only regional-scale changes of the Barony would appear here. Furthermore, a limitation of cartomancy is that it cannot affect people or things built by people - which is why those are the only things labeled on this map; they are immutable here!

There's one spot that Austable gave over to his apprentice, who tried to remove a stand of trees. However, he flubbed the ink and his invocation work was messy, and he accidentally not only removed the trees but sunk the land such that it become prone to flooding in rain and high tide. Austable was obviously grumpy about this. He also took a gray-green ink and sketched in the boundary of the lowland and how the road was diverted to more easily cross. He didn't give that apprentice access to the regional map of the Barony again.

[jshoer]

I decided to try adding a ton of extra marble effect!

Today my project was photography - I set up some lights and a tripod to try and get a photo with less harsh highlights and shadows on the pasted paper. Here's my final product. I'm thinking this is getting into finished map territory - anybody have any comments or suggestions?

[Coggleton]

I love both the worldbuilding and the idea of a map that's constantly being updated by hand- it feels like a medieval version of GitHub.

I'd be interested to see what Cartomancy looks like in the digital age.

[jshoer]

Thanks!

I haven't thought about what would happen to this world with digital technology...though my inclination is to say that the magic probably only works on physical media.

[jshoer]

Question - Since I used such clear white paper, what do you think about adding grungier old-paper textures? I tried putting a different texture under each of the cartomantic additions and used layer masks to separate them all:



Here's the comparison:

[rdanhenry]

I would think that you would want a surface with minimal texture, as that texture does not reflect the actual geography and would tend to work against the magic. Whether or not bleaching it to the whitest possible white would also be desirable is less clear, though greater contrast might also be thaumaturgically beneficial. Depending on the value of a blank canvas, magic might even be used to provide an exceptional surface.

[jshoer]

Well, cartomancy almost certainly involves specially treated and enchanted inks to avoid such effects, but you make a good point. Cartomancers surely seek out the cleanest papers and parchments they can.

Here's a version with the paper textures a bit less opaque:

[MistyBeee]

I loved the strong texture, and I love this one also, but the best part of the whole piece is how original are the notes you added ^_^