January 2020 Challenge : Map of Ulrizen
Hello, fellow cartographers!
The year 2020 has barely begun and I already need a project that occupies my thoughts about something other than work! So I'm going to try to join this January challenge...
I must admit, without much conviction, because I haven't found an old map very inspiring. I dived into my archives and found an adventure I had written for a part of Dungeons & Dragons. I know it's not my oldest map, because I had started drawing earlier, but this module for D&D level 1-4, I must have written it in the late 80s or early 90s... here's what it looks like :
I don't think we even finished playing that saga because it was soooooo long.
To write it, I was inspired by quite a lot of references from what I was reading at the time, from the Lord of the Rings to a comic book quite famous in the French-speaking world (Thorgal).
The story was set in a Viking atmosphere, it was about a curse that had fallen on a northern kingdom (launched by Sauron himself - and yes, I was afraid of nothing at the time!!!) A series of 5 magical objects that protected the kingdom had been scattered throughout the region (a sword, a helmet, a shield, a scabbard and a precious stone) and evil had descended on the region. The adventurers had to find the 5 objects and pass through the gates of time with the king of the region to return just before the curse began. If the king was carrying the 5 items at that moment, the curse did not take place (This is basically what is written in French below).
For the whole adventure, I had drawn a large map of the area (in addition to the plans of all the dungeons to visit), laminated and everything... This is the one I'm going to try to bring back to life, but I find it not very inspiring : too flat, not various enough...
And I have to admit that I'm not sure how I'm going to do it. My first idea would be to respect the fact that it's a map that tells an adventure, so I'm going to try to put as many details that tell the story as possible, while letting the curse that strikes the kingdom appear. To do that, I'm very willing to take a big risk and go outside my comfort zone, by using a style that fits well with the main line of what I want to do, but that I don't master at all: that of a medieval tale, full of illuminations, a bit like "The very rich hours of the Duke of Berry". By cheating on the scale of the different elements of the map, I should be able to tell several things in a single map. I would also like to keep two inserts, for text (again, in the style of an old medieval book)... I don't know at all if I'll be able to do that (and if the result will be edible), but I'll still try the adventure...
Here's what I've got for now...
### Latest WIP ###
