January 2020 Challenge: Adria Reborn
This was way too cool to pass. I'm once again not certain if I'll be able to finish this in time, but I really wanted to take advantage of the excellent excuse to return to my roots.
I decided I wanted to go right into the deep end, so here is what I've set to remake.
This is more or less my first worldbuilding project ever. I wrote stories taking place in parts of this world when I was like 11, maybe 12, and when I was 13 I combined those parts with another story's setting, and thus Adria in this form was born. It was originally the name of that one vaguely star-shaped island, but over time the isle got renamed to something else and Adria became the name of the whole world.
This map was my first ever attempt at making a cool parchement map with Photoshop. I was still years away from finding the Guild, and I think it's obvious I had zero clue what I was doing. I think this was originally drawn by hand and then scanned, and I made a terrible attempt at adding texture to it.
The spark for mapping was born, though. I found the Guild and its tove of tutorials, and for years I worked with this setting whilst I slowly started learning my way around cartography. New attempts followed one another, and this world saw even more revisions and reboots than Syr ever has. Through and endless flow of new ideas it finally had evolved into this, and I finally had to accept that it had come such a long way that there was pretty much nothing of original Adria left. I renamed the new version Sarrigar, and Adria slunk into the shadows. Years went by until I hardly remembered the name anymore.
But now, with this challenge, I think I have the perfect excuse to take a dive into my past. It will be interesting to see what I can do now, both in terms of technical skills, and also to see what I remember of the original worldbuilding and if there is anything salvageable hidden in there. It doesn't get any more nostalgic than this.
Join me as I journey back into the world that started it all!
