Urt's Outer Skin

Having reworked the original maps of the Known World, Isle of Dawn and Alphatia, the mapping of Skothar continues. This is the first part of this, the Nentsun peninsular in a slightly different style, but still 24 miles per hex.  This is currently unlabelled, but it will be a while before I get to this.   Full Map Any thoughts on this?

Map Revision Time Despite improving the process of time, I was never quite happy with a few aspects of how the maps worked.  I disliked the font used to be as close to the original as possible, the cliff icons were rigid and did not flow as I would like, and the process for generating the water layers  did not seem fluid enough. After some experimentation, I managed to come out with new processes for the cliffs and water layers, and changed the font.  Also amended were the borders, these are now generated in conjunction with the water and cliff layers where appropriate. So, the three revised maps are: Known World 8 miles per hex Isle of Dawn 8 miles per hex Alphatia 8 miles per hex There are a few additional areas and new labels included as I've reviewed some additional sources (mainly Ramelin) and made few things up for my own work.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, a more real world "atlas" style map. I'm still working on a few ideas about how I want to portray some information, but here is a draft of Myskatyr Island, sat off the north-western coast of Thonia.  

The Barony of Ystern is situated in the south-east of the Duchy of Foxhill, and sits at the confluence of the Ansarna, Steva and Brudon rivers. A small barony and once wealthy region, that was almost entirely destroyed in the War of the Seven Shamen over a hundred years ago. It owes its recovery to the survival of the monolithic castle situated on a cliff over a bend in the River Ansarna, and the annual spring fair when the dwarven and gnomish trade caravans come down from the mountains to the south and east. Despite this recovery, much of the land has been reclaimed by forest and the fey creatures that reside in it, and only narrow strips of land close to the roads and the rivers that they follow are farmed. The old town of Ystern now lies in ruins, and the smaller, better fortified Ystern Shades stands on the opposite bank of the River Brudon, with the brooding Castle Ystern watching over from the northern bank of the Ansarna. There are several small villages and hamlets along the ro...

The next stage of my mapping process is to create 24 mile per hex versions, but using a "look through" to the underlying 8 mile per hex maps.  This is done by taking the water layers, scaling them down, and then taking the underlying terrain from the 8 mile per hex maps and approximating what would be the best fit for the terrain at a more zoomed out scale. 24 miles with hex overlay 24 miles without hex overlay

After several months work (and having to isolate of Christmas and New Year), the map of Alphatia is finally complete.  Admittedly, this is almost entirely based off Bruce's work (and Thorf's superb realization of that), but it has been intricate and challenging to complete. ( Link to full file ) The key intricacies of this work is to attempt to align the files with the underlying world map from the Masters set, especially when you compare that to the overall map at 72 miles from the Dawn of the Emperors set (the comparison maps are all locked at Specularum as their "point of origin"): As can be seen by the time you move across to Esterhold, the Dawn map is out by a couple of hexes, or approximately 150 miles. Not small beans. When it comes to creating the contiguous maps, there are a number of factors in play: For the continents, attempting to line up the available sources (largely the 72 mile maps from DotE and the PWAs to the Masters map).  This involves a bit of cu...