The Land of Onin

[A Lost Cartographer]

Thanks so much for all the feedback! I'm pleased to hear that you all enjoyed the map. Cartography's always been a sort of silent fascination of mine (I tend to collect maps of the different cities I've lived in and display them prominently on the wall). I can look at maps for hours - it's almost like taking a little trip. I really enjoyed inventing one for myself because of this. It's an immense help toward immersing a person in a fictional environment. As Jtougas mentioned about readers liking to be able to reference the maps, this is exactly why I created it, if even only for myself. So much of the story revolves around the fictional histories of this world that it was becoming hard for even me to keep it straight without having a reference. And as I create this fictional history, creating the map for the world as well almost makes me feel a part of it in some way, you know? Like a participant rather than just a creator or spectator. That's hard to explain but I assume you guys understand.

While this is my first map, I should add that it's not exactly my first run-in with photoshop (so don't feel too bad, Murcu).

There are a lot of aspects to this that I obviously still need to learn. Thanks to NeonKnight and Waldronate for the input on the rivers. This was one thing I wasn't exactly sure about so I sort of just went at it as best I could. I'll try to look up some more guidelines for this for my next attempt. For some reason I was thinking about it in terms of the waters flowing inland from the coast (if only to work from a design aspect to draw out the points of the coves), which doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the real world. Incidentally, Waldronate, there is actually an underground outlet to Sarloch around Teuhn that coincides with the Pit of Sarnath. Teuhn is a kind of waterfall city on the edge of a canyon. The water flows off into the pit and through a cavern underneath the White Mountains, coming out the other side as the Wandering River (at least that was my plan). It's written into the story but with this simplistic map design I didn't have much of a way to enphasize this.

Good idea, also, about the scale bar. I like the concept of labeling it in terms of days because most of the traveling here is done on foot and that would be helpful roadside. Also, it would help me gauge a timeline for some events in the story.

[A Lost Cartographer]

"Onin" is actually a reference to the Japanese Onin War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ōnin_War.

My wife is Japanese and I've spent a bit of time studying Japanese history.

[Gamerprinter]

Yes, I'm familiar with the Onin War, I wasn't sure that was what you meant by your title. OK then. I am half Japanese (my mother is full blooded, born and raised in Japan.) You might not realize it, but I am working on a dark fantasy setting for Pathfinder (having already published some supplements already) called Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story.

Nice work so far. I will need to follow this.

Michael "GP" Tumey

[MSZ]

Very nice map. And as the others said before a very impressive first atempt
In my opinion the colors don't fit. Altough I like the limitation to few colors I think it would look better in a "two color old map style" (don't know how to discribe) a bit like in the Map of Karpentor.