The Grenna Imperium

[jtougas]

His Most Holy Majesty Overking of Grenna and Protector of the known world: Emperor Keoth Indirin stood on the balcony of his palace and smiled at the number of people who were attending the anniversary of his coronation. It was of no matter to him that these people had been ordered to attend, that the entire Grenna Imperium was under a forced holiday and that the Lords Governors of all the Imperium lands had undertaken the sometimes long and arduous journey to the capital only under fear of torture and death. To Overking Indirin ALL that mattered was that they were here. He would be known as the greatest emperor in the history of Grenna. It could be no other way as he would not allow it.....

EVERY so often I get the urge to do something... BIG. I guess because most of my work focuses on a small area, once in a while I get the bug to do a little "world building" This is an area of cartography that I could use some practice in. So I present the "Grenna Imperium". I envision this to be a long term project that I work on while continuing my "Calan Stonebridge" series of encounter scaled maps. I will be using THIS excellent tutorial by arsheesh to create the land forms and texturing. ( I will apologize in advance to my friend because I know I will occasionally and happily diverge from his most excellent instruction and go off on my own path ) The overall region of the Imperium is quite large so I've decided to break it down into smaller "chunks" featuring individual kingdoms. I hope to update this fairly regularly and As always feedback is requested and appreciated.

Here is the overall region
The Grenna Emperium.jpg


Here is the kingdom I plan to start with (The Kingdom of Aetrina)
The Kingdom of Aetrina.jpg

[jtougas]

I worked on this some today while I was thinking about Calan Stonebridge's next encounter I have to say, I've read arsheesh's awesome tutorial before but I've never followed it. I am SO glad I'm doing that now. It is very well written and very easy to follow. I am no expert in land mass or large region creation so it's nice to have something to follow to get me moving. As I said in the first post I will occasionally deviate from arsheesh's tutorial. Here is my first deviation. His method of creating mountains is great. Using his method you have a nearly unlimited selection of mountainous shapes. I did it a little differently. After finishing all the land cloud layers I added a transparent layer named "mountains" and using the free select tool I "drew in" jagged shapes of various lengths. I then filled these with difference clouds with the detail set to 15 and used several different seeds. I then adjusted the contrast and the levels of black vs white until I got something I liked. After that I followed his instruction on blending and sculpting of the land clouds layer. This is where I am now. I'll probably get this into Wilbur tonight and make any necessary adjustments. But for now I think I hear Calan calling me.... As always feedback is requested and appreciated.

The Kingdom of Aetrina Stage 1.jpg

[arsheesh]

Hi JT, huh, that's an interesting trick with the mountains. It certainly will save you some time. One thing I notice about the land clouds layer is that it seems a bit stretched along the horizontal axis. This may not be a big issue, but if you want to generate clouds that are not stretched, make sure that when you are rendering the clouds that you change the default X and Y size settings (in the Noise pop up window) to adjust for document sizes whose Height and lenght are different. For instance, since you have here a map whose length is greater than its height, you would need to increase the X size to compensate. Hope that helps. Oh, and thanks for the kind words on the tutorial, I'm glad you are finding it useful.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[jtougas]

Hi JT, huh, that's an interesting trick with the mountains. It certainly will save you some time. One thing I notice about the land clouds layer is that it seems a bit stretched along the horizontal axis. This may not be a big issue, but if you want to generate clouds that are not stretched, make sure that when you are rendering the clouds that you change the default X and Y size settings (in the Noise pop up window) to adjust for document sizes whose Height and lenght are different. For instance, since you have here a map whose length is greater than its height, you would need to increase the X size to compensate. Hope that helps. Oh, and thanks for the kind words on the tutorial, I'm glad you are finding it useful.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Thanks I figured it out while I was going blind looking for cool mountain patterns in the mountain cloud layer. (the concept is perfectly valid it just seemed "easier" for me to do it this way) There was a lot of "fiddling" with the color levels and the contrast but I'm pretty happy with the results after the sculpting step. One thing I did do was take arsheesh's advice and redo the "land clouds" layer I adjusted the "X" size and got a height map that wasn't quite so bunched up. After a pass through Wilbur (where I once again deviated from the tutorial by running a different "Incise Flow" pass and leaving off one of the "percentage noise" passes) I've started to color this. I used a variation of arsheesh's awesome gradients for the first color pass. In my head the Grenna Imperium sits more or less equally distant from the equator of it's home world meaning that there is just as much land mass above as below. There isn't any true "Arctic" geography although there will be some desert. This kingdom is mostly temperate with large forests It is the farthest North in the empire however so there is some "sub-arctic" geography at it's farthest Northern points. I'm getting to all of that. As always feedback is requested and appreciated.

The Kingdom of Aetrina Stage 2.jpg

[jtougas]

The Kingdom of Aetrina the farthest jewel from the Imperium's crown. The Kingdom while large is very sparsely populated. The cities gather along the banks of the rivers like geese feeding. The mountains split the kingdom into regions named for ancient emperors. Dav, Lest-Barek, Rengar. Aetrina is known for two things. her timber and her people. To say that they have no great loyalty for their emperor would be an understatement. Although open rebellion has not occurred in the kingdom in centuries, the populace delights in the little rebellions, the missed tax, the late shipment, the occasional murder of an Imperium official. Aetrinain timber is vital to the Imperium and Aetrina must be brought under full control soon...

Excerpt from Lords General Jace Derak-Ber's "Security status of the Imperium" report as forwarded to His Most Holy Majesty.

I added forests in this update as well as a couple of color adjustment layers. As you can see in the above snippet, I envision Aetrina to be filled with vast forests and only a limited population. Next will be to begin labeling. As always feedback is requested and appreciated.

The Kingdom of Aetrina Stage 2.jpg

[anomiecoalition]

This is a great looking map. Not sure what the river police would say but for me, thats the best part. The only thing that I would work on (and not sure if its too late in the process to modify) is the mountains - which look great, but i'd actually like to see more of them and more diversity in terms of size (length and width). Either way, something to be proud of.

[Diamond]

I like the general layout; nice spread of landforms. The only thing really bugging me is the fragmentation around the coasts. Is that something endemic to the process, or will that be cleaned up later on? Also, the oceans aren't going to stay black, are they?

[jtougas]

This is a great looking map. Not sure what the river police would say but for me, thats the best part. The only thing that I would work on (and not sure if its too late in the process to modify) is the mountains - which look great, but i'd actually like to see more of them and more diversity in terms of size (length and width). Either way, something to be proud of.

Thanks. As far as the river goes the height map and general geology was created in Wilbur so it's got to be fairly accurate. The mountains I agree with you on I might go back and make some changes there.

I like the general layout; nice spread of land forms. The only thing really bugging me is the fragmentation around the coasts. Is that something endemic to the process, or will that be cleaned up later on? Also, the oceans aren't going to stay black, are they?

The fragmentation is most likely from my original land mass creation. I usually go in after the threshold pass and clean up any artifacts. I missed that step here. I could go back and re create the land mass and I'll probably do that. As far as the oceans I plan on adding some texture at some point.

[jtougas]

With "me being me" I went back and started this over again. I went over what I was trying to do with this map and realized that it was just to do something "different" and maybe tell a (another) story along the way. With deepest apologies to arsheesh I have abandoned his excellent tutorial and struck out on my own. I present the beginnings of the "new" Grenna Imperium.....

His Most Holy Majesty Overking of Grenna and Protector of the known world: Emperor Keoth Indirin sipped his drink carefully. A lifetime of training had instilled him with a heightened sense of taste and smell. He could detect the barest hint of poison or other unwanted additions to his food and drink. He did of course employ food tasters and since the fool was still breathing Indrinin was reasonably sure the drink was safe. Below him in the capital city the celebration was going full swing. There were street performances and food vendors everywhere. His subjects graciously given a day free from labor were celebrating the tenth year anniversary of Indirin's coronation as Emperor. Later that night the massive Amphitheater would be filled to capacity for the nights entertainment. Emperor Keoth Indirin smiled. It was going to be a very good day......

The Kingdom of Aetrina Stage 1.jpg