Atlas Elyden

[vorropohaiah]

Super awesome wip. How's it coming along vorro?

thanks! very slowly. I've been sick most of the month and I'm finishing off a pending commission. I;ve only now started work on the labels these past few days,so it's a while yet... I;ve also been writing a lot of background on the world - a treatise on magic is the most recent one. If you're interested in you can check out the link in my signature

[vorropohaiah]

Elyden has been dormant for far too long, damn real life getting in the way of worldbuilding!

I've just finished a new map - Parthis - and have updated the composite map below. The newest map took me ages to get done. The labeling (especially in the middle) is very tight and not very pretty to look at, admittedly, and I have reservations about the topography now that I look at it (it seems too uniform with green around the outside and yellow in the middle. I'm thinking I want to mix it up a bit and increase the elevation in areas. Purely cosmetic changes and no justification in-world, but sometimes that's how I work!)



You can see how large the new region is, when compared with others. So now I'd like to move on to something different - a different area, different terrain and culture. I'm going to be visiting Ahrishen, a beauteous free land of of lakes, rivers, forests and steep bordering mountains. The rivers and wetlands will be a challenge to do, and I'm expecting this map to have more lakes and rivers than the rest combined, meaning lots of labels! (yay!).

Hopefully this map won't take as long to do as the last one.

[vorropohaiah]

Here's a W.I.P of the region I'm working on at the moment, Ahrishen. Long work hours for the past few weeks are preventing me from getting much work done though it's mostly just labelling at this point. Lots and lots of labelling.

Ahrishen is a very flat region, prone to flooding in summer (following snowmelt) and winter (wet season with lots of rain). many rivers and lakes in the area, surrounded by relatively flat land, flood. Most well-established settlements near such areas are either built on stilts or are positioned to be at the edge of the lake when its flooded.

[vorropohaiah]

Here's an updated Inner Sea collage map to show what's done and what's still left to do to get the Inner Sea region finished:



The next region I'll be working on is in the lower right of the map, and here's the blurb for that particular region:

Perhaps exemplifying the entropy of Elyden more than anywhere else in the Inner Sea, the history of the regions of Arkos, Ba’ath, Suma’ya and Zion (collectively known as the Faded States) are, as befits their geography and cultural similarities, intertwined. They are regions whose past was shaped by Korachani expansionism and whose futures are bleak. Invaded relatively early in the Korachani empire’s history they became at first colonies and and then part of the empire itself, with immigrants and caretaker patricians lording it over the natives, who in many cases became second-class citizens, and the lands themselves were valued only for the resources that could be exploited.

In particular, the regions of Ba’ath and Zion became prized for their reserves of raw umbra, which was essential to the rise of Technarcana in the region and instrumental in the growing power of the Korachani empire. As is so often the case, when those resources waned to the point that large scale extraction was no-longer profitable, Korachan abandoned the region to the Domnitors (regional care-takers) in 2732, handing it over to Sathep the Risen of Sarastro in 3103 RM, alongside Zion. This became known as the Sarastroan Sanction.

Starting in 3097 RM the political situation in Ba’ath had grown out of control, with anyone seen to be a threat to the administration exiled to the south of Ba’ath, which by that had become an Atramentally-tainted wasteland with little resources. This continued well into the start of Sarastroan rule, and over the next centuries the area became a war-torn region of opposing warlords and tyrants. By 3311 the city of Suma’ya had risen above the others, with other cities subjugated beneath its banner. Sarastro had no need of its lands and allowed the fledgling state to fester. Raiding neighbouring territories for slaves and resources it is little more than a localised threat and of little importance to the world without.

Arkos, despite being a relatively small land, had a rich history following failed Korachani attempts at conquest. It was originally conquered by prototype of what would later become the feared Steel Legionnaires - elite vat-born clones that formed the vanguard of Korachani armies - one regiment of which was left behind to maintain the region during the Korachani withdrawal. The descendants of these caretakers would eventually become a ruling caste, known as the Arkos, their imposing statures and military prowess making them natural leaders to a region that was forever fending off barbarian attacks from the south. Though predation from Sarastro would ultimately lead to the region’s downfall. After periods of Sarastroan subjugation, the last of the descendants of the Arkos killed himself in shame 3822 RM, leaving the ruin of its once-great capital Arkos empty, guarded by a crumbling colossus that echoed a golden age that had passed into memory centuries past.

__________________________________________

I'm also busy working on an index for the Atlas Elyden Project, meticulously cataloguing the locations depicted in all the maps so far, using the letter/number grids (I knew those grids would come in useful!) on the border of the maps. It's slow work, though I'm getting there, and here's the proof:



The 'pages' are placeholders until I finish ALL the maps and decide on how to organise them in the document itself, at which point ill replace them with page numbers and redo the column widths

[kacey]

It's amazing the amount of time you've dedicated to this project, and you're maps as always look great, you're really someone to look up to.

[Voolf]

I finally found time to look more closely to your project and i must say - IT IS AWESOME.
I love every single map you post here. I would like to do something simillar one day. Is all the topography made from scratch? Or do you use some software to help you with that?
It looks like simple colours filled in circles, but all together makes a wonder.

[Pixie]

Wow, Vorro, this is coming out awesome. Your "global" map is a cartographic wonder and I promise you right now that I'll nominate, vote and lobby for that one to be map of the year when you finish it.

I am a serious follower of your work, both for the quality and originality, but also because in some ways it is just as absurdly ambitious as my own con-world-making. But you humble me all the time, so the comparison is nothing more than a source of inspiration for me. On this note, I am going to steal your idea of a simple excel reference table with all the words used in the maps - it's a nice and simple one.
Which reminds me... I don't know how you are writing your notes on the world, but I recently downloaded and tried Zim Desktop Wiki, which I really recommend. It's simple software and let's you write a wikipedia style collection of notes, which almost automatically manages links across the articles. Do you have any particular technique/software for this?

Cheers!

[vorropohaiah]

It's amazing the amount of time you've dedicated to this project, and you're maps as always look great, you're really someone to look up to.

Thanks, very flattering

I finally found time to look more closely to your project and i must say - IT IS AWESOME.
I love every single map you post here. I would like to do something simillar one day. Is all the topography made from scratch? Or do you use some software to help you with that?
It looks like simple colours filled in circles, but all together makes a wonder.

yes, the topography is done from scratch. I'm hard at work on the next map, working on the topography. I'm thinking about experimenting with levels, clouds and gradients to make the process quicker, though I'm not convinced I can replicate the effects I want

Wow, Vorro, this is coming out awesome. Your "global" map is a cartographic wonder and I promise you right now that I'll nominate, vote and lobby for that one to be map of the year when you finish it.

Thanks I was trying HARD to get it done by the end of last year, though the topography got to me in the end! Once I realised I wouldn't manage, I slowed down to concentrate on the individual maps, though I;m pretty confident I'll get it done by the end of this year - it's my goal for this year!

I am a serious follower of your work, both for the quality and originality, but also because in some ways it is just as absurdly ambitious as my own con-world-making. But you humble me all the time, so the comparison is nothing more than a source of inspiration for me. On this note, I am going to steal your idea of a simple excel reference table with all the words used in the maps - it's a nice and simple one.
Which reminds me... I don't know how you are writing your notes on the world, but I recently downloaded and tried Zim Desktop Wiki, which I really recommend. It's simple software and let's you write a wikipedia style collection of notes, which almost automatically manages links across the articles. Do you have any particular technique/software for this?

That's really interesting. I've toyed with starting a Wiki (mostly for myself, though it would be open to anyone whose interested) Though just the prospect of hyperlinking 40,000+ encyclopedia entries, articles and essays puts me off!

I use a mix of google keep - i use this for jotting down quick ideas on my mobile in 'shorthand' when I'm out and about. when I get enough notes I expand on them and paste them into the google docs (below)
google docs - I have loads of different google docs with specific subjects where I keep rough notes and ideas. I have a doc for places, another for people, another for inventions, events, ideas etc.
word docs - I have 5 nicely-formatted docs I call the Encyclopaedia Elyden volume 1 is like your typical Encylopedia Brittanica; volume 2 is a natural history with things like geography, continents, climate, flora and fauna, and various miscellania; volume 3 is a travellogue (think of a D&D campaiign setting book describing all the nations); volume 4 is the myths, religions, magic and technology; and volume is the Atlas Elyden!

Does Zim Desktop give you the ability to easily convert the wiki to an online format? That would be useful

[Pixie]

Does Zim Desktop give you the ability to easily convert the wiki to an online format? That would be useful

It does, html, mhtml, latex and others.

[vorropohaiah]

I spent much of the day messing around with Google Earth and QGIS, trying to change the projection of my Atlas Maps from Equidistant Conic to Equirectangular, so that I can wrap them around the below Google Earth map.

More importantly, I've needed a 'quick' way to convert the maps to Equirectangular, which will be invaluable later on when I need to do larger regional maps in various projections for the atlas. I say 'quick' - it's not a very speedy process changing the projection in QGIS, though its a lot simpler and more precise than doing it by hand on photoshop (Equidistant Conic is a horrid projection to convert out of).

I plan on repeating the process in more detail once I've done more maps, dividing the process into various layers - roads, cities, territories, etc. I'm actually really excited by this process, to the point that it's stalled my next map (you can see it in the lower right - a region with a vertical gulf dividing it)!

Many thanks to /r/tsseepra on reddit for the help with QGIS (which I'd never used until today