Old thread, sorry, but this seems the best place to post a response to your stereographic map of Elyden. I had to write and say that of all the fictional maps I have seen, yours appeals to me most in terms of the shape and quality of the coastlines and land masses. At the large scale, the shapes of the continents have a great quality to them. They are interestingly shaped without ever being spindly or grotesque. And at the small scale, the detailed nooks and crannies of the coastlines are excellently done. There's also a lot of variety, which I like because it suggests different kinds of erosion forces at work, or other forces that have local effects on the shapes of coastlines. Recently I was reading about fractal dimensions of coastlines: it turns out that on earth, the crinkliness of most shorelines is independent of scale. So the coast of Norway, which is very crinkly (I hear it won awards :-) is similarly crinkly when viewed at different scales. And the coast of South Africa, which is much smoother, looks similar to itself at different scales. And sometimes I see fictional maps where at the large scale, the coast lines are very smooth, and it's only at the very small scale that it suddenly becomes extra crinkly. So, well done.

Two questions: is this stereographic map a reprojection from another view? (And if so, which was the original view, how did you reproject it, and how much touching up afterwards etc.)

And second, was the resemblance to our Earth subconscious or deliberate? Here are the similarities (and I think the map, and world from what I've seen, are wonderful whatever the case so don't take this as criticism):
The Inner Sea <==> Mediterranean. It has a Europe-like shape above it, and an Africa-like shape beneath it. It has a "Gibraltar" separating it from the sea of serpents (border with the Atlantic), and a "fertile crescent" at the far end (even with a literal Zion!). It has a Greece with very many little islands of the coast and it connects to a Black Sea/Dark Sea. In your world, what would be the Black Sea connects to what would be the Persian Gulf - I love that you can get all the way through. The place names: there are some that sound Greek on the north shore, and some that sound Arabic on the southern shore.

You have a "Scandinavia" protruding out from the continent in the northern hemisphere - I can see the resemblance better on the polar map. (Yours is further east than earth's.)

At the north-eastern tip of your "Asia" is a "Bering land bridge" connecting it to the large continent that would be North America (I mean the connection between the Ialcus Sea and the Sea of Akry). Your "North America" has a "Gulf of Mexico", a fattened "Florida", a "Cape Cod" further up the east coast, and up north, too far to the west, perhaps a mini-Hudson's Bay with a Ungava Bay to its east.

It's separated from your "South America", unlike ours (i.e. your Sea of Aseer is our Panama Canal!) and your South America is a completely different shape. "West Africa" comes very close to the "Gulf of Mexico" and I guess those islands could be like a "Caribbean", much too close to Africa. (Actually the largest one is even shaped quite like Cuba! It's a bit too far from "Florida" though.)

Anyway, I say all that not to be a smart-ass, but because maybe psychologically, subconsciously even, it helps to make your world feel realistic for the viewer/reader.

Cheers - Monty