First Map: Kel'Nor

[Bravehamster]

So, this magically maintained desert region... it doesn't countour the existing land, but is as if a slice of the world were physically swapped...? Meaning that where the differing elevations of the two regions meet, there will be numerous sheer cliff-faces, etc.?

Yes, exactly. The location where major trading roads cross into the region is dictated by where the two regions match elevations.

Ring of Fire anyone?
Cool idea, could you post a bit more about the history?

Sure! Here's what I sent to the players:

Up until ~1000 years ago, this world was dominated by the Orcs, until a combined force of Humans, Elves, and Dwarves threw off the shackles of their Orc oppressors and drove the Orcs North into their current homeland. The Orcs, faced with the prospect of total annihilation abandoned their warlike ways and took up a vow of non-violence. Today most of the population barely remembers that Orcs were once violent monsters and sees them much as we see the Amish: slightly backwards and fairly harmless.

About 300 years ago a great and bloody war break out, the Elves on one side and the Humans and Dwarves on the other. The war was fought because the Elves held the only safe trade route through the mountains that cut Kel’Nor in half. Few records remain from this time, but at the end of the war the Elvish capital and most of their productive farmlands were...gone. In their place lay The Desert. The remaining elves were hunted to extinction, and no elves have been seen for 250 years.

The Elvish lands had not become The Desert, but rather were replaced by it. For many years it was avoided, as some feared it was cursed land, but finally the new and untamed land of The Desert called out to the king of the northern human nation Tar’Shina. This king was named Aemon. He sent a mining expedition deep into the desert, and based upon the predictions of the court Seer, started digging for adamantium. For 80 years the digs continued as Aemon poured more and more of the treasury into the work. All that was ever found was a vast deposit of salt. Tar’Shina was bankrupt, and the monarchy was overthrown, 25 years before the present. A fledgling republic has grown up in its place, although corruption is rampant.

Over 80 years of continuous digging resulted in a sizable city being developed in the desert. Aemon’s Folly (as it came to be known) is now the center of trade for the continent, a fiercely independent city that welcomes all peaceful travelers and traders. If you can’t find it in Aemon’s Folly, it probably doesn’t exist. And that's where our adventure begins.

2 things but otherwise spot on...the light blue outer glow on the land layer needs to be reversed (you have it fading in rather than out so just hit the reverse button on the outer glow gradient in the layer style menu) ... A small tip, most people accuse me of making things too dark (I aim for the "blue marble" style of satellite photos) so you might want to lighten up the image with a layer of white on the very top of the layer stack and set it to soft light with an opacity of around 60%.

Hmm...I'm not seeing any reverse button. Ahh, I found the problem. I wasn't using a gradient at all, just the solid color option. The layer of white is a nice touch, and lightens things up nicely.

Nice job, though, and Steel was right, I cover country borders in the Antique Maps tutorial...the result looks something like my Narthaine map in the Finished Maps subforum, although that one was meant to be lighter than usual. Glad you liked the tut and also glad that you almost perfectly nailed it (the North Korean judge had to take points off for the outer glow)

Thanks. Working on the borders now. This is turning out better than I ever expected when I started out.