Atreysa Maps

[Yandor]

Ahh much better Alizarine, but something another person told me about deserts on one of my maps...

I don't know how much you are interested in the realistic climate, but the placement of your deserts looks arbitrary.

You are right that deserts often occur on one side of mountains, but it's more specific than that... they occur when the mountains block the prevailing wind, causing it to dump on the rain on one side leaving now moisture in the clouds to rain on the other side-- until the winds have a chance to pass over the ocean, or large lakes/seas and pick up moisture from evaporation.

So there it is if you care about those details.

The Link to that Thread

Thats the only thing I can really point out at this second, haven't mulled over it enough yet, but as I was reading along the desert ideas, they do happen along seas and oceans, but it all depends on the "wind" most of the time... I'm no expert at all, not even a little bit but you've got that desert hanging out between an ocean and a sea, with no mountains really in between (or land for that matter) to block the ocean/sea moisture from unloading on the desert.... So just my 2 cents!

Great job none the less!

[Natai]

Nice work. I love the colors in both sets of images (from the first post), but for different reasons.
The lighter color scheme looks great and makes me think more of an atlas. I definitely like the projection-style map. My only suggestion there might be to lighten up the forests, they seem to contrast a little too much with the more muted colors in the rest of the map.
The darker map is gorgeous, and the vivid colors are great. If you can come up with a good color scheme for labeling it, I'd want to print it out as a full-size poster and hang it on the wall.

Repped

[alizarine]

Thanks both you guys for the comments.

@ Yandor: the desert is there 'cause I actually worked out the climate areas and stuff (totally anal-ytical there...). I then totally flumped on being a real perfectionist, so the desert is, yeah, a little east of where it should be. I'm thinking of moving it, actually - just gotta get over the whole "it took so long I don' wanna change it!" phase ^.^ I'll try and get fixed up version posted soon.

@ Natai: I still really like those first maps I uploaded - I think I'm gonna have to try replicating some of those techniques with these new maps, since the scale was off in those first ones.

[alizarine]

So really minor update here - moved the desert a bit (understatement?) just to try out a new location. Dunno if I'll leave it there, but I'm kinda going for a semi-large desert in that area and I'm willing to fudge on the actual "correctness of location" to get it there. The crater is gone temporarily (it was the result of a massive cataclysm at some vague point on the time line & I was working on some political maps the time before the crater, so there it went); the rivers ... yeah, they need to be tweaked. I drew 'em in at about ... 25% zoom for some reason and haven't touched 'em up yet. I think I'll have a political map or two to post some time tomorrow, and possibly a river update. Oh, and the ocean's paler just so I could see stuff. I'm also tryin' a darker blue - oceans color, however, is not my main concern right now ^.^ Thanks for all the great comments!

- Alizarine



oh, and @ arsheesh: every man there go back inside, or we will blow a new crater in this little moon ^.^

[Gidde]

oh, and @ arsheesh: every man there go back inside, or we will blow a new crater in this little moon ^.^

still flyin .....

[arsheesh]

...I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...

[su_liam]

Yeah, that phrase never works out well...

[alizarine]

So a political update here - I was really busy today but had a bit of time to throw together a rough political map of some of the earliest years. I'm using this map to explain some country/nation movement to myself so the countries on the final map won't be where these are; I'll also be cleaning this up later. I'd love some comments about the sizes of these countries/nations (whatever). I'm thinking some are a bit too big? Oh, I even wrote up a brief "history" of the year this map was made! Go ahead and skip it if it's too much info, but this is about all I had time for today.

"In T0B23, the southern end of Sutiherin is ruled by 22 human countries; central Sutiherin is governed by 6 Marugar countries, 7 Sekchar countries, and 6 Rerukan countries, although the northern half of the desert and a large expanse of land just south of the rainforest are controlled by wandering nomadic tribes comprised of a generally even mix of humans and Dairex. The rainforest is home mostly to semi-nomadic Dairex tribes that wander set territories and, generally, avoid all the other tribes. Some of these Dairex tribes also contain Holoki; these mixed tribes are more dangerous and prone to entering other tribe's territories and attacking guerrilla fashion to obtain slaves and an valuables the tribe may have collected. A portion of the northern rainforest is controlled by 5 Zaichi nations, two of which allow Human and Dairex travelers to live and trade in their lands. To the west of the rainforest is the greatest concentration of Holoki, with 7 nations controlling almost the entire western coast, west of the mountains. Those Holoki that move into the rainforest often join the Dairex tribes and defect from their original Holoki nation; this is so common any Holoki known to have moved into the rainforest is considered no longer true-Holoki and is banished from their nation. The eastern coast on the east side of the rainforest mounts are controlled by 7 countries composed primarily of Marugar, although many Marugar nations allow Zaichi, Dairex, and Rerukan to live within their borders. The eastern wastes are home only to beasts and demons."

- Alizarine



Oh, and sorry about the lack of opacity on those colors - just realized you can't see the geography underneath. The fix will have the geography showing through. Just have to figure out a good way to integrate the political borders with the geography so they don't overwhelm each other too much ^.^;

[Yandor]

Cool I skimmed the history (read it in the morning) but seems pretty good so far, I can't wait to see the cleaned up version... I think the kingdoms are fine, might be a bit many (but I have no idea where you are in your history or the population) So yeah just my 2 cents, in the morning I'll see if anything else pops into mind, but great job so far!

[alizarine]

Quick post here; way too much goin' on at college right now for a map-update.
@ Yandor: Thanks for even skimming that history ^.^ I'll be working on the clean version soon; there are a lot of kingdoms 'cause the people's are in flux and trying to figure out the "pecking order" so to speak. The map was made by the remnants of a small country that was consumed by one of the Marugar nations; this map was made about 80 years after they fled their country while everyone was still trying to build their kingdoms and stuff. There are 2-3 more political maps I'll be creating to explain where certain countries are in the "present", the people that live there, and how they got there. I'm crazy like that. The final map will be geo-political with the "present day" countries represented, but I need to explain their origins to myself (so I can design the actual sentient races; again, just me bein' crazy).

Question if someone feels like answering: I saw a map the other day that used images of stuff like animals/boats/clothes to indicate where you could find certain cool/tourist-y stuff on a map of Spain (like Flemenco dancing in the east, or something). Anyway, I was thinking maybe I could use pics of the races to indicate the races living in a certain country/nation/whatever. Dunno if it would look good or too "childish" for the type of map I've got going so far, but eh. I'm tired, and thinking pictures are nice ^.^ Thanks for the feedback, everybody.