This is a companion piece to my map of Siraaj. They are both of the same area, but on two separate planes, which are reflections of one another. It was made in Photoshop CS3 & Illustrator CS3 for a homebrew campaign setting called the Hourglass of Zihaja. It is an Arabian Nights based setting, made from the votes by the members of the Giant in the Playground homebrew forum.
  • Text in dark green is a settlement.
  • Text in dark brown is another location, such as an adventuring site, a geographical feature, or a region.
  • Every settlement larger than a thorp has a name.
  • Settlements in yellow are major cities.
  • Settlements in gray are lesser towns & villages.
  • Settlements in red are former towns that are uninhabited &/or in ruins.
  • Locations with a star on them are prominent locales (IE something that I have a lengthy description for).
  • The scale is in the lower-left corner, opposite the compass rose.
  • The blue lines in the oceans are major oceanic trade routes, which are mostly for the pahari & the marid genies.

The world of Najmah is a mysterious place, full of bizarre happenings & magical events. Much of this is caused by the fact that the sun never rises here; the land is always dark, & the sky is full of stars. But another major factor contributing to the unknowable enigma of the Plane of Night is a strange multihued mist that pervades the air, land, & water in this dark & exotic land.

Also known as kuuhaa, the mists of Najmah are everywhere. They widely vary in thickness from region to region, from mile to mile, & from day to day. On some days, the air is clear & virtually mist-free; at other times, the mist is as thick as the deepest fog.

The names of various places are taken from actual Sanskrit, Hindu mythology, & authentic-sounding gibberish. The whole thing was made by painting it in Photoshop using my normal mapping techniques, tracing it in Illustrator to lay down the rivers, roads, & settlements, then porting it back to PS at a much high resolution & laying down more detailed textures on top of everything, & piling on filter after filter; I used some methods from Pasis, Ascension, RobA, & Tear. I hope you like this map in direct proportion to how much time that I spent working on it.

For some reason, I've had trouble uploading images here in the past, & the big map is huge (4,925×4,925 pixels), so click on the thumbnail below to be linked directly to the big map hosted on DeviantArt.