I am working on a more fleshed out regional map for a growing campaign and want to pose to you a few very newbie questions. I have searched these forums but am a little overwhelmed by the range of experience and work that I see here.

At this page you can find a very small snippet of a larger map that I have been developing. As you will note, it is quite crude, but the point was to have something, not a work of art (that comes later).

I am working in Macromedia Fireworks (it's a few revs old, which is why it's not Adobe Fireworks) which is an environment that I'm very comfortable with due to using it in my job. I have created a roughly legal-sized map (at 300dpi). I created a number of assets that I have plopped down on the map in order to create markers for hills, forests, etc. These are basically placeholders until I can pretty it up.

Which is why I'm here. A few questions:
  1. Do any of you know of a collection of assets (in any useful format) that I can use to plop down better versions of those notations?
  2. Is there a simple way to create basic, believable textures for ocean & land backdrops (which the assets are plopped onto)?
  3. How about a few color pallets?

What I want to avoid is a 19-page tutorial that takes me hours to go through. I'm trying to produce something of a 'middle' quality, not pass the thing off as a Google map.

Years ago, I bought Campaign Cartographer, found it unbelievably hard to use, then pitched it in favor of normal image editors. Now I am hitting a wall.

Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
DocBadwrench