Had a map bug in my head the last several days that today I finally sat down and indulged. This might have been my first time physically inking a map; to my dismay freehanding everything worked fine until the map border at the very end, which came out a bit off-plumb. Nonetheless I thought I might share it, so I scanned it in, then shrunk the gigantic scan size (despite it just being on an 8.5x11" sheet) to something I could actually upload (and did a little color-enhancing on Tinsendy's shading as my scanner didn't seem to like the brilliant orange I'd used for it and scanned it pretty dull). Overall it's a pretty rough map; the way I made it (copying the original to keep it pristine before starting shading) among other issues had the unfortunate consequence of leaving me unable to erase many of my draft lines.

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Some lore:

The Eight Heritor Kingdoms were founded in the distant past when the great leader, warrior, and later king Siegrod liberated the humans of the land from the cruel tyranny of the ancient giants. He ruled the nascent human civilization for many more years as a beloved monarch, but split the land among his eight children when he passed. Each of the eight Heritor Kingdoms, as they are known, remain under the rule of the most direct descendant of the bloodline of one of Siegrod's heirs (though how the eight Heritor Houses define the directness of one of their member's descent differs between them).

Even now, many generations later, all eight kingdoms remain. Though they frequently jockey for power, influence and advantage amongst one another, any attempt by one of them at the outright conquest or annexation of another ignites the ire of all the others. The rulers of each kingdom meet annually at the Great Conclave, the location of which rotates between hosting kingdoms, to discuss matters pertaining to all the kingdoms or sometimes mediate disagreements.

Against external threats the Eight Heritor Kingdoms are relatively united. The Vashal Lands, (naturally) the home of the Vashal, are one such threat, but as the Vashal have their own civilization - alien as it and they may be to the human lands of the Eight Heritor Kingdoms - and are thus far more organized than the comparatively uncivilized lands to the east and north, conflict with the northwestern neighbor of the Kingdoms is much rarer, though larger in scale when it does occur (it also bears noting that the people of the Kingdoms are not the most tolerant sort when it comes to outsiders, so though the Kingdom citizens may not think so the Vashal might simply be a foreign human culture rather than some other species). The Hinterwoods, a vast forest to the east and south of the Kingdoms, on the other hand, are the source of near-continuous raiding by the forest's beast-like inhabitants, and Tinsendy, Breguster, and Monross must constantly see to defense of the border regions. Sark, the Desolate Land to the north and separated from the Kingdoms by mountains, is a cracked, gray wasteland inhabited sparsely by strange, gray-skinned peoples living amidst the dusty, pale fog that shrouds it. The Desolate Land is not generally a source of threats, but its inhospitable terrain is the destination for those rare high-profile personae non grata that are formally exiled from the Kingdoms.

During the rule of the original eight Heirs of Siegrod, the islands in the Sea near the Kingdoms were all within the domain of the kingdom of Runmere. Over the years, however, the islands of Cassan and Vespen were taken by other kingdoms as settlements in various minor conflicts between the kingdoms. Vespen especially is highly prized by the kingdom of Valister, since it affords it the ability to have a naval presence on the Sea it would otherwise lack.