Continent WIP

[Ascension]

I like it.

[Steel General]

This is coming along very nicely.

[Gidde]

Thanks!

Placed territorial borders, and started the process of city placement and labeling. I'm not happy with the city icons, but they'll do until I find better.

The area with borders is the "civilized" portion of the continent, a theocratic empire. The empire is comprised of seven districts, each nominally ruled by a noble family (for which the cities are named that are their seats), but the only real power lies with the church, whose seat is in Corcavron. All of the lands in the small eighth district surrounding Corcavron are under the direct rule of the church, without any veneer of secular rule.

The wilderness areas hold settlements as well, but they're much smaller than any of the cities in the empire, with the exception of Arenport, a piratical free city on the edge of the eastern desert. I'm not sure if I'm going to put these other settlements into the continental map or not yet. We'll see how crowded it starts to look after I get the terrain labeled.

Still a ton of naming and labeling work to do, but here's the current WIP:

[rdanhenry]

Arenport doesn't seem well located to have trade going by it. Pirates need trade ships to plunder, or they stop being pirates for lack of piracy.

[Gregorus Prime]

Damn. This map has really come a long way. Looking good, man. I do agree that Arenport is in a bad place, piratically speaking. That huge bay halfway down the continent from it would be a great place for pirates to set up shop.

[Gidde]

Thanks for the comments guys

I oversimplified Arenport a bit ... in my head, it has the feel of a pirate city (i.e. Tortuga in the PotC movies), but the people there don't necessarily pirate trading vessels. They're more rebels, dissidents, and refugees who got far enough from the Empire that it doesn't come after them. The location is due at least in part to ruins from a previous civilization that lie in and around that desert; I'm thinking either they built upon them or found the city abandoned.

The building of this world is still quite obviously a work in progress ... all of my previous efforts pretty much focused on the empire.

[Juggernaut1981]

Gidde> I'd be thinking the following about Arenport.

#1 Old civilisation = many more adventure options. I'd make the city in tact, but ancient (think South American "cities in the walls" kind of thing).

#2 Society wiped out by:
a) Plague (caused by flood??)
b) Famine (caused by lack of flood....)
c) Miscellaneous unknown apocalypse (caused by the undead spectre of Issac Newton for example)

#3 Empire doesn't go looking because "nobody lives there... our ancient records tell us the area is dead and nobody lives there"

[Gidde]

Thanks Juggernaut; I pretty much have been thinking along those sorts of lines myself. The people of the empire are pretty new to the world, having fled an ancient menace through magical means (sort of Riftwar-esque), and this civilization was long gone before they arrived. I'm thinking they were very powerful though, and would have built things that stood the test of time. So yeah, I'm leaning toward the intact (at least mostly) city as well.

[Immolate]

Gidde I think you've taken the style in some new and interesting directions. Agreed that those city markers need a different approach. They look like they should be on the side of a VW van.

[Gidde]

Thanks Immolate And yeah, the city markers are horrid.

Put in some terrain labels ... not sure the mountain labels are as readable as I'd like, but I'm having a rough time putting labels over such craggy mountains and having them be readable without completely obfuscating the mountains.

That said, at least I like the font/size of those labels ... which makes the city labels completely wrong. I think I'm going to redo all the cities in the style of Arenport, just a little smaller.