The Promethium Wars on Telmun IV

[Abu Lafia]

While not working on my challenge map, i was doodling around with different landshapes, testing the idea mouse posted the other day, to "swirl" the landmass until it looks more suitable. Suddenly i was working on another map...
I've always been fascinated by the worn look of Ilanthar's alternate history maps and so gave it a try myself.
The map depicts a rather classical sci-fi setting, although the whole thing is more like "spiritual-steam-drunk-punk ... in space!": There is a "gold rush" on a far away planet (Telmun IV), where several factions are trying to get their share of the rare Promethium metal, by exploiting the land and waging war against each other.

Telmun_WIP1.jpg

The factions, descending from earth but meanwhile spread across the explored parts of the galaxy, are:

- The Military Protectorate of the Free Worlds (MPFW)
Practically "the Western World" (or the largest part of it) after a military coup ... like 1984 with Apple^^
- The Holy Alliance (HA)
A grand unified (Orthodox and Catholic) Theocracy. Well, the spanish (habsburgian/russian) inquisition as the "unkown unknowns" of this universe.
- The Bantu Federation (BF)
A federative union of many Bantu speaking Nations.
- The Interplanetary Council-Republic (ICR)
The poor "good guys" fighting for the people...
- The Zen-Budo-League (ZBL)
Katanas should have a place in every thinkable future!
- The United Sultanates (US)
UAE in space
- The Celestial Reborn Tang Empire (CRTE)
The reincarnation of Zhaoxuan, the last emperor of the chinese Tang dynasty (died at age 15 in 908 AD), led to the renaissance of the celestial empire.

- After establishing the borders along an underlying hex grid, i started labelling the factions' spheres of influence and giving them a color code. Not totally sure about it. I like the fact, that the "aggressor from the east" is in blue (this time) and saffron/orange for the ZBL, green for the US and purple for the HA was kind of an intuitive choice for me, but i'd love to hear if there are things to make better?

- I started labelling the cities on the southern coast of the United Sultanates. The cities were mainly founded by people from the north african "sultanates", so the names reflect it somewhat. The names for the Tang empire cities i got from donjon's random name generator (it'd be too hard to come up with them myself! ) I wanted to slightly color the labels in the colors of the respective regions.

Next steps:
- labelling more cities (the longest part i fear)
- maybe adding other types of icons for places of special interest (ressources, battles, etc.)
- Adding roads?
- Adding some sort of terrain?
- Doing a legend
- cleaning up the map (those tiny islands...)

Since this is my first "political" map, i'd love to hear what you think so far. Any kind of critique, comments, suggestions, etc. is, as always, welcome.

Cheers,
AL

[Mouse]

I particularly like the shape you've made with the sea, best, though its a little dark for my taste. I'm not sure about the political colours (but then I've never made a political map in my life). Perhaps a bit richer and slightly textured? Or... through my eyes you've given it a very... 'ancient mariner' sort of projection shape... sorry, not good at explaining what I mean by that, but I think it would look even better as a parchment based map with a bit more texture in the ocean - a few rhumb lines maybe?

(Or its just possible I really don't know what I'm talking about at all! LOL)