The Hourglass of Zihaja: The World of Najmah

[Zeta Kai]

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.

[jtougas]

This is beautiful

[Sapiento]

Beautiful indeed!

[laevex_esre]

Wow. I love the colours and textures of the sea and mountains. It looks really magical.
The scale confuses me though. It's quite sparsely populated if you consider an area of several hundred miles only having a few towns in it. If you're going down to the thorp level at this scale then, in a normal world, you would have to put hundreds and thousands of settlements on this map. If you want it to be a sparsely populated world then that's fine though. Maybe not many people live there because it's constantly dark.

[Zeta Kai]

Yes laevex, this world is very sparsely populated. In centuries past, the world of Najmah was more densely inhabited, but the Great Calamity that took place 355 years ago emptied the southern & eastern continents, 7 the subsequent upheaval thinned the populations of the remaining lands. Since then, the world has recovered, but it is not yet back to the pre-Calamity numbers. Nowadays, the roads between the cities are long, dark, & lonely, filled with strange & dangerous creatures. The inhabitants keep mostly to the well-guarded routes, & people are willing to pay for armed escorts & pelt hunters. In a world of eternal night, everyone is looking for some small measure of light to guide their way.

Here is an unlabeled version of the map, for those who would rather gawk at the geography & my passable texture work than look at all the roads & towns which are not relevant to you. For those who genuinely are interested in this world, its regions, its places, & its cities, you can check out the campaign setting (Hourglass of Zihaja) that this is based on here.

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.

[mearrin69]

Nice map. Yummy colors. Have some rep!
M