Fighting Jane's Ships

[Diamond]

A map for a short story I've been tinkering with. In this world, magic returns in the year 1500, about a quarter of a century before the Spanish first contacted the Tawantinsuyu (Inca). Needless to say, the Inca held their own and eventually went on to become one of this world's greatest civilizations, fusing magic and technology to create a nearly unstoppable machine of conquest. Unfortunately, their society had developed into a rather nasty theocracy.

The Union of Peaceful Peoples (a bit of an ironic misnomer), led by the Habsburg Empire, defeated the Inca in the bloody World War of 1860-69, and today the Inca are united by a descendant of the last ruling noble house, focused on peace and prosperity.

Unfortunately, new evils are on the rise - in Virginia, the mad Queen Jane has created a mighty fleet of atomic and magic-fueled warships, and along with the puritanical New England, is determined to unite the Americas under her rule...

Thanks to Wings of a Hero (http://wingsofahero.deviantart.com/) for the scratched wood background.

[jbgibson]

Cool. Exquisite map, and fascinating setting. Be sure and update this post if and when said story gets published !

[Steel General]

Nicely done Diamond!

[arsheesh]

Beautiful!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Lukc]

It looks gorgeous and sounds like a fun premise - but I'll be the colour-blind geek again and have to frankly tell you that I can't tell, from the legend alone, which half of the countries are. The grunge texture does its bit and in the end, well ... I'm left just guessing. Unfortunately this makes me a sad bunny who can't tell himself stories about the map.

[Diamond]

Yep, I agree with you 100%. The grunge really screwed up the colors. Maybe I'll redo it with a larger map so I can just label everything instead of using a key...

[njordys]

Haha, I love these alternative history settings. Alot of interesting countries there. I wonder how the khanate of sibir are doing.

[Hai-Etlik]

Sorry if I come across as really critical on this one. I do like your maps, but I don't think this is one of your better ones.

Although they look nice at first, the textures and effects don't really "match up" in a way that makes sense. If looked at as a straight printed map as is, it's exceedingly modern as it has glossy emboss and drop shadow effects along with artificial distressing and grunge. If interpreted as a photo of an artifact then it's a piece of paper glued to a sheet of wood, with some brass/gold ornamentation, and then some odd white text floating over it. This is a rather odd construction. The degree of wear and grunge is highly variable: the wood is scuffed and scratched, but there is no scratching on the paper or metal, and while the paper is all grungy, the metal looks brand new. The text just doesn't make sense at all as it doesn't look like anything but computer text with a glow behind it.

The pixelated borders and choice of the Robinson projection also contribute to this modern/old clash: Robinson was developed in 1961. A more 1890ish projection would be Mercator or maybe a pair of hemispheres in azimuthal projections. Also, projections like Robinson are kind of hard to interpret without a graticule.

[Diamond]

I definitely agree with you, Hai. This is by far not one of my better maps. If I ever go anywhere with the story behind it, I'll most assuredly redo it.

[rdanhenry]

Of course, an alternative history - and one with magic yet - would likely produce a map that wouldn't pass as "historical" due to different paths of font development, etc. (No reason magic can't put glow behind text as efficiently as a computer.) I'm not saying this particular maps combinations work as well as they might, but as a general point, I think "historical accuracy" sometimes gets misapplied to situations where the history very well ought to be different from our own.