Athil: The Plunder Isle

[DungeonMasterGaz]

This is my first post of a finished map.

I’m a keen user of all the CC3 products, and this map was created by colouring the symbols from the Cartographer’s Annual Black & White Overland mapping style. I added my own choice of drawing tools to draw the terrain elevations and created my own sheet effects to get the look I wanted.

The island is a location in my 4E D&D campaign setting.

Brief Background
Athil is a relatively young nation. It was first settled 90 years ago by a contingent of Iron Sentinels from the city-state of Bel-Moth who set up a penal colony at Helgaunt to house their most notorious and bloodthirsty criminals. The colony was a success until the prisoners rebelled in 1,495 CR and overthrew the governor. Within a year the rebel prisoners had established the Athilan Syndicate and the pirate state of Athil was born.

The Athilan people gained their prowess on the ocean after they were plunged into a naval war with Ithlond shortly after the prison rebellion. In a trial by fire, their naval skills were honed to perfection as they triumphed over the numerically superior Ithlons. Since then, Athilan ships have preyed on shipping in the Sea of Mists and beyond, becoming a terrifying force to be reckoned with.

[torstan]

Very nice. The sheet effects seem to be a very powerful way of getting good results. I've never used any of the CC products. How difficult is it to create your own sheet effects?

Oh, and some rep for a very pretty map.

[DungeonMasterGaz]

Thanks, Torstan

Adding sheet effects is easy really. Its pretty much the same as applying effects to layers in any other art software. CC3 comes with a selection of effects such as bevels, shadows, glows etc. It's just a matter of tweaking the effects to suit by adjusting the associated values/colours/opacity etc.

What is quite useful is the ability to create symbols in CC3 that have elements on different sheets (layers). For example, a hill's outline goes on one sheet while the background colour and shading go on other sheets. This allows you to apply several different effects to the same symbol.

[Steel General]

Nice job...

[Gandwarf]

Cool map. You created a pretty unique style and I know how hard that can be with CC3. Have some rep!