[WIP] Vale of Elsir

[kjdavies]

Not a complete creation on my part. A friend is running some D&D 4e adventures in the Vale of Elsir (if I have the name correct) and has a regional map made of maps from several sources butted together. The styles and colors clash somewhat unpleasantly, and I was looking for a challenge to tackle, so I figured I'd see if I could recreate the map for him. He had a few changes he wanted made (some of the geography didn't suit the story -- why does this road have a near-monopoly on travel to the West when there are *two* more roads that go that way? -- or didn't make sense, such as all rivers flowing into a lake and none flowing out) so I thought I'd incorporate them while working.

So far, after about 10 hours (assuming two hours a day starting on Sunday) I've got the map below. I still have one region left to render, the fens surrounding the delta on the lake, and a whack of labeling.

Incidentally, if anyone knows a better way to do hills that would be consistent with maps in a style like this, I'd be delighted to learn of it. I tried searching here and didn't have a lot of luck.

Overall, I like it. I can see some areas to improve and a few where I frankly didn't get it *quite* right (some artifacting near or on the mountains, for example, or not breaking the forests up quite enough), but overall I'm quite pleased. Not bad for one of my first significant works, I think.

Keith