The Union of Holy Kingdoms

[Diamond]

This is a fantasy version of the Holy Roman Empire - the UHK is more centralized, but still essentially a collection of independent kingdoms and assorted other states. To the north you've got the Ferrenland Republic, which is a Dutch analog, and north of that is Knurland, a barbarous forest wilderness inhabited by pseudo-Norse lycanthrope tribes. South of the UHK are the Nine Kingdoms, a coalition of 'Swiss' Dwarven nations, and south of them is the Etrenian Peninsula, filled with Italian-esque nations.

My New Year's Resolution was to actually finish a story idea I start, and this is the setting for the one I've settled on, so as I get to writing on it, I'll most likely do further maps for the setting, regional maps, city maps, etc.

I developed my own simple technique for creating coats-of-arms; I did a tutorial for it, which can be found here. The WIP thread for the map itself is here. Fonts used on the map are ariapenci for the nation names, and good old Times New Roman for the city and river names.

I also included a picture I did of Anka Halfblood, one of the main characters featuring in my story/book-in-progress, created using Jeff Hebert's awesome HeroMachine.