A nasty place

[osloging]

I have an idea for an RPG campaign, but my mapping skills just aren't up to it, so I've decided to post it here. I can't pay anything, but if you make a map it remains your own. All I ask is for a kind permission to use it non-commercially. If you'd like to use my background story / idea (below) in the same way, that's okay to me.

Anyway, here's a backstory for the map I have in mind:

"So you say these rebels can not be condemned to death?", said the tall man known to the people of the Southern Empire simply as the General. "They have challenged the Throne!".

"Believe me, I am well aware", replied duke Baradan, "And my father would have liked to see them all roasted alive. So would I. But my soft-hearted sister has intervened. In fact, she has said that if the rebels are convicted to death, she will refuse to marry Irrad. That marriage, as you know, will tie our family with the Duke of Ihanna. Hopefully it will ensure that our Ihannan vassals will be somewhat more inclined to stop the smuggling at their northern borders".

"Smugglers? So, a band of bandits peddling moondust in the Reaches will prevent me from killing these people, who have rebelled at the very heart of our Empire?", the General replied, "Has your fa... the Emperor given any thought to how this might be interpreted by other rebels? Do I need to remind you that certain merchant houses would like to see the Emperor weakened, and have the gold to spread around? I might be just a military man, but showing weakness in these circumstances seems to be a bit like handing your enemy a bastard sword and then running into it with your neck".

"Dagam, you should know when to keep your tongue", the Duke intervened.

"Keep my tongue? This is..."

"I have found a solution, old friend. It does not involve roasting them. Instead it involves ice; a very considerable amount of ice. You remember my sorcerer, I assume? Old Nimm?".

"Yes..?"

"He has discovered an interesting... world... a place created by some madman wizard centuries ago. Apparently this fellow wanted to create some garden of sort for his - well - experiments. But he failed, his garden became a place of everlasting snow and ice; and a very fitting place to expel these prisoners to. To please the princess I will even equip them with furs, and spears and some rations of food. They'll die, of course, all 600 of them. But most importantly, they will never be seen again. The princess will be pleased, but everyone one will think that it was you who got your will, General".

Now, unknown to Duke Baradan and his sorcerer, the madman wizard was not that unsuccessful at all.

In fact, he planned his demiplane to be a place of ice and snow, but he created two temperate zones heated by miniature "suns" (in fact they are portals to the Elemental Plane of Fire). Both are situated in craters, with steep cliffs surrounding the temperate areas. One of them is merely a few miles wide; and contains the ruins of the madman's own palace, as well as a ghost-town which was once home to his humanoid servants; who have long since abandoned the place. The other is about three hundred miles wide and is highly forested, but also has hills, lakes, rivers, etc. It is home to many of the more or less successful "experiments" of the madman wizard, as well as to a few tribes of orc-like humanoids (smaller and smarter than regular orcs) who were originally intented to be slaves, some of them settled in villages throughout the area. The two craters are placed in safe distance from eachother, the cliffs and the ice meant to prevent any "experiments" from entering the area of the palace. Transport between them was meant to be done with magical airships.

This is the world the rebels - the PCs amongst them - will land in, and will have to survive in.

Does that sound like something anyone of you would like to try drawing a map off?