Map of the Kingdoms and Principalities in Aran & Ilan

[Caenwyr]

I noticed some islands seem to be coloured much brighter than most of the lands, the island south of Barann and the islands west of Sarand. I don't know if that's intentional of not but it looked kind of odd to me.

It sure looks that way, doesn't it? But I think that's an optical illusion, caused by the darker seas surrounding the islands. Did a quick test in GIMP desaturating the map (both in luminosity and lightness), and if anything, the islands are actually a bit darker than the mainland.

I did discover something odd though. If you desaturate based on lightness, the islands of Taeryn (Barann) and Vargyn (west of Sarand) appear much darker than the rest of the islands or the mainland. Odd! Will have to look into that...

I also noticed that in the names on the map you didn't use that long s. I don't know much about that letter and I was wondering why you chose not to use it in the names.

It's a question of readability, mainly. English words that suddenly have long esses (or how do you spell the plural of s?) will still be understandable - context will help - but I don't want anyone thinking the city of Caſanor is actually called *Cafanor, and Oſtwyc certainly isn't Oftwyc. Since context can't help here, I decided to use the short s only: Casanor and Ostwyc.

I also wanted to make a distinction between the information in the sidebar, and the map itself. Different fonts helped with that. I hadn't tested it until just now, but turns out the font I used in-map (Morris Roman) doesn't even have a long s. Dodged a bullet there!