Adding legend-related components so that the map has everything it *needs*; further embellishments are going to be time-dependent. Also made the compass rays (what's the proper name of those?) extend through the seas of the map itself. I was a bit unsure how to label the city symbol types; at the scale the map is all of the marked locations are going to be major cities, but the diamond-shaped ones are in a separate tier of size and Pryme-wide significance as compared to the circles (and the four-pointed 'stars' are only marked as such if they are both of major significance and the capital of a sovereign state - some independent, sovereign cities are not so marked due to lower relative import, such as Sethis).
### Latest WIP ###
prymeMapJan2018-wip8.jpg
Also a lorepost, of course!
Notes: The Sjovi Desert, the Vast South Rift, and the Escha Beryl
Among the more hostile and mysterious regions of terrain in Pryme are those lying in its southeast. The Sjovi Desert is a vast expanse of pale sand, most of which is a cool white verging on almost lavender in shade in contrast to the desert’s scorching, dry daytime heat (though it fits the frigid nights much better). The remarkable color is generally theorized to be due to some influence from amethyst and rose beryl crystals, deposits of both of which can be found in the desert (the latter closer to the Vast South Rift). In comparison to Khusep’s deserts, the Sjovi lacks a major water source as a centralizing influence to parallel the River Asa that runs through the former, and furthermore where water can be found in the Sjovi it tends to be tainted, with a higher incidence of this than in similar situations in Khusep. In addition to this environmental risk, its wildlife can be particularly hostile; among many of the inhabitants of the coastal cities north of the desert there are numerous tales of huge lurking beasts that burst out of the sands to swallow travelers whole. Fittingly in light of these hazards, the Sjovi lacks any major human habitation; there are only really two major reasons people enter the Sjovi at all. One is to mine amethyst and rose beryl as mentioned above, although such efforts tend to be small in scope, hampered as they are by the fact that the best deposits are found near the Ravenclaw Mountains or the Rift, either way being very deep into the desert. The other is to descend into the Vast South Rift, which requires crossing at least some of the Sjovi’s pale sands no matter what route is chosen (at least, as far as is known: the full perimeter of the Rift has never been charted).
The Vast South Rift itself is a highly anomalous geological formation, a cavernous pit of enormous and unknown breadth and depth. Early explorers who reached it thought it the world’s edge, though the learnings of later eras have made such a conclusion seem very unlikely. It is rather dark, though rarely pitch-black, within the Rift, which is somewhat strange as it yawns so wide that the sun really should light it better than it does in practice (in fact, it is rare to clearly see the sun from within the Vast South Rift, and the sky is quite dark at all hours). This is thought to most likely be due to some effect of the rose beryl, though not much evidence has been found either in support or denial of this theory thus far. To Pryme, rose beryl is a poorly-studied gemstone only known to occur naturally in and near the Rift, where it is very plentiful with large, exposed crystal formations. Strangely, crystals of the stone give off light of their own, and are the source of much of the illumination that is present in the depths of the Rift; when looking into its depths at a distance the larger crystal formations look reminiscent of stars in a dark night sky (albeit stars in a magenta shade). The edges of the Rift begin extremely steep, vertical in many locations, but do taper somewhat as one continues downwards. This is relevant, because there are people that live within the Rift.
The Escha Beryl, as they are called in the rest of Pryme due to an incomplete translation of a name for themselves based in part on the local rose beryl crystals, are perhaps the one people of Pryme that the least is known about. They live in the Rift and its (relative) darkness, deep enough that there is enough flat ground to build their homes and even cities, though even miles below sea level where most of the Escha Beryl reside most of the land has a noticeable natural slope deeper into the rift. Escha Beryl are typically thin and very pale of skin and eyes. The people of the Vast South Rift are generally known to welcome visitors, but haven’t historically made any attempts to reach out to them either. While potentially lucrative, trade with the Escha Beryl is highly limited in practice due to the sheer extent of natural barriers to engaging in it, what with a harsh desert followed by miles of near-vertical descent. What travelers and traders have visited the depths of the Rift have noted impressively vast efforts by its inhabitants to construct terraces of flatter land, across which run rivers fed by deep groundwater (compared to which, of course, the homeland of the Escha Beryl is deeper still). Their architectural works and monuments are reported to be quite impressive in scope, though the acumen in technology and engineering they imply is often overlooked by many of the nations of Pryme on account of the Escha Beryl’s (understandable) complete lack of knowledge of seafaring, which in the rest of the continent is often the first place one looks when gauging scientific and technological development. Of the known Escha Beryl people and polities, all appear to be the subjects of a single (albeit rather decentralized) monarchial government ruling from the city of Eschmavi, though given the extent of the Rift and how much of it is unknown to the rest of Pryme there could be numerous independent states down there yet unmet by the closer-to-sea-level rest of Pryme.
