Valley at the Top of the World, a Palladium Fantasy RPG Shangri-La

[Coriolis]

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This is a map I made for a friend and his Palladium Fantasy Campaign: "A God... Rebuilt"
The map depicts a secret valley featured prominently in the "Island at the Edge of the World" campaign book by Palladium Books.

For those of you who don't like rotating your screen around or reading upside down, the inscription around the frame says:

"Hidden amidst the barren heights of the Old Kingdom Mountains, a lush valley flourishes under an ancient power. This is the dominion of the Crystal King. This master of a long-forgotten magic reigns over his secret valley through the powers of his fortress and the bravery of his knights. The Crystal Fortress exerts his will, keeping the monsters and deadly cold of the Old Kingdom Mountains at bay. It also exerts the Crystal King's will over the people, for his is a jealous power that suffers neither challenges nor defections. Few ever venture here, and none ever leave. As warden of this gilded prison, the Crystal King keeps the peace and unwittingly guards the key to saving the world."

As with most of my maps, this map was made with variations off several Arsheesh tutorials, including the Eriond technique, his Photo-realistic forests in GIMP tutorial, his icon mini-tutorial, his curved label tutorial, and his ornate frame tutorial. Kudos to Arsheesh for enabling a hack like me to make something nice to look at.

I always try to throw in at least one thing I've never done before into each map I do. This time, it was the cliffs and farmland textures. The mountains to the south fall several thousand feet to the river banks below, the result of a catastrophic regional war over ten thousand years previous to the scenario. The farmland textures are based off real-world imagery from a remote part of Wales.