Today's update - I'm trying a few things:

CathedralGalaxy_201211.jpg

Three questions...

1. What do you think of my font choices? There are two, one for landmarks and gates, and the other for regions and titles. I like the landmark/gate font, but I worry about how distinct some of the letters are. The region/title font also seems to work here, but might be a tad heavy. Any thoughts?

2. I made an attempt above to label the nations with multiple regions. (Red - the Republic, purple - the Imperium, and green - Amseile.) Does it work well enough? I also added a key off at the bottom right, both because it adds to the worldbuilding and because that gives another way to identify those polities. Is the key out of place? Would it be better to leave the national labels off the main map?

3. I'm playing with styles for the foreground structures. Here's the pyramidal construct with line art, without line art, and with some fuzzing effects to try and imitate artwork like John Harris'. What do you think?

CathedralGalaxy_HulkLines.jpgCathedralGalaxy_HulkNoLines.jpgCathedralGalaxy_HulkHarris.jpg

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The Mariner Worlds are a loose affiliation of wanderers, not all native to this sparse region of the galaxy. They have periodically launched expeditions outside the Cathedral Galaxy towards the smaller orbiting clusters in its local group - purely for the sake of the journey. Prominent landmarks in the Mariner Worlds include Harbor, a partial Dyson ring that should be gravitationally unstable yet has maintained itself for eons, and the Lighthouse, an array of quiescent Archaean transmitters and instruments facing outward from the galactic spiral arm.