July 2016 Challenge: The Lands of the Line

[Sapiento]

I really like this map!

[Warlin]

I like this map as well. The path of the lime is so intriging and the composition, the choice of the color, these stunning illustrations are awesome. Great work as usual.

[Diamond]

Well, I decided to make my own heraldry for this instead of using Abu's templates (awesome though they are). And they all have an actual meaning!

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Lonkhor: The oldest of the Known Lands. Her inhabitants are practitioners of a strange fusion of necromancy and science, and the infamous Black Sparrows of Lonkhor are undead mechanical birds, said to guard not only Lonkhor's borders, but the wall between life and death as well...

Pandona: The self-proclaimed 'Children of the Dragon', they, like everyone else alive, have never seen the Dragon Nabela. Nevertheless, they worship her All-Seeing Eye, and declare holy jihads on their neighbors in Her name.

Ymmat: The five Mage-Kings of Ymmat rule a land steeped in ancient sorceries. Ymmat's national sigil is a mystic pentagram, each point representing not only one of the Kings, but one of the sorcerous disciplines as well.

The League of Nine: With an economy built on slavery, each vastly powerful city-state is represented on the sigil by a star. To prevent conflict, it is actually illegal in League lands to assign any one star on the sigil to a particular city.

Memsarut: With their strategic location and powerful force of Wyvern Riders, it's only logical that the nation's most important resource has pride of place on the national sigil. The white wyverns of Memsarut are said to be the descendants of Nabela, and the fanatics of Pandona consider it blasphemy that anyone should ride one of Nabela's children.

Imbrios: A relatively new nation, formed by breakaway states of the Old Empire of Calantium, Imbrios is a nation rich in natural resources but poor in magic. As such, her men and women of learning are all about recovering the Old Science, and inventing some new. Imbrios' national mindset is represented by twin gears, black for the Old Science, gold for the New.

Calantium: Once the dominant empire of the region for centuries, Calantium is now decadent, fractured, and declining. Her citizens are kept happy by the time-honored traditions of bread, circuses, and gladiatorial combat. Revolt is never far away, but the Grand Imperial Family and their Black Eagle standard still hold the reigns of power... for now.

Basatyr: The last of the major nations, Basatyr was another Imperial subject that broke away. Famed for her desert vistas and vast ruins of the Eld Times, her sigil is the Red Crescent, representing the planet's ancient red sun setting on the last days of Mankind.

[Sapiento]

Really interesting map, Diamond! The composition of map and illustrations works very well.

[vorropohaiah]

love the work on this one and the background behind the Lines.

[snodsy]

Beautiful, love how the icons seem to be intergrated into the ground, beautiful color palette. Not crazy about the framed border look.

[ladiestorm]

Diamond, you have an absolutely beautiful map here! And I absolutely adore that border!!! I think it works particularly well with this map!

[Neyjour]

Initially, I was a bit sad to see the banners go, but these round icons look so much better! Wonderful work on all of it!

[Diamond]

Thank you, guys. There's still a few more things I want to do, hope to have time to finish it up!

[Charerg]

An absolutely amazing map. I think it achieves the elusive goal of incorporating realistic topography in a fantasy map without losing the "fantasy feel". I wonder if you used Earth's topography (via clip-and-piece together) or cloud-generated topography to achieve that look?

And great background story/info as well, that definitely helps in the map coming alive. Overall, I find it hard to find any weak areas in this map (map, border and the artistic elements are all solid), and the idea behind it (or rather, the interpretation of the generator-created idea) is really original as well!