Talon City-States

[290blue]

For my first map here, I thought I'd start simple... and map a reasonably small area for a campaign that didn't fit into my "regular" world. The idea was to map an area roughly analogous to Italy from around the 13th century; a region of rival city-states and machiavellian politics.

So, here is the first WIP of the city-states of the Talon Peninsula:

Talon-overland.jpg

I probably need more rivers; at the moment I've only included a few that lie near the cities. Any other geographical oddities that I need to take care of/pay more attention to? I think some roads and shipping routes wouldn't go astray... Any technical advice is also very welcome.

Techniques were mainly adopted from Tear's Saderan and/or pasis's Mountain Creation tutorials. Place names kindly donated by Google translate.

[Ascension]

Looks nice. If you do add more rivers then don't go hog-wild...this style prefers that there aren't too many rivers.

[Steel General]

Yeah, I agree with Ascension.

[Eilathen]

I like it. Have some Rep. !
Care to elaborate on the world itself?
And what kind of system will you use? (enthusiastic roleplayer here! )

[arsheesh]

Very attractive, have some rep for such great beginning!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Clercon]

Very nice!

[290blue]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

Care to elaborate on the world itself?
And what kind of system will you use? (enthusiastic roleplayer here! )

I'm a 4e D&Der these days, if I'm going to GM anything. I have a world that I normally create adventures in, but this doesn't fit in to that at all, which is partly why I chose it as a testing ground for mapping.

The idea for this is that these are drow cities. The drow in this world are surface dwellers, just like the other major races. Their appearance is less carved-from-emo-obsidian (still dark, but more dusky than outright black... exceptions exist), and their culture is less evil-for-the-sake-of-it, but otherwise they're pretty much still drow. So you've got rival houses vying for power, the priesthood sort of uniting them but at the same time also trying to dominate them, and so on.

I tried to give each major city (8 of them, because they're drow...) a unique "theme" or aspect to make them distinctive. Vecchia is partly built into a cave system, and Galleggianti is flooded. Focena's buildings are partly built from coral, while Luccio uses much more metal, especially gold, in their construction. La Scarpa sits in the shadow of a volcano. Tara di Streghe is controlled by a cabal of sorcerers, whose rituals are slowly corrupting the soil around the city. Canto is a tree city, more reminiscent of the cities of elves than of drow. And Ambrata... I haven't worked out a niche for. Maybe it's the "normal" city?

Beyond that, I hadn't thought about the wider world at all yet. Perhaps it's an all-elf world? In the feywild? No plans to run it any time soon, so I have time to think about it.

[290blue]

Here is the latest iteration of this map... WIP #2:

Talon3.jpg

Rejigged the forests, added a couple of rivers, nudged a few of the cities, put in a frame (thanks arsheesh!), and included some small cosmetic terrain effects.

I might try to make a more parchmenty, icon based version next.

[Ascension]

I like the shading that you've done to convey the sense of height for the mountains.

[Katto]

Very nice map so far. For me the city icons don't fit with the rest of the map. I can't say if it is the size, color or style. Have some rep!