The Last Sea of Ausur
The Last Sea of Ausur is a dying world that I have imagined for the Cartographer's guild contest. The contest required mapping a canyon, so I created a canyon world. The waters have converged towards the last remaining depths of the surface, and life has evolved around this sea. The rest of the planet is a harsh desert. In this world, life has adapted and thrived through the use of both technology and magic. Several kingdoms constantly fight for control, while carovan traders brave the vast deserts and predon tribes rule over other lands. In the canyon, ascending air currents allow for the use of flying boats with kites and balloons, which dominate the skies.
This is also an experiment to try a new style .
Any comments and critics are welcome.
For the high res version you can check this link
https://www.deviantart.com/n-a-i-m-a...-Map-942695235
TheLastSeaOfAusur_Mapredux.jpg
I have added also the World before the Drying age as reference while worldbuilding this worldmap. This is the world of Ausur I created before the Drying age, I couln't spend months on working on this for contest timeline reasons so it's not flashed out as most of my other maps but it served the scope with a basic tectonic study and quick creation with low resolution, No biomes or climates had been studied as well because it was out of the scope, though a previous world with oceans and continents helped me to define the features of the Dryed up World of Ausur.
Last edited by Naima; 01-14-2023 at 09:08 AM.
I like it. The city-circles add a lot of layers to the narrative. Might use different circles for cities and creatures. I like that you only hint about the special features of the world, like Sand runners etc. That reminds me of how Star Wars did worldbuilding, by not explaining terminology.
Yes thankyou , about different circles I tried but I didn't like the results, somehow they looked too heavy on the map , I tried squared icons and rectangular ones, hexagonal ones, but overall they looked a bit too strange so I sticked with using all circular ones, this because they where many . Also I was running out of time that I spent mostly on the images inside and the surrounding frame and decided to use just circular ones and use different colors for differentiation. I dunno about what did starwars but Yeah I think that adding just a minimum Iconic scenery of animals woudl let the viewer define and "invent" his own perception from it , I didn't want to overdetail those and deliberately made the icons small enough to hide the mistakes and the quick job to just inspire rather than making big paintings that would take ages.Originally Posted by HINDSIGHT
Less is more. I also couldn´t figure out how you would show beasts in any other way. They are needed on the map somewhere I think. With Star Wars, I meant how they name things "Womp Rat" and "Jawa" without explaining what it is, and even if its just a name, it add something to the whole story. You do that as well with some of the words chosen, The Drying Age, etc. Good work.
Yes I strangely had a lot of ideas channeled into this map that was just made for a contest ... perhaps when you have less expectations and constrains you get more imagination allowed to run free.
Perhaps if I started to put more into this I feel I would deprive the viewer of his own fantasies and ideas ? But other ideas I had in mind for example:
What is a Skreeter? I have no idea I thought the name evoked some kind of bipedal runner ratlike big creature that roamed salt plains on this world ... I dunno even if its a word in english or what evokes to an english audience but to me that is what evoked and so I added that picture... or the Vorax ... a bipedal all mouth spikey creature ... or muncosaur ... which is a creature name I carry over since I was a child ..a creature shaped like a hand with middle finger and long neck with head with a small proboscis "munching" grass... dunno if munching means sonething lol but its the sound I imagibed for the act of eating ground grass... that is how I let imagination totally free to run ... I would have added more portraits for the tribes and other creatures or figures ... have more cities and villages but most of all I would have liked to describe the technology and magic I had in mind for this world where small and large boats can fly in the sky as long as use ascensional currents of the canyon .. using kites , balloons ropes gears and wings of wood ropes and silk... while outside in the desert merchant caravans are the only able to cross the deserts using huge "Howdah" creatures (using howdah on their top carapax) slow but resistant to thirst and big enough to survive aggressive creatures.
Yes! Great post. I remember something similar, carrying a name ir creature all the way from childhood imagination. If you haven't already looked into it, searching etymology and the origin of words can give a lot of background. I used that once, when I tried making a society that had no latin origin words, became very challanging particularly for words related to armour. Also a good point that restraints forces us to not overwork an idea. Some of the best songs were written in 30min. About your map, you could also think about societies/cities that did not adapt to the enviromen changing, or tribes that now thrive because of more sand. I would maybe remove the snow parts, or change it to a wintery desert, to really focus on just 2 ecosystems(?) I dont know what happens geologically to a planet/place that dries up like yours.
I wnted the ice caps as was thinking of mars that shoudl have also but its a cold desert so a Desert can be as hot as cold, just matter of no precipitation mostly , the precipitation instead happens in the Canyons where melted ice contributes to preserving the last sea.
I also wanted a peculiar variety of cities so some are kind of Venice like hindu aztec hybrids , another a tree city another a cave city another a city built on cliffs and so on.
What an awesome map! I love this so much! Thank you for sharing. It just sucks you in & gives the imagination so much fuel for story & adventure!
Thankyou... indeed my scope was right to fuel imagination and sense of exploration.
Great work Naima!
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