The Ancient City of Khanre
Khanre was the the old capitol of the Kanamoseneh Empire, founded at the cave where the demonic kagiri were sealed away into the caves of the mountainside, but with the coming of the akathun ruling class, the capitol was moved 300 miles to the southwest to the newly founded city of Qatra, but Khanre remained an important location in the empire, particularly when the kagiri began to be revered as servants of the Sky Hawk in her rising cult.
This is the beginning of a plan for the city, a mile east to west and half a mile north to south. The east is set into the mountainside, with a walled in area for the Necropolic and catacombs. Just south of that is the akathi First City, where the Commander Governor and his ruling class of warriors live. West of that is the Temple City, where priests and temple guards live. Outside of that, in the majority of the city, there is the market and the houses for the sekhati, the slave working class of the empire.
The basic plan for the map is barely even half finished, but I have. It's a major location for the novel I'm writing.
I had wanted to just get up a quick start on it so I could feel like I did something, but here's the map, a bit more detailed with the Outer City where the sechatu live. (I did the plurals wrong in the previous post. It should be -u, and not -i.) I shortened the city, because a friend of mine said that a mile long was too big for late bronze age, which is the time period this map is for. In the end, I'm going to go for a parchment look, if I can figure out how to do that in GIMP, that is.
Here's a more complete draft of the map. I'd really like to get it to a more aged look, so does anyone have tips on that?
I think it looks nice.. But about the compass.. It looks strange with the drop shadow..
As for the aged look, there are quite a few tutorials that cover that here.
But, as for me I put a parchment texture under it mess with the layer blend modes a little bit and then drop the fill down to about 75 on a couple of layers and maybe some distortion and apply another parchment texture over all of it and put it on Overlay and mess with opacity and fill until it looks good.
That looks really good; city maps have never been something I'm good at, or can even do :/ as to getting an aged look... no idea! maybe make a layer with the artistic>apply canvas filter, colour it brown, and then put it over the other layers with low opacity? Or, I believe you can find some parchment images somewhere on this site to download... perhaps put your map on top of on, and reduce the opacity?
Anyway, this looks greatas an aspiring writer myself I'm always interested to hear about the stories others have planned
All right. I made a new compass and did some canvas/clothify effects to the background.
If you're doing this in gimp, then the easiest way to get a good parchment look is to find a good parchment texture and put it in the layer below your buildings, and then set your building layer to multiply. Or you could put it on a layer above your buildings on a white background and set the blend mode to overlay. Either should work (I think).
Check out the mapping elements section, there are lots of good parchment pre-made textures there and some good tuts as to how to make your own.
I redid the look with a new approach to both the parchment and the compass. I also fiddled with the buildings and walls to try to get more of a hand-drawn appearance.
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