Soi Fen, capital of the Han Tolian high elves

[senalee]

Link because the file is too large to host locally

One of two maps (the other's not finished) to be included in my first published novel, Dreambound, coming out in September. It takes place in the region of Han Tol, especially in the capital, Soi Fen. Han Tol's aesthetic design is largely inspired by various East/Southeast Asian cultures, with a high fantasy flare to it. All elves in this world exist in a matriarchal society, though Han Tol is a bit more egalitarian, at least when it comes to themslves. Their society is extremely theocratic and xenophobic, so much so that their military is called The Inquisition, with a monotheistic religion. The nation/region, Han Tol, is split down the middle by the Spine, a gigantic cliff thousands of feet high that stretches from one pole to the other, the result of a cataclysm millenia ago. The capital, Soi Fen, is settled on a spot along the Spine, between one lake atop it and one lake below it, and has thrived as a point of connection between the two sides.

My biggest issue when drawing this was how to accurately display altitude. Aside from the cliff (which I drew waterfalls in an attempt to display) the land is rather flat, the 'Hill of the Holy' the only real spot of any height. If I drew the cliff face as its actual size in relation to the buildings though, you wouldn't see the bottom and it would look like there's nothing down below. I highly doubt I'm going to go back and change it now, since aside from that I'm pretty pleased with it as it is and a ton of the detail will be lost anyway when it is shrunken to fit in the page size of the book. And with time constraints being what they are, I doubt I'd be able to make the changes quick enough.

[- Max -]

Looks interesting though I doubt some labels will be legible once printed.

[senalee]

Yeeeeah. I think I might erase the labels for the book version and just save them for other prints.

[RiverSerpent]

wow. This is very Tolkien. how did you get the old, weathered effect?

[senalee]

wow. This is very Tolkien. how did you get the old, weathered effect?

If you mean the background, I think I just found it on Google images. Of course, there wasn't anything high enough resolution to cover all of that so I had to blow it up some.

[Gamerprinter]

While my own style combines a hand-drawn linework layer with transparency/merge layers of beveled shapes beneath does show elevation changes better, because of its hybrid hand-drawn/digital aspect, I don't think that's what you want. Otherwise, as hand-drawn work only, including both limited topographical lines of elevation combined with short single direction hatchwork perpendicular to the topographic lines is how I show changes in elevation. And if you can't tell, the section of roads north (top) of this map are at a higher elevation than the roads at the bottom of the page.

city-elevations.jpg