New fantasy RP from me

[Bannanachair]

Jan 26, 2018 14:46:30 GMT -4 Tikobe said:

Jan 26, 2018 10:08:00 GMT -4 Bannanachair said:

What follows are some places (natural geography and a couple things that are neither natural nor man-made) that I want to include in the RP:

• The Spiderwood Forest: In the OP, I mentioned that I wanted spider people. Well, I've decided that giant sentient spiders live in forests, specifically the Spiderwood. The Lord (duke? earl?) of the Spiderwood is nominally a human lord under a larger monarchy, but in reality their influence is only on the edges of the forest. Deeper in the forest, where no man dare settle, are where the namesake of this forest resides. However, despite the limited amount of land and the everpresent danger, this Duchy/Earldom/Lordship is one of the most valuable pieces of land in the world due to the presence of a naturally occurring mineral that can't be found anywhere else: Spiderwood trees, and spiderwood, which is a wood that's almost as strong as iron when treated in a certain way and with magical properties just as notable.
• The Mushroom Forest: Imagine a forest with giant mushrooms instead of trees. That's basically all that I've thought of so far, but the imagery in my head is striking. Just imagine what the faeries of this particular forest must be like!
• The Glasslands: Seven hundred years ago, this was just an ordinary desert, not to dissimilar to any other. However, something unique started happening when a blue dragon chose there to die, and then another, and then another: Instead of a thunderstorm to alleviate the drought, it was just lightning. Over the centuries the lightning strikes became more and more frequent, and the wind stronger, such that it's not uncommon for the floor to be glass for a dozen miles around rather than sand, or for "glasstorms", roughly equivalent to sandstorms but with shards of glass broken off by lightning, to occur dozens of miles even further out.
• The Cavelands: A large mountainous region that is littered with caves, many of which are rather large. This is the birthplace of several religions (with dozens of religious figures connected to one cave or another), a place where exiles often go to and home to the last strongholds of otherwise long-gone empires due to the unique quality of the caves that agriculture can occur within them.
• Magic Towers: Several towers are scattered throughout the world, likely older than even the Cyclopses, though their original creators vanished long ago. Three of them are used by groups of exiles from Kraken Island who decided to create their own magical orders: The Order of the Green Tower, The Order of the Blue Tower and The Order of the Red Tower (I actually might change "green" and "red" to "emerald" and "crimson", but I'll need something equally awesome for "blue" or it would just be out of place). The Yellow Tower (Gold Tower?) is used as a palace by one king, and the Purple Tower (I'm at a loss for this one as well) is the headquarters of a religious/militaristic/knightly order. It is speculated by some that there may be more similar Towers unknown and undiscovered, but whether or not that is the case remains a mystery.

I have no idea what the logical implications of lots of these would be, but I'll figure it out, I think. Does anyone have any cool ideas that they'd like me to do, or complaints about these ideas?

Mushroom forest seems legit. If you do do an underdark area, maybe this can the forest instead, although that "Cavelands" seems to be taking the place of that.

Maybe for the Blue Tower you can call it the "Sky" or "Sapphire" Tower. For Purple there's always "Amethyst."

And shit, spiders... I dun like spiders. They scare me.

The cavelands are actually a different idea entirely; I was originally thinking of valleys and canyons, but decided that caves would serve my purpose just as fine. These aren't particularly deep caves nor some large underground cave system, though, they're just caves. If I do an underdark lots of the caves will connect to the underdark, but lots will just go three hundred feet into a mountain and reach a dead end.

Spiders are meant to be scary, man. If I chose something not scary to guard the most valuable hardwood in this world, do you think it would deter people as much? Of course not! That's why I'm using spiders.

[Bannanachair]

Jan 28, 2018 22:16:32 GMT -4 Duck14 said:

Jan 26, 2018 14:46:30 GMT -4 Tikobe said:

Mushroom forest seems legit. If you do do an underdark area, maybe this can the forest instead, although that "Cavelands" seems to be taking the place of that.

Maybe for the Blue Tower you can call it the "Sky" or "Sapphire" Tower. For Purple there's always "Amethyst."

And shit, spiders... I dun like spiders. They scare me.

Stay away from Spiderwood. 

A Mushroom forest would be very interesting. Would it be in a cave system or out in the open? On an island by itself or on the mainland?

I was going to suggest Amethyst as well. It’s probably the best option for Purple. It’s probably gold for yellow that I’m most iff6 about but there aren’t really many options there.

Hah, I wouldn't have thought of Spiderwood so early if I didn't have plans for it, both for the substance and the location, straight from the beginning. No story plans, but ideas about what could be there, etc.. I also know what direction I'm going to be pushing some of Tikobe's characters towards, now.

The mushroom forest would be just like any other forest, on the mainland, but with mushrooms as tall as trees instead of trees. It'd be on the surface.

[Bannanachair]

I'll sketch some maps on paper tomorrow or Thursday and post the basics of the ideas that I have for the geography when I'm done. I'm thinking of having maybe eight to twelve "regions" of comparable size to any of the Southern kingdoms in Westeros, divided between one to three continents, plus some islands and island chains (including Kraken Island, which I've decided isn't a placeholder name but actually a really cool name). If this doesn't make any sense, it will once I've posted the map(s).

[Bannanachair]

If anyone already has ideas for characters, please share them and I may or may not think of ideas that would be cool to use in relation to your character(s).

[Tikobe]

Jan 29, 2018 6:41:14 GMT -4 Bannanachair said:

Jan 28, 2018 22:16:32 GMT -4 Duck14 said:

Stay away from Spiderwood. 

A Mushroom forest would be very interesting. Would it be in a cave system or out in the open? On an island by itself or on the mainland?

I was going to suggest Amethyst as well. It’s probably the best option for Purple. It’s probably gold for yellow that I’m most iff6 about but there aren’t really many options there.

Hah, I wouldn't have thought of Spiderwood so early if I didn't have plans for it, both for the substance and the location, straight from the beginning. No story plans, but ideas about what could be there, etc.. I also know what direction I'm going to be pushing some of Tikobe's characters towards, now.

The mushroom forest would be just like any other forest, on the mainland, but with mushrooms as tall as trees instead of trees. It'd be on the surface.

Reminds me that I should come up with a few more character ideas than just the one I came up with.

[Bannanachair]

I've decided to post my thoughts on demons (once again inspired by 4th edition D&D, and probably others, but I've only read 4e stuff) before uploading any maps, because this should help contextualize a few things that would otherwise require further explanation. I might also post the extremely basic timeline that I have so far just to see what you guys think of it before the maps, but I could do those in either order. Without further adieu, here are the things:

• Demons are beings from a collection of planes/dimensions collectively known as Hell. They are beings of great power, and come in all shapes and sizes. They do not reproduce sexually, for the most part (though there are exceptions); rather, they spontaneously are born in their dimensions as ordinary demons, from where they may begin to accrue powers.
• Each of the various dimensions that constitutes Hell is ruled by a Demon Prince. Sometimes a dimension is ruled by two or three, either in competition or, extremely rarely, in tandem, and often they're places of raw chaos without leadership. There are examples of multiple dimensions being ruled by the same Prince, and those Princes are often extremely powerful individuals.
• Demons often attempt to exert an influence on the world, though astrologers, cosmologists, wizards, theologers, philospphers and other scholars are continually arguing about why this is the case. It is generally accepted that they desire power in the world in order to gain power within Hell, though they go about it in ways so various that it inevitably leads to arguments: Some simply cause chaos and destruction in mad rampages until they're stopped, whereas some (particularly the Demon Princes) act through gaining worshippers and human sacrifice rather than mad slaughter.
• Throughout history Demons have had amounts of power that wax and wayne with time. Some time ago (I need to work out the specific timeline later) a coalition of Demon Princes took over the Empire of Bael Turath, which, at that point, directly ruled a quarter of the known world and exerted influence over an area almost as large. They convinced the nobility to worship them, and created pacts to grant them power but which corrupted their blood.
• From these nobility were born the race of Tieflings, which have horns upon their heads, sharp teeth, hooves rather than feet, unusually coloured eyes and skin and, on occasion, even tails. Though the magical power within their blood has often waned over time, either due to the nature of the deal itself or intermarriage with regular humans, they still maintain their fiendish appearance, and are often segregated separately from the rest of society out of fear.
• Tieflings aren't the only devilish race to have emerged through the machinations of devils: The farthest southeast known to the scholars of Kraken Island is inhabited by a race known as Gnolls, or hyena-men, and slightly further to the east but less to the south are the Minotaurs, or bull-men. Very little is known about either of those two races.
• Demons attempting to influence the mortal world isn't something simply relegated to history, for in many major cities throughout the world, covert cults worshipping them may be found, often attempting to indoctrinate nobility and other influential figures to their cause. The city-state of Sylathneus, instead of having secret cults of devil-worshippers, has been overthrown by said worshippers in the service of the Demon Prince Mazros, Mazrelon, Olvunnan or Izranaud, depending on which source you trust with respect to its name.
• Demons are sometimes brought into the world, either by their worshippers, opportunists seeking to bind the demon to their will (a very difficult thing to do) or scholars seeking to study them. This practice is forbidden within Kraken Tower, for obvious reasons. Several hardwoods, including Spiderwood and Icewood, plus most blessed by a Faerie, can be used to expel a demon back to hell by stabbing it through the heart, though whether this kills them is highly speculated.

The majority of this information is for purely worldbuilding purposes, but the parts that are directly relevant to the RP itself should be fairly obvious.

[Bannanachair]

I'll admit, I haven't done much of the history, though this is the basic outline that I have thus far. It's mostly about the rise and fall of various empires in distant history rather than anything particularly recent because I want to be free to do stuff with recent history later. Here's what I have so far:

• Unknown: The Towers were built. They supposedly predate dragons, faeries and cyclopses, though some scholars speculate that even if they didn't, given the lifespans of those creatures, their histories would have forgotten it as well.
• 30,000-100,000 years ago: Sometime in this rage of history, Cyclopses built their structures, fought their wars against Faeries and reached the peaks of their civilization.
• 25,000-30,000 years ago: Humans emerged from somewhere and took much of the former Cyclops land, and started building their cities and empires.
• 23,250 years ago: The claimed date of the founding of Sylathneus, which claims to be the oldest city in the world despite the lack of archaeological evidence to back this claim up.
• 10,000 years ago: First written histories emerge, written in languages currently undeciphered by scholars.
• 4,400 years ago: Oldest readable record, describing the formation of the Knightly Order of the Kraken, which eventually, over time, became the foundations for the society that exists on Kraken Island today.
• 3,500-2,900 years ago: Approximate dates for the Yuan-Ti empire, which was ruled by the snake-men of the same name.
• 3,100 years ago: Supposed founding of Bael Turath, an empire ruled by men, then later demons, which would grow to encompass much of the world.
• 3,000 years ago: Supposed founding of Arkhosia, an empire ruled by dragons but mostly inhabited by men. This empire would grow to encompass much of the world.
  
• 2,700 years ago: Roughly when the large-scale expansion of Bael Turath and Arkhosia began occurring.
• 2,500 years ago: The Wars of Fire, or large wars between Bael Turath and Arkhosia, begin. By the conclusion of the Third War of Fire, 2,430 years ago, Bael Turath realized it couldn't win, so their nobility sold their souls.
• 2,400 years ago: Both empires fall as a result of the Wars of Fire, though pockets of them continue to fight the wars for centuries to come. The world is set back significantly and it will take civilization centuries to recover; some say that it still hasn't recovered to those heights.
• 2,250 years ago: The Lich King, taking advantage of the chaos of the world, creates an empire which collapses two hundred years later due to his death.
• 1,800-1,200 years ago: The Empire of Ghoril rises and falls in this time, though it doesn't reach the same size of Arkhosia, Bael Turath, the Lich King's Empire or Yuan-Ti. Geographically, it's located in the western provinces of where Bael Turath was and some of the Eastern Provinces of Arkhosia.
• 1,100-850 years ago: The Empire of Tarthel rises and falls in this time, though it's even smaller than Ghoril. It's somewhat to the west of Ghoril as well.
• 500-240 years ago: The Empire of Nerath rises and falls in this time, to the east of Arkhosia's capital but the west of both earlier empires, and extends further North than any empire since Arkhosia.
• 600 years ago: The most recent dynasty of Sylathneus, the Skados Dynasty, takes over with the aid of the Demon Prince Gar'Goriz, and this family has, over the past 600 years, been slowly solidifying their power and expanding.
• 290 years ago: The fortified town of Winterpond is built on the southern shores of the Frozen Lake, near the Icewood Forest, by some pioneers from Nerath. This settlement is the furthest north that any human settlement currently is, in a strange region of the Tundra that's more Taiga than Tundra, and slightly warmer than the area directly to the south of it.
• 75 years ago: The blue dragon Nizeston conquers the city of Ostcliff, and over the subsequent decades, the rest of the Orevod Peninsula, uniting it under his rule.

Those of you who participated in some old RPs and D&D campaigns of mine may be beginning to notice some easter eggs in here (mostly just me taking the names of some places). Also, because I'm too lazy to create anything entirely from scratch, there are some overlaps in the history and geography as well, but I'll be creating a lot of it from scratch and altering a lot of other parts of it. You'll notice more easter eggs when I post the map, likely on Thursday.

[Bannanachair]

My guesstimate as to when I'll be posting this is some time in mid-March, by the way, though it may come out as early as Valentine's Day or as late as Easter.

[Bannanachair]

If anyone likes or dislikes anything, please tell me. I want everyone to like the world of this RP, and I don't want to make something an integral part of the world if everyone hates it.

[Duck14]

The omission of Dwarves and Gnomes is a little bit of a bummer. They’re underused in comparison to human kingdoms, dragons, demons, and elves which all feature. Let’s include the little guys. Afterall the original idea was to give some room to the underused races/peoples/species.

[Bannanachair]

Feb 1, 2018 5:39:14 GMT -4 Duck14 said:

The omission of Dwarves and Gnomes is a little bit of a bummer. They’re underused in comparison to human kingdoms, dragons, demons, and elves which all feature. Let’s include the little guys. Afterall the original idea was to give some room to the underused races/peoples/species.

Gnomes would be included within the scope of faeries, I thought - they're much more faerie-like than modern Elves, so that logically makes sense. Sorry for not having made that clear earlier. It's always been my intention to do something fun with gnomes.

I've actually started to come around a little bit to the idea of Dwarves, but I'm still on the fence. If I do an underdark, I'm definitely doing Dwarves. If not, then I can still integrate Dwarves into the world, but they won't be nearly as prominent as they are in other fantasy works like Lord of the Rings, Shannara and Eragon (off the top of my head).

[Duck14]

Feb 1, 2018 6:35:26 GMT -4 Bannanachair said:

Feb 1, 2018 5:39:14 GMT -4 Duck14 said:

The omission of Dwarves and Gnomes is a little bit of a bummer. They’re underused in comparison to human kingdoms, dragons, demons, and elves which all feature. Let’s include the little guys. Afterall the original idea was to give some room to the underused races/peoples/species.

Gnomes would be included within the scope of faeries, I thought - they're much more faerie-like than modern Elves, so that logically makes sense. Sorry for not having made that clear earlier. It's always been my intention to do something fun with gnomes.

I've actually started to come around a little bit to the idea of Dwarves, but I'm still on the fence. If I do an underdark, I'm definitely doing Dwarves. If not, then I can still integrate Dwarves into the world, but they won't be nearly as prominent as they are in other fantasy works like Lord of the Rings, Shannara and Eragon (off the top of my head).

That’s fair. There’s a lot of potential for both races to fit in. 

I think using Dwarves more in line with the Narnian ones would work better here than the grand scale we see Dwarves in other fiction.

[Bannanachair]

I'm still working on my basic ideas for the map and where everything should be placed. In the meantime, guys, please feel free to share and discuss character ideas and story ideas that you'd like to roleplay in. I have my own set of story ideas, and I may do some mix-and-matching, and my story ideas will change depending on what characters are made, but I'd like to see what you guys are thinking.

[Bannanachair]

I tried to go to sleep, but I was having a hard time of it, so I decided to write up some details about a small handful of locations that I've thought of in some detail, plus some information that could lend itself to a cool storyline or two in those locations. I have maybe four or five of these sorted in my head out so far, but here's just all that I'm typing until I'm tired enough to fall asleep.


Winterpond

• Winterpond is a fortified town built in the Tundra by the empire of Nerath nearly 300 years ago at the height of the empire. It was built in its location due to how incredibly strategic it is, with the intention of further expansion in the north, though a succession crisis a mere thirty years later greatly destabilized the empire, leading to a complete lack of Imperial support for Winterpond, and twenty years after that the entire Empire fell.
• Winterpond is built on the western edge of a large lake called the Frozen Lake due to the fact that it is frozen. It is located just to the south of the Icewood Forest, and is thus the only location where Icewood, a hardwood not quite as strong as Spiderwood by a significant margin but with even more powerful magical properties, is harvested.
• To the west of the Frozen Lake is a mountain range that stretches far to the north that maps denote as the Ironfrost Mountains due to the name of an abandoned settlement there, a contemporary sister town of Winterpond. Ironfrost was never as large and is now a ruin.
• The entire area is known sometimes as the Frozen Lake Vale or the Winterpond Vale, and surrounding it, even to the south for nearly a hundred miles, is The Tundra.
• The area just around Winterpond has some viable farmland, even though the Tundra tends not to. In addition, cutting through the ice of the Frozen Lake allows people to fish, thus supplying the town with enough food to (barely) survive.
• Winterpond, the Frozen Lake and especially the Icewood Forest have an unusually high faerie presence, and the faeries tend to be significantly more unseelie than they are in other places. In addition, though some Cyclops groups are good for trading, some are rather hostile to the inhabitants of Winterpond and the faeries in the Icewood alike.
• The architect who designed and built Winterpond added a large underground system of crypts, and among some circles it is rumoured that Nerath used Winterpond's isolated location to store magical artifacts that it deemed to be too dangerous, and though some attempts have been made to map the crypts of Winterpond, they are significantly more expansive than the town itself.
• Winterpond is ruled by Counts, and has two or three knightly houses as well, who make up the aristocracy. Due to the small population there's not much of a difference between the various social classes, and because all men are required to train with the city militia when they reach fifteen, if the "aristocracy" begins to oppress the people, the people would very easily be able to overthrow them, which they haven't ever done.
  

Yhendorn City-States

• The ancient region of Yhendorn is one of the oldest hubs of human civilization in the world, and is currently home to nearly a dozen small petty kingdoms, which tend to control a large-ish city that is their namesake and the surrounding towns for a few days ride. I won't go into detail about all of them here, but I will cover some large ones.
• The Yhendorn people (who, let me just remind everyone, are humans, not a fantasy race) do not practice knighthood (a Nerathi tradition), and managed to remain largely independent of any conquering empire since Ghoril. As such, their best warriors are often considered to be inferior to the knights that much of the rest of the world has adopted, in social standing if not in skill. Rather than jousting, quite a few of the Yhendorn cities have ritualized gladiatorial combat which, though much more violent in appearance, tends to leave neither opponent with significant and permanent injuries: The exception is the city of Sylathneus, which has fallen into the hands of demon-worshippers.
• The most infamous if these kingdoms, though not the most militarily powerful by any margin, is Sylathneus. Six hundred years ago the Demon Prince Gar'Goriz, through a cult that influenced parts of the upper-class of the city, orchestrated a coup d'etat that put his most fervent supporter, Themeros I Skados, on the throne. The coup opened up the kingdom from attack by its neighbours, though, and several important border towns and cities were conquered, significantly diminishing Sylathnean influence in both the region and the world. That said, the demon-aligned kingdom has since regained considerable amounts of strength through their immortal "overlord", and the King of Sylathneus has since always been versed in summoning magic to be able to summon demons to aid their kingdom in their conquests. Despite what might be expected, the people are free to practice worshipping their traditional gods, so long as the city as a whole provides sacrifices to Gar'Goriz - which it often does in the gladiator pits.
• If Sylathneus is the most infamous of the Yhendorn cities, then Nasathalus is the most famous. Where Sylathneus is located in the southern part of Yhendorn, Nasathalus is located in the northern part, and all trade that enters Yhendorn through land does so through Nasathalus. This has led to it being the most economically powerful of the Yhendorn kingdoms, and as such one of the most militarily powerful, with alliances both with the various Yhendorn Cities and with nations outside of Yhendorn. That said, Nasathalus is also the most culturally un-Yhendorn of the cities, and several of their noble families have knights in their employ; a fact that is often used as propaganda by their ever-changing rivals.
• Kings of Isthalas, the largest and most populous of the Yhendorn cities, still include "Emperor of Yhendorn" in their long list of titles despite the fact that they haven't held the associated power in at least four thousand years and have actually been conquered, not only by external powers, but even once very briefly by another Yhendorn kingdom.
• Other Kingdoms of note in the area include Lylalnas and Asnenas, which have, for the past century, been allied against the growing power of Sylathneus as a result of their sudden conquest of another City, and there have been constant border skirmishes; Gharak, which is not Yhendorn in origin but rather grew out of a Ghoril settlement in the area; Ollalnas, where the Amber/Golden/Yellow (I still haven't decided) Tower is located; and Mytfanoras, which is likely to be due for violence and wars now that the current Royal Family, House Casmeros, is ruled by an old man with no clear heir.
• All of these cities are very old, and given how ancient the region is, it has its fair share of legends about it. Among other things are the rumors of old tombs located in the deserts surrounding the Cities where ancient Kings are purportedly buried with all their treasure, ruins of ancient settlements destroyed in some war or another, an ancient Brown Dragon lurking somewhere who supposedly was a friend and ally of several kings of Ghoril and even the tomb of the Lich King.

Okay, I'm done for now. I'll post the other three tomorrow, maybe, or after I post the map. As always, tell me what your thoughts are on what I've written, what your criticisms are and what here you think you'd like to RP with. I'd like to keep the current King of Sylathneus as an NPC, but aside from that I've avoided mentioning names as much as possible for if you guys wanted to come up with your own names.

[Bannanachair]

Here's what I've done for the map so far. This is (obviously) a first draft, and if anyone's willing to help improve the map, that'd be great. I'll provide my own criticism of my map down below (I rushed this slightly), but it's in spoilers so that it doesn't influence your criticism(s) of my map.

SPOILER: Click to show

Things I like:

• The ideas behind the map, if not the map itself. I don't want to remove anything.
• The Western continent, especially the southern part.
• The Kraken Coast and Kraken Island. I figure that if the nation has literal krakens in it's army it might as well use them to conquer some of the mainland.
• The Zahlst Islands and Kraken Island. I think I did them really well and, aside from tiny alterations, they're more or less what they should be for the final RP.
• The Port Cities. I didn't name them. They're cities that exist along the coast of that southern continent as independent nations because of the Sahara as-yet-unnamed desert to the south of them preventing significant colonization in that direction.

Things I want to change:

• The Cyclops Kingdoms, and Winterpond's position within them. I think that Winterpond is either too far north or the Cyclops Kingdoms extend too far south, and I'm leaning towards the latter of the two options.
• The Nerathi Successor States. I had no borders in mind other than for the Orevod Peninsula so I just vomited out dotted lines. I think I have too many of them on the middle continent and they should just be along the coast, and I think that some other culture should exist there instead.
• Yhendorn. Aside from the fact that it accidentally intersects the southern continent when there's meant to be an ocean between them (oops) I also think that Nasathalus should be on the west of Yhendorn and Sylathneus on the east rather than how it is now.
• Cyclops Islands. They should be further south, preventing the Nerathi from crossing into southern Yhendorn by sea, and thus also making Nasathalus much more strategically important.
• The weird peninsula in Yhendorn. I originally intended that to be all of Yhendorn, but I decided to make the region somewhat larger instead.
• The continents are too tall and thin; I think that especially the western one is much too narrow. They should have some width to them. I was working on A4 paper so I was limited by those dimensions, but I want to change the shape of the world and make it wider eventually.
• The Eastern Realms, Minotaur Kingdoms and Gnoll Tribes. These are regions specifically for worldbuilding, to add borders to the world, and not places that I actually intend on taking the RP, but now that I'm thinking about it a bit more, the three separate continents should be merged into one.
• The Desert Nomads and Glass Desert. Maybe the Gnoll Tribes can be moved there, and it can become grassy flatlands instead? But then where will I put the Glass Desert?
• Roads, rivers, lakes, forests, mountains, cities and other geographic features need to be added, along with more detail to the coasts of the continents and maybe more island chains.
• More cultures need to be added. At the moment I just have Nerathi and Yhendorn, and though I can think of lots of ideas for the Nerathi successor-states, I want a couple more cultures to be added in, if that makes any sense.

[Bannanachair]

Here is my new and slightly better map. I haven't finished it yet; there are still some details that I need to fill in and fix, however, I've done lots of the map already.



The little "x" on Kraken Island is where the "capital" is. I still need to add in lots of geographic features, but I'm thinking for that I'll do more zoomed-in maps on individual kingdoms and whatnot. I haven't decided much about the city-states on the African southern continent coast, but I want to make them notably distinct from the Yhendorn city-states. I drew up the borders of 15 Yhendorn city-states, and I'll decide what's what when I do a more in-depth map of the specific region. The Urnesh Islands and Grulthel Islands are both home to Cyclops nations, each one occupying a single island. The three smaller islands in the Kraken Islands also have notable Cyclops populations, I think, though they're subservient to the Wizards.

The Kraken Coast is land that is directly controlled by the Wizards, and is somewhat Feudal. The Duchy of Ayomor is also part of the Kraken Kingdom, but it has large levels of autonomy and is ruled by the Duke of Ayomor. The County of Arlomon is simultaneously a vassal of Kraken Island and of Elsutia, and now that I think about it it should be a March ruled by a Marquis instead of a County ruled by a Count, but I'll change that later.

The Kingdoms of Elsutia, Argolon, Eredal, Orevod, Oyinid, Vrelon, Traxetus, Legia, Lovilan and Slairis were all formerly part of the Empire of Nerath as well as the Duchies of Ayomor and Vrelon, and many of them were also part of Tarthel, Ghoril and Arkhosia. I just realized that I accidentally have two places named "Vrelon", the Kingdom of Vrelon and the Duchy of Vrelon, which are in different locations, so I'll need to change one of their names. I also need to improve their borders, and maybe throw in a couple more independent principalities, duchies, counties, earldoms and the likes of that.

I included, throughout the map, locations of the capitals of some of the old empires, but not the capitals of the current kingdoms. This was intentional, so that I could make better decisions when making the more detailed maps of each kingdom later.

The Oln Sea is because I decided there wasn't enough water, and so there are also going to be islands within it eventually maybe. I haven't fleshed out the east very much either, but I have a few ideas for the central part.

[Tikobe]

Attached to here should be a map of a kingdom I made in high school called Aelwyd. For the most part, it fell into the same pitfall that I pointed out with yours about the fish scales (Actually, you were better about it), but granted this was made in my junior year of high school, and there was some order as to why certain noble families drew their borders where they are now.

For the most part, what's breathing life into Aelwyd here is the river system, providing the kingdom with good soil and a large supply of fish. As a matter of fact, three of the family keeps (One of which is the Royal Family, making their keep the capital of the kingdom) are built alongside the river, often on both sides as well.

However, it's not all about taking advantage of this. Aelwyd was recently in a territory war with the neighboring kingdom of Gelyn, giving birth to three houses: Captaen, Garda and Tosaigh, which are all families that have devoted themselves into securing the border. In addition, since relationships were shaky with Mynydd, a kingdom that lies in the mountain range alongside Aelwyd's southern border, a long time ago, Aelwyd had established the house of Draiocht alongside the Aelwyd-Mynydd border, giving Draiocht the same task that the other three border security houses have been given.

While I could've done better to draw up the borders, I made sure to think about how locations for defense and for production would affect a kingdom and how they would go about their business. Now of course, this is only building for a kingdom (Which is radically different from drawing up a map for a world), and I made it on Google so it's not good, but I hope it helps.

A Map of Aelwyd.pdf (35.32 KB)

[Duck14]

I’ve suggested it on other threads here (So sorry if you’re hearing it again) but Inkarnate is a pretty solid mapmaking site.

Used it quite a bit for D&D purposes.

[Bannanachair]

Feb 9, 2018 7:51:14 GMT -4 Duck14 said:

I’ve suggested it on other threads here (So sorry if you’re hearing it again) but Inkarnate is a pretty solid mapmaking site.

Used it quite a bit for D&D purposes.

I'm terrible with inkarnate.

[Duck14]

Feb 9, 2018 7:55:06 GMT -4 Bannanachair said:

Feb 9, 2018 7:51:14 GMT -4 Duck14 said:

I’ve suggested it on other threads here (So sorry if you’re hearing it again) but Inkarnate is a pretty solid mapmaking site.

Used it quite a bit for D&D purposes.

I'm terrible with inkarnate.

Fair enough, it is quite tricky. I only manage it because I use it on my iPad rather than my laptop.

[Bannanachair]

Feb 9, 2018 7:55:56 GMT -4 Duck14 said:

Feb 9, 2018 7:55:06 GMT -4 Bannanachair said:

I'm terrible with inkarnate.

Fair enough, it is quite tricky. I only manage it because I use it on my iPad rather than my laptop.

Can I see what you've made?

[Duck14]

Don’t know if I’ve done photos properly, haven’t done one before. Anyway this is one I did really early on, and actually the last time i proper DMed, so a little over a year ago. It’s a single country so doesn’t give a full world or continent view. I also may have gone a little illogical in sections, including the southern volcano, but that was all in good fun. It was the first time any of us, in my D&D group, had used Inkarnate so it may have plenty more feature than I uncovered then.

[Duck14]

This is another done by a friend and my more recent DM. It’s much more of a world map and probably uses the sites features to a better extent than I did.

[Bannanachair]

I found a cool website that I might use for worldbuilding.

[Duck14]

Friend noticed I had opened the campaign containing the first map. Now wants me to continue that campaign since we kind of had to delay some time back. Look what you’ve made me do Tim.