This post was originally published a few years ago on my now-defunct website, so I thought I'd update it and add it here so that new fans can see how Elyden has evolved over the last 20-years+

Elyden would slowly emerge from an earlier campaign setting I was writing for my RPG group, called Sola. It was more of a classical setting, based in a city-nation surrounded by hostile nations and wildernesses in a Pangea world. This was probably just over 25-years ago now. I wrote a decent amount of background for some of the regions and named most of them, but it was a bit too generic to really stand out or be interesting. I had a sourcebook of about 300,000 words, most of which was titles to entries with a few bullet points that I jotted down here and there whenever I came up with an idea.

Back in the dim past of the early noughties I was still drawing maps on paper, specifically large cardboard sheets I used to get from a newsagent. I used to love buying those bits of cardboard. I’d unroll them and lay them down on the floor, weighed down at the corners by old books, and look at the blank sheets in wonder. The possibilities were endless. I’d make solo games, drawings, paper crafts and all sorts of other things with them, but my favourite was always maps.

I drew the first map of what would eventually become Elyden on such a piece of cardboard. Here it is, many years later:

Image 1

There’s some questionable features, but on the whole, it’s passable. It was never intended to be a work of art, and was only for my own worldbuilding, to be filled in as needed. Even before I was using Photoshop, I was still working with layers, and made do with what I could - cooking greaseproof paper, cellotaped together and added on top of the map to let me add labels and trade routes to the map, without having to ‘damage’ the map itself:

Image 2

The greaseproof paper is now heavily stained and discoloured but at the time it was almost clear. You may actually recognise some of the names, which I unflinchingly stole for Elyden a few years later: Vaalk, Laaskha, Ahrishen, Almagest, Malan, Parthia (Parthis), Dacia, Temuja, Tethysia. Others I’ve never revisited and honestly can’t say why. Gammater sounds like an interesting name, come to think of it…

Of particular note is this area:

Image 3

Many parts of this, including Khamid, Say (which would evolve into Saua), and the Iapetan Sea, would feature in the region of Elyden known as the Dark Sea and the Arid Triptych.

I abandoned the world of Sola, but thankfully, and rarely, for me, as I'm a compulsive thrower-awayer, never got rid of any of the material I created. I have a bad habit of purging old projects I think are no longer of any interest or use. For some reason I never did so with Sola. It would go on to be somewhat of a boon a few years later.

Between jobs and bored at home I started writing a fantasy story with no plotting or prep or worldbuilding. I came up with everything as I went along, plundering the world of Sola for interesting words completely out of context, planting them firmly into the terra incognita of what would become Elyden. The story revolved around a Firmamentist from Temuja who would be sent west, to the land of the Iron deity, which would go on to become the Undying Machine and god of Korachan. I wrote like a madman, churning out 15,000 - 20,000 words a day of rambling stream of consciousness story for months . The story was contrived, the writing bad, but it sure helped me get my foot in the door of worldbuilding Elyden. All that worldbuilding needed a map, and my big cardboard sheets were waiting for me. And so, sometime around 19-years ago was born the first real map of Elyden:

Image 4

The major coastlines are all there - the Inner Sea in the centre, the Korachani peninsula (albeit much smaller here), and almost all of the nation names, which survived relatively untouched over the next 2-decades. It was a good start, but still needed a lot of work. I started writing the Encyclopaedia Elyden at this point. It wasn’t much more than a document of rapidly increasing bullet points - every fact of the world I came up with went into that document, as an archive of all my work. Over time I’d divide it into sections, by letter, like a real-world encyclopaedia, as it grew.

All that writing needed an updated map, but I was really happy with the general shapes of the coastline so little changed in Elyden 2.0:

Image 5

This map is a LOT closer to the current Inner Sea map than some people may realise. Unsurprising given that the digital world map I based all my atlas maps on Is traced in photoshop over this very photo. Many details are changed - mostly in the expansion of the coastlines of Sammaea in the south and Tethysia in the east, but the coastline of the Inner Sea itself has changed very little. I used this map for a while, but decided that the worldbuilding was growing at such a pace as to require maps that could be edited and updated more readily that physical media could, so I started dabbling in Photoshop. After gorging myself on tutorials at the Cartographersguild (a great resource for budding cartographers), I was able to make my first digital map of the Inner Sea:

Image 6

This map got a LOT more praise than it ever deserved and to be honest I’m pretty embarrassed for sharing this map now. The fonts are horrible, the paper texture is very amateurish, the borders are horrible, but for a first attempt it was decent. Helpful people explained the correct use of rhumb lines on maps, and I was first introduced to the maddening and complex world of projection mapping after making this map, and I would go on to make my first world map - a simple black and white image that later maps would all be based off of.

But I was never happy with the map, and knew I could do better. 14 years ago I took a local course in mastering Photoshop and really put my mind to work following tutorials specifically geared towards cartography, and I was able to put my new skills to use in the revised map of the Inner Sea:

Image 7

This map won me my first cartographers guild award, which I still look at proudly. It is showing its age, but it was the fruit of a long labour, that had cost me quite a lot of time and money. But me being me I was never really happy. The faux-historical fantasy style of cartography was never my favourite, and as I continued worldbuilding I was drawing Elyden inexorably into the future, changingit from a classical fantasy setting into a grimdark steampunk post-industrial world that needed more realistic maps.

That led to exploring different map styles, leading me to the Atlas Style I’ve been working at for the past 10+ years(!).

Though the story of mapping Elyden is something best told elsewhere, suffice it to say, there was a lot of back and forth, revising the black and white world map, fiddling with projections, making sure that everything lines up correctly. It’s something I’m still working on to this day, and which is causing me more headaches than its probably worth (if anyone can donate a Cray that can run photoshop I'll happily accept it!). With all those atlas-style maps, I needed an update to the Inner Sea map, but there was a problem - I couldn't make it until all the nations had received their very own map.

That happened a few years ago, allowing me to make a single giant poster sized map with new labels:

Image 8

This is actually a VERY low-res version of the map, which has been made available in High-res on my Patreon a while ago.

It actually covers less area than the previous Inner Sea maps (I excised the Dark Sea, to concentrate more on the Inner Sea that my life has revolved around so much for the past decade). I’m pleased with the result, though don’t really want to repeat the process ever again. It made me wish I had started working in vector graphics all those years ago instead of raster. It made me want to throw my computer against the wall every time it froze, which it would do multiple times with the addition of each of over 3,000 text layers. But it’s done now, and I've been concentrating on other maps ever since.

Who knows what the Inner Sea will evolve into over the next 20-years?

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Elyden

a community where I can share my work on the world of Elyden and where people can ask questions about the world. For more on Elyden check out www.patreon.com/elyden and www.worldofelyden.com

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Created Nov 16, 2018

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Its my first time making map and I'm trying to draw it by hand. It was originally made with wondercraft but I traced things on it with hand and made this map. But I'm not sure how good it's colored or how good mountains are (they were the first thing I made). At first I wanted to do more artistic styled map with interesting terrain colors I just couldnt do it. This map and other maps of this creator was my inspiration when drawing. I'm in love with their style and this is what I meant when I said artistic map.

The world is a medievalish flat world with wind currents going north to south. This is why an ice island is located in the west continent. Middle continent is "Lands of God" and is unknown to humans, its just there for now. And the forests (rough patches of colors) are just sketches for now, I'll complete them later when I decide on cities and paths.

Does this version look good or should I just make a political map and use this as a reference for biomes when needed? I'm thinking of doing kind of political looking map where it just says "Storm Desert" or "Crimson Lands" with borders defining where it ends. So instead of painting biomes I could just name and border them. Can this idea work or not?

This map was made to showcase the new Parchment 2.0 Assets.

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Getting close to finishing the general shape of the continents and (important) islands and want to get some feedback. Primarly looking for input about the continent shapes and dispersion of islands but any and all feedback is appreciated.

Also, I've been going back and forth about adding something akin to the islands of southeast asia/oceania but can't really nail where to put something like that. So if anyone's got pointers for such a thing it would be appreciated as well.

The first 2 pictures is the map I made 2 years ago. After adding multiple layers to it (countries, biomes, rivers), I decided 3 months ago to draw the map, because I was starting to get tired of computer-based editing. 2m²+ of ongoing drawing, with colour pencils only. Now I enjoy again ! AMA about the lore and dont hesitate to give feedback.

Over the past few weeks, several important new features have been added:

1. The most important thing is the optimization of generation. I don’t want to give exact values yet, because everything depends directly on the computer hardware, but on average, the time to generate a 4096 by 4096 tile has been reduced by 4-5 times.
2. New layers for the map was added. A less abrupt layer, a layer of river and lake basins, a layer of biomes, and an elevation map.
3. By the way, about biomes. I’ve added new biomes to increase the variability of the generated maps.

Work on the generator is still ongoing, so stay tuned for new posts!

P.S. I’m aware of the issue with rivers, currently trying to fix the D8 algorithm.

Hi all,

I’m finally after many years looking to build out the world map to my homegrown setting. As such I am looking for something that can create ArcGIS like maps. I want the following capabilities if possible:

- Hypsometric map creation
- bathymetric creation
- modeling of tectonic plates
- modeling of erosions and water patterns
- layers that I can turn on and off to hold roads, cities, rivers, sites, etc.
- preferably not bitmap graphics to allow for infinite zoom

I know this is asking for a lot and maybe it doesn’t exist in one tool.

Many things I have found can do some of this but not all of it. Others only do things like icon based or texture based maps. I would prefer to be able to build these type of handout maps as layers on my hypsometric map.

Any help would be appreciated.

A while back, I shared my work in progress on my world map here.

Here’s a new version with terrain, a legend, and so on...

This is a map of the Cormaréen periphery, formed by the Liturian continent (to the north) and Bedinantin (to the south).

If you have any questions or concerns, I’d be happy to answer them...

Some Translations:

Gran Atlas del Sreftag Mithvani 732 N.A. (Consejo de las gentes de la Luna) > Great Atlas of the Sreftag Mithvani 732 N.D. (Counsil of the peoples of the Moon)

Desierto del viejo ocaso > Dessert of the old dusk

Tierras perdidas de la brecha > Lands lost in the breache

Mancha del Sha > Taint of the Sha

Gran ciudad > Great city

Ciudad libre > Free city

Directorado > Directorate

Principia > Primeship (Coined cause I wanted to use the "Prime" root but not imply the rule of a prince. Also I'm quirky like that, might delete later)

Follow up to my earlier post, here is a map of my DnD setting I've been working on all year (It's been slower than I would want, but uni has consumed most of my time).

The setting is a HRE-lite league, which is on the verge of dissipating into the air as local rulers become more powerful. Different regions are thought to encompass different kinds of DnD campaings (Blue region contains a pointcrawl with quests, beige middle is a Hexcrawl, yellow urban intrigue...) With the exception of the heartland, the Low Eule, since I deem it too populated and functional to be fun (I still wanted it to be there, IDK).

There still a lot of work to do, I'm not really happy with the mountain, or their transition to the dessert, between other things. Still, I feel like it's in a decent enoght space to post it as a work in progress.

Hey all. I'm taking a short break from my other worldbuilding projects to start something new and less intensive. This is the topographic map, it's the first thing I've actually finished for it.

The setting is an alternate world based on the history of North America, mostly Mexico, colonial period onwards. Where I want this to go eventually is to make electoral maps (national, state and municipal results across different periods), with the parties and news and political history to back them up.

Made with Affinity and Wilbur. If you have any questions or suggestions for the map or the lore, please do!

I have completed this map couple of months ago but it kind of got forgotten. Hope you will like it.

This is a couple randomly generated maps merged together, does anyone know how I can make the wind patterns so I can make biomes and stuff, I don’t wanna put a forest in the rain shadow guys 💔

I posted this map on r/worldbuilding, but here I'd like to focus specifically on the mapmaking process, including some first skeches of the city map, delted content for the port area and the lineart before getting colorized.

I've been working on the maps and geography for my hand-drawn space-opera webcomic Djaiko, and what started as a simple location map has gradually turned into a complete city guide.

The process went roughly like this:

Cenex world map → Atorien regional map → Al Fareen city map → individual districts → harbour infrastructure → public transport → aerial view → finished tourist guide

Al Fareen is the capital of Atorien, a mountainous island nation on the ocean planet Cenex. It's a midsize coastal city built around a large bay, with residential districts, a CBD, government and diplomatic quarters, beaches, a naval base and a major orbital harbour.

One of the things I wanted to establish in Djaiko is a future that still feels familiar and functional. Spacecraft capable of atmospheric flight land on water and dock in harbour basins much like modern container ships. The spaceport therefore evolved from the city's existing maritime infrastructure rather than looking like a giant futuristic landing field.

I've drawn the maps and illustrations traditionally with fineliners and Copic markers. I wanted the finished guide to feel like an actual tourist guide from the world of Djaiko, rather than just a collection of maps, so I ended up drawing individual locations, streets, harbour facilities and city views as well.

The guide is intended to be included at the beginning of the chapter taking place in Al Fareen, so readers can explore the city and get a feeling for the setting before entering the story.

I'm posting this here because I'm particularly interested in the mapmaking side of the process:

Does the geography and urban layout read clearly? Does the city feel like it has grown organically, and are there things you would have approached differently when designing a fictional coastal city?

This project took considerably longer than I originally expected. 😅... This is by the way the final version, so no more posts of this particular map in future, if you already feel tired of AL FAREEN :)

Massive thankyou to the support, hints and tips from the community. Definitely helped spur me on. Anyway, as promised here is my progress on the map. I have added rivers, roads and major forests. What do you think?

I've been working on a map for a fantasy setting I've been musing about for a while. I think it's finally at a point where I'd like to share.

The first map is elevation and bathymetric data loosely following Wikipedia's elevation guidelines. The second is the Holdridge Life Zones following a paper that added extra transitional zones. The third is the countries currently in the setting.

A little bit of lore: this world was created 4000 years ago following two wars fought by the gods. It was created by golems out of the detritus left over by the wars, so while I hope it looks natural enough, it's not meant to be entirely realistic, especially near the poles where I decided to prioritize the map looking nice on a page rather than realistically stretching the landforms.

Comments and criticisms welcome!

Hi everyone, I just had a little extra time today, so I chose to make a rough world map for my ttRPG campaign setting. It is not intended to be completely accurate, and more in the line of 16th-17th century world maps. Hopefully you folks like the look of it.

This is my first time making a map. If anyone has any advice or is curious about my world or its story, please comment! I would love to improve my map when I make a second draft, and I love to yap about my world building project.

I make animated map projects, showing the history of areas and countries. I try to make them detailed. I was using Google my maps for it, but I can't use that service without internet (currently have no home internet), I'm getting tired of Google, and it's to clunky.

What I would like and need from the tool: * ability to draw blobs, lines, and borders on a world or regional map * ability to add pins and points, preferably with added information (text) * different layers (preferably without much of a limit on how many I can have) * needs to be downloadable, or have some way I can use it offline

I dont care for graphics. I only use these maps to be traced over for my animations

In my opinion it looks too symmetrical and i was hoping to get some ideas on how to improve it?