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ScotlandTom — The World of Eldaron
Published: 2012-01-21 04:24:40 +0000 UTC; Views: 5942; Favourites: 67; Downloads: 0
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Description
The World of Eldaron - To be used as the basis for many of my future Pathfinder campaigns.While not my first try at fantasy cartography, this is my first map in this style. Many folks would use custom Photoshop brushes to create all the little details on the landscape. In the future I will do so as well because drawing all of the detail work by hand was a literal pain.
The features of the map were developed taking into account plate tectonics, ocean currents, wind currents and humidity (all based on Earth averages and all probably not completely accurate by any means). And no, this map probably won't wrap very well to a sphere.
Thanks to everyone at the Cartographer's Guild for all their advice and critique.
Media: Photoshop CS4
Time: Approx. 36 hours
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Comments: 32
Yep, absolutely everything in this map was imagined and designed by me
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Yay! I'm working on my own world as well! I think the paper it's on is to big to be photographed or scanned, though
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This one is nice! Vivid colours without being to "kitschig" (german word 
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Lovely work! The level of detail makes me a bit jealous of your talent.
Could you perhaps tell me what font you used for this?
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Thanks for the compliment! And the font is Blackadder ITC
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I realized this after I did a thorough Google search. I was surprised to see it already available on my computer. But thank you! Once again, I love the map. It has been a huge inspirational source for my own project.
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Nice work. I have seen the cartagraphers guild and would not be suprised to see you there.
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You've been 
Beautiful map! I love the bluish/purple ocean background. It's a wonderful contrast to the colour of the landmasses. Compliments it so well, and really makes them pop! Love your choice of font also. It fits (and flows) so well with all the wonderful details. Excellent job! 
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Thanks for the feature and the excellent comments! There are a lot of truly exceptional fantasy cartographers represented in that feature and it's fantastic to be displayed among them. Thank you.
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Beautiful maps, and great to hear that you attempted realistic conditions as well! 
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Thank you! I find that using a somewhat realistic approach (even if it's not 100% accurate) helps maintain consistency throughout the map I'm creating. I also find that working from the bottom up in this manner inherently answers a lot of questions about everything from weather and habitats to potential trade routes and tactical positions.
And yes, bad rivers are bad. I work hard to ensure my watersheds are plausible.
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Designing an accurate model for any world would be quite impossible...
Historical climate anomalies can add interesting details as well, like in real life the Medieval Warm Period and the following Little Ice Age did. Similar events occur in my fantasy world and have greatly influenced the Northern states.
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Thank you much! Glad you enjoy it!
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Just amazing. Really hope to get to this level of detail on my own maps. o.o
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Thank you! It did take a good amount of effort. If you're going for this style I would definitely recommend creating or finding a good set of brushes to use for all the detail work. Doing it all by hand is a bit of a chore, though the end result can turn out well.
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Indeed it is. Normally my forests end up just being swirls because they look dumb otherwise. My mountains are either A's or (As my colleagues would say) look like "Titties". I do hope to get to that level of detail, either with Mythe or my new map (Which is so far nameless :C) and I have to say looking at a lot of the different maps, including yours at the top of the list, I am learning new ways to draw maps.
Thank you!
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Jundali... Tundali? Damn script, er... is that a great crater sea?
I tried to make a map with 200 million years of geological history. I wanted to know exactly where the plates are and were, and how the continents moved. I wanted to plot the oceanic currents of each stage to estimate the climate, so I could decide on the ecologies of each stage- where the forests and deserts and glaciers were, for example, and where the most productive seas were. I wanted to be able to plot the evolution of the world's life through these periods, and finally, know where all the coal and oil and minerals would end up in the most recent epoch where I could set my stories.
So far my efforts have defeated me. This task is greater than I imagined.
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Tundali. The script is a little hard to read with some letters, but I'd hoped the "The" in "The World of Eldaron" would make it easy enough to sort out.
I can imagine that creating 200 million years of actual geological history for a planet would be a daunting task. That's why I only created the appearance of a geological history by using the most basic concepts of geology and climatology. It gave me a reasonably believable geology and climate in about an hour's worth of work.
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And I just noticed that the oceans all start with "The". I am blind.
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Fortunately, your kind of blindness is curable.
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A simple double-opthalmectomy.
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Just whip 'em out, toot-suite. Replace them with snow globes, works just as well.
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Damn, I forgot to look at the title. I was searching the other continents' and oceans' names, even though I knew that it wouldn't help all the while their names were equally novel. And lacked capital Ts (or whatever).
So... is that a crater or what?
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It's either a crater or a mark leftover from some sort of world altering cataclysm. I haven't decided yet. Either way some huge, planet changing event happened there. There's also a giant pit a few hundred miles wide in the middle of the Auctorian continent.
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Still figuring that out. Probably some ultimate evil. Perhaps some lesser evils as well. The point of making this map was for me to have the basics of a world which I could then fill out and tell stories within while running my players through their campaigns. I figured a gargantuan pit would be a pretty spectacular and intriguing place to explore and fight in.
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Or a money hole. Throw your money down the money hole to deal with rampant inflation. All the monsters carry gold, after all. An adventurer who doesn't die will bring down entire economies single-handedly.
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