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It just occurred to me, due to someone's comment on the most recent chapter, that I've never shared the actual geography of Combat Healer, aside from in-story descriptions.

Hopefully this 'map' version, that I made, aligns with what you were overall visualizing from the story.

Originally, I only had a hand-drawn map in my notebook, but I decided to make a more official version for all of you.

Let me know what you think!

Files

Comments

Andrew Haskell

Which online map editor? Looks amazing.

Christopher Miller

I agree with Jared about the middle being pretty well described in the narrative. But didn't understand that mountains, other than the Atacama Valley completely isolated the two kingdoms from the rest of the continent. That makes Atacama incredibly important financially, logistically and militarily. Why isn't it reinforced with troop garrisons and have cities, from both humans and elves nearby to take advantage of this singular, unique resource? Is there nothing of significance beyond the mountains to the west?

KaizerWolf

If you google 'Fantasy Map Generator' it should be the first result, but it's: Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/ Probably the biggest part of the learning curve is just all the options it has available. The 'options' are on the top left (you can toggle them), and you can toggle on/off what you want to see on the first section (Layers). I would turn off 'Routes,' 'Ice,' and 'Rulers,' since I feel like that's all pointless information. The mountains are the 'Relief' setting, but you need to keep it off most of the time (until you're ready to actually download an image of the map. The reason why? Because for some reason, the 'Relief' setting makes the map get buggy, and if you try to repaint the states, or redo other sections, the map will glitch and not want to do it. The next biggest thing is the 'Tools' section. This is where you can manually change the height-map, biomes (aka, forest, grasslands, desert, etc.), as well as 're-paint' the states. (If there are too many states, you can delete some too.) I've found that if you repaint a state, it usually won't update the border automatically. Instead, I have to go to change the height-map, but instead of changing the height-map, I'll immediately exit the customization mode, and upon doing so, the state borders will redraw based on the colored areas. When changing the height-map, you can either use the 'keep' function, which make it so you can't change the coast line, or add/remove lakes, or the 'risk' function,' which will let you change the coast line and add/remove lakes. The site doesn't save your info long term, so make sure you download a copy of the map (as a .map) file, every once in a while. And you can upload it again later to keep editing it. Once you have something that is close to the final product, you can modify the 'Layers' to make the map look how you want, and then save it as a JPEG or PNG image (may want to set the upscale feature to at least 2, so it will double the output size).

KaizerWolf

I do believe I've at least hinted at the reasons, but: 1) There is a fairly harsh desert through that gap in the mountains, which serves as a natural barrier. People can obviously cross it, and they do for trade, but sending an army across would be quite the task. 2) Basically every year, the area gets extremely bad storms that are so harsh and frequent enough that not very many people live there, even though it's otherwise a very nice place year-round, in terms of temperature. It's like tornado valley in the US, except that if you live in the Atacama valley, the chance of your home and crops being destroyed by a tornado are very high. Enough so that most choose not to live there long-term. 3) Due to it's importance, the Atacama valley is sort of a neutral zone, even though it's mostly within the elven kingdom. There was a treaty signed at one point that forbid mass military occupation of the area, by ALL THREE countries who trade (including the main one across the desert). 4) There is an outpost at the beginning of the desert in a fairly 'safe' region that doesn't see the horrible storms, yet has the closeness of the Atacama valley for things like water. Essentially, due to irrigation, and some natural rain that gets past the mountains at this point, it's a bit of an oasis at the beginning of the desert, but it's more or less a trader's village. There are guards/knights, as well as hired protection, but it's a fairly peaceful area that kind of sits 'outside' of the legal jurisdiction of all kingdoms. There are actually 2-3 kingdoms across the desert (haven't decided if it's 2 or 3), but the other 2 are very small. We're talking like the Lamia (or maybe Naga) having their own kingdom, kind of small, as opposed to being ruled by another people. I also haven't decided what the main race of the 'kingdom across the desert' is yet. The humans mainly live across the sea, but I don't know who lives across the desert. The Oni and Minotaur used the occupy the lands surrounded by mountains (the current Delanor and Ryfle kingdoms), but they were essentially conquered and integrated by the elves from the north (driven downward by the Scourge and Dungeons) and the humans from the east. But who lives in the west? Maybe it could be cat-people, or something. Other demihuman races, perhaps. I'm open to ideas. I've mentioned Lamia when Allister was talking about Jackel (and how Kizmel said that Jackel once slept with a Lamia, snakegirl, but it wasn't something Jackel had ever brought up to Allister, even though he usually bragged about his sexual conquests), but, aside from the Lamia, I haven't mentioned or otherwise introduced any other races yet.