Rose of Westeros

My dearest Gretta, you have told every suitor who has come to your father's door the same words: "I will marry the man who gives me something of countless value." They have tried, haven't they? Gold necklaces from Araby. Silks from Cathay. A suitor from Marienburg even offered you a deed to a villa in Sartosa—though what use a Tilean pirate haven would be to a respectable Nuln manufacturer's daughter, I cannot imagine.

I have to admit that the design of the map header and footer defined too much questions to answer: inside or outside the map area? too baroque or simpler? how to contain creator information? Finally, I think I've found a design that meets most of the requirements in a satisfactory way: it is integrated with the frame design, the info is divided into header and footer to allow different information to be properly shown, it is located out of the map area to break the squared look of the map while not taking part of the informational area. So, the header contains just the map name, whereas the footer contains the creator data, also showing the Rose of Westeros Logo. Both the header and footer allows adding a date, if it were necessary, something like "The Neverwinter Coast (circa 1380)" in the header, or "Osmund Steigmeyer, 1380" in the footer. Regarding the works progress, as can be seen in some pictures above the political part is is pr...

After one month of intermitent work, the physical part of the DnD Neverwinter map is finished in two language versions: english and spanish. The sources of geographical items have been: DnD5 Starter set, in english and spanish DnD5 Dragon of Icespire Peak DnD4e Neverwinter Campaign Settings aDnD Waterdeep and the North aDnD The Savage Frontier Though it would be nice to have more geographical items, the above documentation doesn't define more suitable of being included. Even some items, present in other unofficial maps as Berun's Hill, have been discarded by the reasons exposed in this post . Next milestone will be finishing the political part.

Based on the official data sources, Berun's Hill location is not clearly set. On one side, Waterdeep and the North (Ed Greeewood) names it for the first time in this way: The Long Road runs south from Mirabar through the desolate Crags, to the village of Longsaddle, past Berun's Hill, and thence to Triboar So it seems that it is located between Longsaddle and Triboar, what means that it should be in the  Starmetal Hills. By the description, it can be assumed that it is clearly visible from the Long Road. On the other side, The Savage Frontier (Paul Jaquays) drops more light about its location: This local landmark is a bare-topped, conical hill that commands a splendid view of the valley of the river Dessarin to the east. This lookout has often been used in times of trouble to watch for advancing orc or barbarian tribes coming down from the north and east. By that information we can assume that it offers a privileged sight to the North and East of the Valley of River Dessarin...

Though quite happy with the initial results (see previous blog entry ), the result was not realistic when compared with ancient maps. So I decided to try with a double nib fill plus a new shading layer just below the previous layer. The results, shown in the photo above, are (IMHO) quite better than the first attempt. With this step the physical part is almost completed, just lacking the peak and volcano symbols (though maybe they fit better in another work package... to be considered).

Giving the coast border a pen nib ink finish was the last pending step for finishing the physical part of this map. Result is not bad, though maybe a more dense nibbing would get a deeper visual impact. The result, however, is quite balanced with the rest of the map, so for now it's staying. I find it quite realistic: pattern is manually made and the application tries to emulate a hand made job by avoiding symmetries. A detail of the final result can be seen in the attached image.