Aeston's Cartography Corner Part 4 - Brick by Brick

Hello everyone. I have only a few things to share today and one question I would like to pose for discussion. First of all, the online map has been updated again. After Leviathan was over I got back to work on adding nations that I could get complete information on. Here, again, is the link: https://www.realmsnet.net/maps

Banecroft, Eagle's Rook, and Voraniss were relatively easy for me to add since I had made versions of all of them for the O'er the Lands of the Realms series from a couple of years ago. Blackavar was something I had never worked on before but thanks to the Knights of the Sable Dragon I was able to get all the information I needed to add it in. So please take a look through the link above.

Again, I plan on getting to everyone, eventually. If you're a nation leader and I haven't reached out to you yet, please be patient. This is slow work but ultimately everyone will be included.

Also I've added some map symbols since the last time I made a post about them. Most of these were suggestions that I received through the #cartography channel on the Realms discord server. If you haven't joined the server to it, I suggest you do so. Lots of good discussion happens there every day. Invite link: https://discord.gg/ZSAKSQwP

Portals are a normal enough occurrence around here that a symbol for them is appropriate. Natural landmarks cover any kinds of environmental features such as special forests, mountain passes, caves... anything that warrants having a name. And a port symbol will be added adjacent to any population center that has a considerable shipping industry or something of the sort.

One thing you might notice is currently missing from the map are historical ruins; the traditional symbol we've used to represent a group that isn't around anymore and that had space on the map. I haven't gone in and added those yet though it is one of the things on my short-list of tasks to get to. Historical landmarks will end up being on their own layer that can be turned on and off. I'm considering using a new symbol for them, however. Right now there are lots of plot-ruins on the map and I think something to differentiate them from historical ruins is appropriate.

Finally the question I want to ask the community to discuss is elevation.

I set up topographical layers on the map as I was building it. I did this to try to represent the mountain ranges that historically have been on the map and also just trying to be generally geologically accurate for how land gradually rises above sea level with respect to the location of the ocean and the large inlets all over the map. But, I never really committed to an exact numeric scale.

For reference, the colors of the topography from lowest to highest on the map look like this: 

Overall, 14 different hight ranges starting at immediately above sea level on the left to the height of the highest mountains on the right.

For further reference, note that the hight of the mountains in the middle area of the Realms hang out around the middle of the scale, like this view of Chimeron and surrounding areas:

And the more extreme edges of the map have the taller mountains, like the Saurabian and Aspis Nor mountain ranges pictured below.

So it's really kind of up to us to decide what scale we are using and how much of an elevation difference there should be between each color level.

Just hitting on some basic facts, Mount Washington is 6,288′ in elevation so if we want to stick with New England geography as our guiding standard then we could have the scale top out around there. If we want to go more epic in scale, the tallest peaks in the Rocky Mountains are all over 14,000' in elevation.

So I leave that to you as a point of discussion. How tall is the right amount of tall for our mountains? What should the different colors of the scale represent. Please comment on Facebook, in the discord #cartography channel, or even just send me a PM to let me know what you think.

Thank you for your continued engagement with this project. It is a lot of fun to put together and I have enjoyed the conversations I've had with nation leaders as we've designed their areas.

In service,
Jason "Aeston" Rosa