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Published: 2016-06-01 06:31:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 8470; Favourites: 66; Downloads: 78
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C&C are more than welcome, and remember, you can follow my patreon for high-res maps, textless maps, more details on the world and other exclusive content , thanksA key/legend to the map can be found here
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Second of the territories annexed by the Korachani empire following the Archpotentate Malichar’s rise to power, Laaskha was then and remains now a militant culture famed for its unique tradition of employing spirithosts in battle. In their most basic form, spirithosts are artificially-maintained bodies imbued with the spirits of great past generals, allowing them to impart their wisdom to those in the present. So important were the spirithosts in their culture that a great hall, still standing, was constructed to house both the vessels and the spirits. There, in the Temple of the Spirithosts, they are venerated as great cultural heroes and champions of the Laaskhan people.
But Laaskha is more than the followers of these millennia-old champions. It is a land of borders - to the west, beyond the Gulf of Skaros, are foreign lands without the Korachani empire. It is a land of many people - lascar, Korachani, Vaalkan, Almagesti - all mingle in its cities. It is a land whose people, disparate as they may be, are united by belief (faith in the Church of the Machine is absolute and its ancestral god, the seven-armed martial deity Seithenyn, was successfully converted into a major saint of the Church of the Machine long ago) and a hard-working nature.
That hard-working nature was put to the test when, early in the fourth millennium RM, it became apparent that the oceans of Elyden were slowly drying up. Inch-by-inch, the coastline was expanding, leaving coastal settlements surrounded by mudflats that allowed sea access only during high-tide. Over centuries even the tides could not rescue such cities from becoming land-locked. Some cities were relocated at great cost, others had new ports built closer to the new coastlines. Still others toiled to deepen their harbours, but the fate of such cities was inevitable. The Laaskhans relocated and rebuilt many times over the past centuries, and the ruins of abandoned cities pepper the land, in some places over a hundred miles from the present coastline. Such cities might be forgotten by other nations, but the Laaskhans look at them as reminders of their past and the dedication that marks them as Laaskhans.EDIT - I updated the main image, changing the hue/saturation to make the colours pop a bit more, and changing the mask around the nation to make it paler, as well as updating some geographical details to match withthe more recent maps in the collection
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Comments: 14
Tonio103 [2016-06-02 07:42:14 +0000 UTC]
Well sir, you sure have a talent in map making, châpeau bas ^^
I have a question though, what represents those ying yang symbols ?
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vorropohaiah In reply to Tonio103 [2016-06-02 09:08:47 +0000 UTC]
as this is part of a larger work I don't have a map key/legend with every map as that will feature at the start of the collection, so some symbols might be confusing.
the yin yang represents a region of 'magical' importance. in this world 'magic' exists in the form of a dichotomous system of physical laws (in a nutshell many world myths begin with chaos and order or light and dark. the same is true in Elyden - there is the Firmament above and the Atramenta below, both of which exert their influence upon the world, like gravity or radiation). Regions where either the Atramenta or Firmament are more powerful than the status quo are represented by that symbol. They might be corrupted lands (in the case of the Atamenta, where the land is mutated or people can grow sick; or in the case of the Firmament, the land might be fossilised prematurely, or magnetic, or living things that spend too long there might slowly turn to stone (osteopetrosis - dont google if you're squeamish)
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Tonio103 In reply to vorropohaiah [2016-06-03 09:37:51 +0000 UTC]
wow very interesting ! i'm must look forward to that ^^
I like very well the idea of a dichotomous system of physical law. You can do very interesting stuff with that.
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vorropohaiah In reply to Tonio103 [2016-06-04 07:54:34 +0000 UTC]
thanks, yeah its basically what makes the world a fantasy. otherwise it would be more like an alternate history (though with a different world. the Firmament/Atramaenta allow for lots of interesting things like 'magic' (or magical fuel, as its more commonly used now - so there aren't spellcasters and wizards per se, but technarcanists and arcane machinists), mutants, etc.
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Tonio103 In reply to vorropohaiah [2016-06-04 12:53:27 +0000 UTC]
Yeah or what i like to call a "culture fiction" since alternate history applied more for a history based upon a "point of divergence" in our own earth ^^
Sounds like a kind of steam punk ^^ how could we call that ? 'Magic punk' ? Sorry i like to discuss on terminology
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vorropohaiah In reply to Tonio103 [2016-06-04 14:28:16 +0000 UTC]
I have heard that before. I think Magitec describes it well enough. Though i think the term magitek or magic punk don't fit the setting exactly as they tend to conjure a more 'fun' aspect that isn't really present in my world which would be more 'dying earth' or 'lovecraftian', though that flavour isn't immediately conveyed by the maps alone (reading the map entries in the encyclopaedia might reveal more info though, like a lot of abandoned quarries and mines and forests that have been exploited and remain now as infertile dusty plains.
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Tonio103 In reply to vorropohaiah [2016-06-05 17:19:59 +0000 UTC]
oh ok, i should go read your encyclopedia ^^
Well magic punk or dungeon punk shall fit quite well, if you have in mind that it come from 'cyber punk' which is a quite dark science fiction, no ?
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vorropohaiah In reply to Tonio103 [2016-06-05 18:12:33 +0000 UTC]
well the punk genres are all quite different. Cyber punk is obviously sci-fi, where the other punk settings are a bit more ambiguous, though generally theyre all based on a real-world time period - in my case its a cross between victorian london and the roman empire, though that's just the region im mapping in the atlas maps so far. as you get farther away the technology level becomes increasingly archaic, with a reinassance level being the average (i like to compare a new york, a clan of bedouin nomads and an amazon tribe - they all live in 2016 but are all very different to one another. thoughthe bedouin might live pretty much they same way they did centuries ago they have guns and access to modern tech, to a certain degree. Elyden should be like that too)
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Tonio103 In reply to vorropohaiah [2016-06-06 09:56:42 +0000 UTC]
Well, i mean, i believe punk genres –even if diverse– are too be quite dark as settings, even if some –like solar punk or clock punk– are often fuzzy and more fun and optimistic. I believed that they were more about the principal type of tech they used, like pre-industrial mechanics, steam, atomic energy, diesel (explosion engine), cybernetics, bio-technology or even magi tech, and the "punk" is to say a quite dark setting.
Well maybe i'm wrong, and in the end to put thing in boxes is not necessarily useful. Your setting seems awesome, i like the idea of a not globalized use of technology, with huge disparity depending on regions.
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vorropohaiah In reply to Tonio103 [2016-06-06 11:37:01 +0000 UTC]
I'm a fan of stone punk (like disney's atlantis) and diesel punk, as well as steam punk though it's become a bit too popular and cogs/gears have become too prominent (it's steam punk not cog punk)!
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Tonio103 In reply to vorropohaiah [2016-06-08 08:12:56 +0000 UTC]
Well yeah, often more and more, steam punk is just transformed into a cliché, with people claiming to do steampunk art just by adding a gear on a gantlet or stuff like that. I believe that renewing the steampunk style with a refreshing Juggenstill steam punk or something could be good though ^^
I like all those styles but i won't classify myself as a fan since i don't consume a lot of such art.
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vorropohaiah In reply to Tonio103 [2016-06-09 09:07:32 +0000 UTC]
yeah, very true about the sticking cogs on everything and calling it steampunk. pity as it dilutes the good stuff
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Woodgnome01 [2016-06-01 17:22:57 +0000 UTC]
Nice map. Like the inset showing changes to the coastline.
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vorropohaiah In reply to Woodgnome01 [2016-06-01 17:58:56 +0000 UTC]
thanks. I like to fill out the dead space with 'useful' stuff
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