This is a (sketch of a) political map of the two continents with which my story is primarily concerned. You may note that according to the compass rose in the lower left-hand corner, this map has south at the top; this is a legacy of drawing the map and getting its shape and orientation fixed in my head, then realizing what the directions had to be to make it fit with the rest of the world.

Ah, those pesky directions. Been there, done that.

Neat map. When you say political map, do you mean that you're mapping political factions, counties/countries, or just different groups/places? And are the continents connected by that thin strip of land, or is this a conglomeration of two continents in one image?

Overall, great job on the map. I really like it.

"Political" as opposed to "physical." This map is just countries; a version I did on paper (unfortunately on a size of paper that's difficult to scan) had trade routes too. But my point was to make clear that this just shows political boundaries, not anything about terrain (except what's land vs. ocean).


Yes, that's a land bridge.

(Which reminds me that when I created this some years back I forgot to add something to give the scale, and I forgot again when I was editing it to convert it to a format the Gallery can handle. My current concept is that each of the two continents is on the order of 3,000-4,000 miles in each dimension---which would make the land-bridge not really thin at all. But I'm not certain about that scale.)

If Shine is your world's name, then you might want to know that it's also the name of an old science fiction called The Green Book's name as well.

So, all the kingdoms of the eastern continent--are they in some sort of agreement to hold all the artful borders? (the bow and arrow aiming at the target isles, and the roughly symmetrical countries around them?

Why is tiny unexplored zone unexplored?

Who are the Barbarians, and what is the Mechanized Zone?

*runs off to scan the Realms Beyond to see if these questions are, in fact, already answered*

This world doesn't yet have a name as such; these are "the Shine Continent" and "the Wild Continent", and surrounding lands, but I don't have a name for the world as a whole, other than "the world of the Shine Cycle" (that being the name I've chosen for the series as a whole).

Their borders were drawn as such when they were established; messing with them would risk losing the metaphysical benefits that accompanied them in the charters that established them. (For example, the Sunshine Kingdom always has sunshine and clear skies, but its agriculture, forests, and other ecosystems still thrive on just groundwater, dew, and fog, while the same conditions wouldn't hold somewhere else.) And because of the danger that the Dragon Empire has always presented, they have always been at peace (even if somewhat at odds at times), even before most of them joined together to form the Shine and Wild Empire.


Good question. But it's tiny only by comparison---as I said in an earlier comment,



The area labeled "barbarians" is inhabited by several nomadic tribes; the Mechanized Zone is an area settled by colonists from the "more civilized" countries nearby, protected by a pair of thick, but movable (by means of machinery---hence the name) walls.


Nope; I haven't asked for a subforum yet.

Oh I see, cool.