Cartograffy

Well, that's a first pass on the Western Coast. Much can be said about all of this, in fact it will be.

I think, optimally, wishes being granted by a magic ring style ambitions? I'd like to finish this up in watercolors so that it's 5'x12' and then get some nice photos of the pieces, get them color-corrected and edited lightly digitally. Then join them up together into a big scaleable image file and then put that on the internet and make it interactive so that you click on a spot on the map and it gives you the option to read something about that place by choosing an author and a time.

I guess I should explain that when I write the history of my imaginary country I make up primary and secondary sources and that I kind of really do write it as a history - rather than as a novel. There's a lot of forged documents that count as authentic testaments of previous times. It's a whole thing. Can I tell you why I'd want to do this? I cannot.

Anyhow- the top of the coast is where you'll find Pinepath - the first of the Kannylte to join the Empire after the conquest of the Weft Valley. Pinepath is prinicpaly the home of the Zun people who joined up nice and easy because their existing civilization was governed by a handful of Mad Alchemists who were easy enough for the Empire to roll over, particularly with the groundswell of support by the common folk, who were pretty much done with being ruled by Mad Alchemists. Naturally there's an undercurrent there of Sane Alchemy now, which will is based on my modified hermeticism that uses 6 elements each with 2 'genders' or 'poles' that will end up being a mashup of the Tao and the Kybalion. Probably. They're called Pinepath in reference to the Mad Alchemists being crucified along the roads - but also, because of the roads themselves being made of wooden-boards and rope bridges, largely.

Next down is Copperring which has a similar backstory - here, you see the concentric rings of river and hill and mountain and river (sorta - it's something that doesn't really come out in a map, but the experience of the people living there is all about this concentric orientation). There's copper in the hills and in the river - so that's partly the source of the name. Also, this area was the head of a proto-imperial system, where the Url-King who'd fashioned the Copper-Ring, a kind of lightning-rod/static-sulfur-ball contraption lived. He used his technical knowledge, including the understanding of metal-smithing to draw people into his authority and governed his own region for 300 years(!) but also became a patron and defender of the people further south. Those people had been terrorized by the Eno (a tribe of religious zealot/assassin/nihilist/satanists) who lived on and worshiped the big mountain in the middle of the plain. The smaller kingdoms that the Eno preyed upon turned first to the Url-King for help and defense. He in turn disseminated his technical ability and knowledge throughout the region (but in a methodical, experimental way, so that some of the kingdoms were given some knowledge and denied other knowledge). This was effective at stemming the tide of the Eno's predations, but was not sufficient to turn them back entirely. The Url-King in turn pledges himself and all of his clients to the Empire so long as the Empire agrees to conquer the Eno. Being somewhat benign, the Empire drives the Eno of off the One Mountain and into a permanent diaspora. This ends a period of human history in which knowledge and wisdom might have prevailed against danger and heralds the age of Steel, in which military dominance and force become the final argument. Below Copperring are a couple of Kannylte that lie on what is called the Ruined Coast- in that it is full of ruins, not that it is ruined itself. Here you can still find the weird remnants of the Url-King's client states, a mish-mash of peculiar, individualistic city-states. I'm working on names for these places right now because the ones I had, I just don't like.

Stealing from Sargon the Great who conquered everything to the Persian Gulf and erected a monument saying: "I have washed my weapons in the sea." I have considered Tidescour or Oceanflight - but also things like Seaflight and Wavemask. None of them is really doing it for me so far. I'd probably really like Tidescour if it didn't sound too much like some kind of cleaning solution. The idea is that places are named for part of their conquest - so they should have some reference to people being driven to the sea, and some reference of the Empire rescuing them by marching to the sea. The Sea.

South of that, at the end, you can see the mountainous fingers rising out of the ocean - this is Whitesail which is sort of like Novaya Zemlya - at the southern tips these peninsulas are conjoined and linked on a seasonal basis, but the very, extremely, super-duper old old mountain range (appalachian style but with glaciers and fjords) help create these warm lowlands and super-rich fisheries. These areas are the traditional home of the Hlorii people - who express a lot more sexual dimorphism than you're used to. The dudes are 3 meters tall and sometimes have fangs, and the ladies are like, regular sized lady Fado singers. These people have a lot of weird duality in their cultural attitudes that are based on the land and the sea, the man & the woman, the highland and the lowland and so on. Their deal is a devotion to old-time religion that's dualistic and theological (rather than mystical). They gave up on resisting the Empire after a famous event in which one of their Hetmen's harem was captured and ransomed back to him in exchange for his complicity in helping the Empire.