World Map: The Land of Numendyr

I'm in the process of writing a novel, or at least attempting it anyway, and in an effort to save myself hours of rewriting later, I felt it best to start out doing some world building first.  Of course, that involved designing a map of the world in which my tale will be set.  I'm currently working out the histories of the world, in a broad sense, to lead up to the point in which my novel will begin.

This is a map of the land of Numendyr, and yes, I suppose the design is very "Tolkieny," but I tried to be as original as possible in the names and places of the realms.  The style of the map is the only thing closely resembling the Tolkien high-fantasy mold.  There are no elves, dwarves, or hobbits in these lands, and magic is virtually dead.  Instead I have three human realms, the oldest organized kingdom of Coranthya, the free holds of Erderan, and a young, but growing empire called Anderos.  All three regions have been at war, and at peace, with one another at various times in their history.

I used Photoshop to create the map itself, and designed the brushes used to create the mountains, hills, and forests using sketches scanned in from my sketchbook, which gives it a very hand-drawn feel, I think.  The whole process took me a couple of weeks, working here or there.  I probably spent a total of about 10 hours on it altogether.

Click for high resolution view

The Land of Numendyr by Rob Chandler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at rwchandler.blogspot.com.