Fantasy maps of Ryallon

Introduction

A while back, I did a post on how I make my maps.  http://ryallon.blogspot.com/2011/05/mapmaking-for-fantasy-worlds.html  As I write, I add to my maps.  So I'm doing this post to show you the updated versions for my books.  I've also named what was formerly "The Northern Continent".  It is now Nulanea.  There are more continents on Ryallon, the closest being Antilea and Pomelea, but this is the only one I have mapped.

All of the smaller maps here are in Nulanea.  I've also changed the font from Carolingua to Fairydust to match the fonts on my covers.

Nulanea
The Continent of Nulanea.  This is the northernmost continent on Ryallon.  This map is found in the Willden, Wyvern and soon to come Crazed Trilogies.

Eddland
The Kingdom of Eddland.  This is the setting of the Wyvern Trilogy.  In the first book, Pelya travels on back roads from Dralin to Settatt where the Blue Wyverns are located.  Book 2 will begin there and continue to Zimth, the capital of Swelth (Not my best names, I know, but . . .)  It will go elsewhere after that, as will book 3.

Eddland is a country of trade and merchants.  It also has vast orchards, farmland and wineries.  It has become wealthy over the last few centuries.

Soaarth
The country of Soaarth.  This one of the settings for the Crazed Trilogy.  You may notice 2 capitals.  It is the only country in Nulanea with such a thing.  Aest is where the senate resides.  They make the policies and laws of the kingdom..  Thea is one of the most active seaports in the world and where the executive branch of the country rests.  The entire coast is filled with trade, but the northern coast is rife with piracy.  The Partade Marshes are toxic to people and are the home a hostile race called Marbu.

The chief crop is parthmellya, a fast growing plant from which paper is made out of, most of which is exported through Aest, which keeps a tight control on it.  Soaarth is also known for wineries and a vast variety of herbs grown found in its forests and hills.

Greffen Province and Cothbern
The Greffen Province of Paruuth and the city of Cothbern.  This is the setting of Rain Glade.  Paruuth is a kingdom that has been impoverished by war between its provinces.  The peasants are poor, most never seeing a copper in their lives.  The Greffen province is tucked into the enchanted Grendia Forest in the southwest corner of the kingdom.  It is surrounded by impassible mountains on two sides.

Cothbern is a completely unremarkable village where Rain, the main character of Rain Glade, lives.

This area may or may not be in the Crazed Trilogy.  We'll have to see.

Willden Forest and Kethril
The Willden Forest where the Willden Trilogy takes place, and Kethril, where book 3 of the trilogy happens.  It is one of the largest forests in the world and filled with magical beasts and Druids.  The Caaldith Mountain range borders the east side of it.

The "Valley" at the bottom is where Tathan and Liselle were raised.  It is nearly unreachable through treacherous mountain passes to Swelth and Klizania, and through an ancient road through the Willden.

Kethril is where the 3rd book of the trilogy takes place and is also the namesake for that book.

Those are all the updates for now.  I hope you've enjoyed them.  I'll do another update in a year or so as I add more. :)

All my best,

John H. Carroll

All images copyright John H. Carroll

Mapmaking for fantasy worlds

Most books in the fantasy genre have maps at the front.  Lord of the Rings is the obvious example.  Many people have seen a map of Middle Earth at some point or another.  If there isn't a map in a fantasy book, it can actually upset the reader greatly.

The thing about fantasy books is that they are generally set in a world of the writer's imagination.  Most of the time those worlds are epic playgrounds spread throughout kingdom, mountain ranges, forests, continents and exotic cities.  The writer can see these places in his/her imagination, but the reader can get a little lost with "They went to the forest, then climbed a mountain west of there, then went to the caves to the north, and then along the windy river to the city in the south."

So it really helps the reader if a map is provided.  That way the reader can visualize what's going on as they read.  In well developed worlds, there are usually a number of maps.  Some of them will center in on countries or even detailed city maps.

How the writer goes about making the maps can vary.  I write fantasy novels, but I'm terrible at drawing.  I'd love to eventually pay someone for professional looking maps, but right now my children need food.  I've tried telling them to stop eating, but my wife says that's a very bad thing.  *sigh*  So I have to draw the maps myself.

Here is the "world map" that I've drawn.  It's not actually the entire world, rather just the northern continent.  However, there's enough space here to fit numerous series of books.

Now the first thing you might notice is that the writing is amazing!  Yeah, that's not my handwriting.  After I was done drawing everything by hand, I scanned it into the computer and used the free image editing software called GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ to erase my terrible handwriting and add in the words with a much nicer font.

It was difficult trying to figure out the different symbols.  My first couple of versions didn't look anything like this.  You couldn't tell where a country started and where a river ended.  I looked at numerous other maps to see how they had done it and then improvised with a hodge-podge of different styles.  The important thing is that it's fairly easy to tell what's what.

You may notice that there are very few cities named.  I honestly don't know what cities are where in most cases.  I haven't made them up.  The first part I made up was the Kingdom of Paruth.  It was a setting for the original book I was going to write with a character named Calren.   After writing the first chapter of that story, I had him meet Pelya, a female soldier of the Blue Wyverns mercenaries.  Then I wrote her biography and had her start out in the city of Dralin.  I placed the Blue Wyverns in the Kingdom of Deller.  That's when I drew the map of those kingdoms.  It looked quite a bit different at the time.  I actually wrote about 4 chapters of Pelya's story only to realize that it was more like 4 books worth, so I stopped writing for a few years and did other things.

When I came back to writing, I couldn't find what I had already written, which infuriated me to no end.  I've since found it, but I think that perhaps it was a good thing that allowed me to start with a fresh slate.  I decided to start with an image I had in my head.  It was of a man standing in a mountain valley headed home.  That book, I finished.  It's called Rojuun.  I've since turned it into a trilogy called the Willden Trilogy.

The problem was that I hadn't conceived of that part of the map, so I had to draw it.  Then I came up with the kingdoms of Mayncal and Brindlyn as well as the Iynath Empire.  Well, I hadn't conceived of those either.  So they were placed to the east of the original maps.  The Iynath Empire is mostly desert.  I was raised in the Mojave Desert and found myself amazed at how everything west of the Sierra Nevadas was lush and green while everything to the east was dry and largely barren.  That's probably where I got the inspiration for that sort of climate set up.

The Willden Trilogy wasn't named right away.  I honestly didn't know what to name it by the time I was done with the second book.  For lack of anything better, I decided to name it for the Willden Forest.  All three of the books spend at least some of the story in that forest, so it made sense.  I used GIMP to chop out that part of the map and placed it in the books so that the reader could see better where the companions were traveling.

My next trilogy will be the story of Pelya and will be set in the city of Dralin.  Since the Willden Trilogy sounded really good, I decided that I would go with a running theme and title all of my trilogies based on their location.  So the next trilogy will be the Dralin Trilogy.  I haven't made a map of that city yet.  I plan on writing the first book and making up the locations as I go.  When I publish the book, I hope to have a map of the city in it then. :)