Map Project: Area 24: Placing Key Locations (Help please!)

[Hotrod]

Greetings, Splicers fans!

Latest work in progress here.

I have just been commissioned to make a map of Area of Influence 24, the region described in the "I Am Legion" book. My goal is to create a map that's a useful gaming resource and an image that's nice to look at, with a thematically-appropriate presentation. Ideally, I'd like this to be something that a GM or player could use in a game as both an in-character and out-of character resource. I'd like this to be something suitable for display as a poster print on a wall or table top or a screen display on a high-def TV or tablet.

I welcome and covet your suggestions, comments, critiques, and criticisms. I am a total newcomer to Splicers, and since I'm starting off completely unfamiliar with the world, I could sure use any help the Splicer fan community can give me as I take this first step in joining your ranks. I'll be posting updates to this map as I go.

If you want to support this project and see some of the other stuff I make, you can check out my Patreon page linked in my signature below.

[Hotrod]

My current concept for this map is to present it as a Technojacker tool, with a frame made to look like a physical object, like a tablet. I've done something analogous before,with a modern iPad or Kindle Fire look. Perhaps this could be hacked N.E.X.U.S. map information; if so, I might try to include some of The Machine's iconography or some suggestion that what the viewer is seeing is stolen/hijacked.

While it would be an interesting challenge to present this as some kind of spliced biotech-based map, I think that would require a radically different approach than the style I generally use.

In terms of display size, Area of Influence 24 is described as being somewhat circular, having a radius of 1,000 miles. This will probably mean having a roughly square-shaped map area. Unusually for Palladium, there is no world or regional source map to work with, so I'll have to work from text descriptions.This is somewhat liberating, but it makes me worry a bit about inconsistencies with the text. I'll need to research the book pretty carefully.

[Shark_Force]

if it is going to be an in-universe map, you can justify some uncertainty in the map. the Machine probably doesn't know exactly where all of the resistance and legion facilities are (although it may have at least some idea... provided they haven't been moved). a technojacker won't know where everything is either, so they wouldn't be able to add it all in.

I'm not sure we've seen a lot of what the machine's perspective looks like; I would guess that it depends a lot on which personality is the filter. Hecate may care vaguely about where the resistance is highly active, but she's going to be more focused on production sites and shipping routes and schedules. she probably won't particularly care at all where Ishtar is holding her wargames, except maybe from a perspective of needing to recover the damaged robots, for example.

as an added layer of uncertainty, with Legion and the Machine battling in cyberspace the location of even various facilities may be concealed or inaccurate, and of course the entire thing is presumably being translated from how the machine perceives things in the first place.

all of that together means an individual GM has something to work with where they can insert a location where they need it or even move an official location from where the map says it is.

[Hotrod]

Nice, that would both explain any mistakes on my part and give GMs the liberty to keep, toss, or change whatever they like.

Now I just need to sort out the pixel dimensions of the map and the border/frame.

[Hotrod]

Looks like I'll make this to print on 11x17 inch cardstock. Making an image at 300 dots per inch (photo quality) means 3300x5100 pixels, which is big, almost at the limit of what I can do, but since a large chunk of this overall image will consist of the frame, the map portion of the image where I'll be doing most of the work will be about half that area, about 3300 x 2550 pixels. The rest of the area will be a thick borderfor things like buttons, menu headers, that kind of thing, and a side-panel where I could put in a legend or some thematic text.

This way, the mapped area should be manageable and, by configuring it at this size, it will also be printable at 300 dots per inch on standard 8.5x11 cardstock.

Next

[Hotrod]

I’ve been digging into “I am Legion” over the last few months off and on and taking notes where I can about features, regions, and organizations in Area 24. As a side note, I’d never really gotten into Splicers before, but I’m fast becoming a fan. This IP has some fascinating concepts.

In terms of mapping it out, “I Am Legion” is a bit of a mess, with incomplete information in the geography description and important details sprinkled throughout the rest. While the book's narrative approach makes for compelling reading, there’s a distinct lack of information about where things are, and there’s a lot that gets alluded to, but not described. This isn’t a criticism of the book per se; it’s an enjoyable read. It just makes it harder to create a canon-compliant map.

I also suspect that this may impede Splicers games, too; without a common frame of reference, it probably becomes harder for GMs and players to play out the travel elements of adventures and campaigns. This makes me all the more motivated to make this map.

The more I’ve read, the more I think I want to present this map as a technojacker tablet-like creation, possibly something out of Steel Mountain. I’ve got the overall layout and pixel dimensions established, and I’ll be refining the frame and icon style as I go. For now, though, the unframed map itself is my priority, and I’m getting ready to start drawing it in earnest.

Here’s what I have on Area 24’s physical geography:

What I know for sure:
+Area 24 is a vaguely circular region that’s about 2000 miles wide, give or take. I infer this from the description of the Nepali Mountains, which run the length of Area 24’s eastern border.
To the south and west is the Great Ocean.
+To the north lies Area 25, which is dominated by The Machine, and the Applecore Mountains mark the boundary between these areas. I have no information on the terrain up there, but I think that tundra/ice would be appropriate, since Area 24 is northern and temperate by virtue of its proximity to the Great Ocean.
+To the east is Area 23, a human-dominated area, with the Nepali Mountains separating the two regions. Area 23 is also bordered by swamps (p236), so I’ll put swamps on the far side of the mountains. The Nepali mountains are taller than the Himalayas and include a 3,000 ft cliff on the west side, a jump that will look a little weird, but this seems appropriate given that The Machine artificially raised this mountain range higher in response to losing control of Area 23.
+In the exact middle is a heavily fortified and desolate region 200 miles wide, where The Machine’s core for Area 24 dominates the region. I will likely make this region almost unnaturally circular to emphasize it as an artificial creation of The Machine.
+Just about everything else in this region lies in a thick, roughly doughnut-shaped region between the central desolation and the encircling mountains/ocean.
+Area 24 is a temperate northern climate with lots of forests and grasslands.

All the rest of what I have is fragmentary:
+New Eden is a large region a little over 100 miles across (11,000 square miles) with trees that grow up to 1800 ft tall. This is a lush garden spot with forests that I’ll somehow need to accentuate to make them look taller. Given that it’s expanding unchecked, this region is likely roughly circular.
-Unfortunately, I don’t know where in the doughnut New Eden is.
+There’s a region called “Kali’s Domain” which is the predominant Machine presence in Area 24 (more than the Core’s zone?!). Its description indicates a large area. It includes a House of Pain, an industrial center that is not to be confused with The Playhouse, another Kali industrial center which is apparently a larger/more public torture place meant to bait Splicers into attacking it. Kali apparently likes to decorate this region, so I might try to give it some kind of creepy, hellish textures/colors with reds, oranges, and dark greys mixed in.
-There’s no information on how big Kali’s Domain is, how it’s shaped, or where it is in Area 24.
+East of the Nepali Mountains is a region dominated by House Barren Marsh, which was formerly Area 23.
-There’s no information in “I Am Legion” on the geography on the east side of the Nepali Mountains. My cartographer’s intuition says it’s probably desert or prairie, but I could make it a literal barren marsh too. Perhaps there’s information on this in the main Splicers book?
+The Valley of Skulls is something I could draw in as a jagged, zig-zagging crack in the surface. I did something similar in my Land of the Damned map, though that was much larger than the Valley of Skulls. I have conflicting information about this valley; p14 says that this valley is 30 miles long and half a mile wide, but it also says that it has an area of 400 square miles, not 15. I’m going to use this discrepancy to excuse making the valley look significantly wider and longer so that it’s actually visible on the bare map. My interpretation will be that 400 square miles is the area of the fissure, whereas the 30 miles by half a mile is the area of the ruins of Great House Altamont’s haven.
-There is no specific information on where the Valley of Skulls is, though the text suggests that it may be near the center of the west coast, since its creation shattered the west coast. I’m guessing that the shock waves from this event propagated north and south along the coast more than east and west, so I’m thinking of orienting the chasm along a rough east-west line.

In terms of political geography and places of note, I have:
+Great Houses and their havens: there are a total of seven, and most have little to no information on their locations. Great House information is inconsistent; Tarkov and Poisoned Earth have full house details, but Artemis does not, which is weird considering it’s the most important Great House in Area 24.
+20 Retro-Villages, six of which are described in detail, and most of those siz have at least some indication as to their locations.
+7 Ghost towns, industrial centers, or ruins described in detail, with some of them giving clues about their locations.
+5 more ruined cities mentioned and named, but not specifically located except to say that they’re somewhere along the west coast (p14)

Having read through "I Am Legion" at least three times now, I think I have about as much as I'm going to get regarding map information. If you see any issues or have any suggestions, please let me know. I'll be starting the physical geography soon.

[Shark_Force]

house artemis was previously described mainly in the rifters. with that said, you can find a fair bit of stuff that might have been briefly referred to in the Slappy's Creations thread (Slappy being Chris Kluge)


viewtopic.php?f=46&t=73564

and yeah, Splicers is pretty awesome. It isn't hard to become a fan

[Hotrod]

Update: I've drawn up the coasts, a rough land texture, and the mountain peaks. Now I need to do some land sculpting, having elevation rise gradually to the mountains and defining river basins. Here's the current version.

One interesting feature for Area 24: the mountains to the east feature cliffs, where NEXUS raised them to isolate Barren Marsh. It's a bit tricky to draw cliffs with my technique. I've got a few ideas, but this will require some experimentation.

[Hotrod]

Update: I've done some more sculpting, put the height map through the erosion program, and done a basic temperate color gradient.

Here's the first draft of the bare geography.

As first drafts go, this went better than usual. I rather like the two big river basins; the larger will be the Sanaca River, which empties into Carver's Bay. I also like the shape of the cliff face on the eastern mountains. That said, there's plenty of work to do before the bare geography is complete:

-A lot of unnaturally flat areas remain, both in the lowlands and mountains. This comes from the erosion program that fills basins as part of the algorithm to produce realistic rivers. I'll leave some choice ones in a few areas and turn them into lakes later, but I need to reduce the number of these flat areas.
-I'll likely move the mouth of the big river to a larger bay.
-While I like the look of the cliffs on the eastern mountains, there are some areas where they jut out farther away from the mountains than I'd like. This should be a fairly simple fix: I just need to redraw them a bit.
-I need to define areas of grasslands, which tend to be smoother and more rounded. I'll pick out some regions and have some fun with the smear tool on the land sculpt.
-The simple color gradient in this version isn't appropriate for all areas. Grasslands should have more of a gold and orange prairie look. The central core of Area 24 is surrounded by a desolate wasteland, and green isn't appropriate for that zone. The area north of Area 24 has a colder climate, so I'll likely use more of a tundra color gradient. Similarly, the Barren Marsh on the eastern edge of the map should look distinct from Area 24 in terms of climate.
-Right now, the oceans are a simple, flat color, and I want to create some bathymetry (underwater topography) to indicate sea depth.

Plenty more to do, but I'm making progress!

[Hotrod]

Mini Update: I spent a couple of hours making revisions to the land sculpt and ran it through the erosion software again. It's better, but not quite what I want yet. One or two more rounds of land sculpting and erosion should get the basic land shape down.

[Hotrod]

Update: The land sculpt is essentially done now after four rounds of tweaks and revisions. Here's the latest draft.

+Rivers are going where I want them now. The Sanaca River (the big one up north) drains into a nice bay.
+I've eliminated most of the wider flat areas from earlier drafts, especially in the mountains
+The cliffs are higher in the eastern mountains, and they stand out a bit more.

Up next, I'll be drawing in woods, climate zones, and plains/grasslands. Before I do that, though, I'm going to review the source material to see if I can glean any more hints of what kind of terrain I should be putting where.

[Hotrod]

I've taken a first pass at placing key locations throughout Area 24, and I could really use some help from interested GMs, players, and other fans. Because many of these key locations have an impact on the nearby geography, climate, et cetera, it's really important for me to nail these down now.

Here is my initial attempt at placing key locations around Area 24. Notes on this version:

+The computer core location and surrounding wasteland is probably the most reliable feature in terms of location (dead center), size (100 mile radius), and climate (dead wasteland).
+New Eden seems to occupy a relatively small area in the map vs its text description. Its official canon size is 11,000 square miles, which comes out to just over 100 miles by 100 miles. The text refers to this as a "substantial portion" of Area of Influence 24, but when you look at what 11,000 square miles is on the map, it's only marginally larger than the area around the computer core. New Eden's location is a pure guess on my part.
+I've exaggerated the width and length of the Valley of Skulls. This is to make it visible. The valley itself is described as 30 miles long and half a mile wide, but if I drew it that way, it would only be 1 pixel wide and about 35 pixels long.
+The Great House haven locations (teal) are guesses. Deluvane is nearby a couple of mountain passes, which made sense since it's supported by Barren Marsh. Coastal settlements and ruins are best guesses; I'm confident with their groupings, but not necessarily with their overall locations. I put most of them fairly near tributaries to the Sanaca River.
+I put most of the named retro-villages along the Sanaca River. I get a sense that this is a significant artery of trade within Area of Influence 24.

Anyway, please look it over and let me know if you see any adjustments that I should make. Thanks!