Calithar and it's Surroundings
This has been quite the 200 hour adventure. First of all, you can find a full-rez png file here: Google Drive Link, and a blowup of the heraldry section here: Google Drive Link.
What is this? Well a bit of a Frankenstein really... My previous map is now 6 years old and it was time for a change, specifically towards a more historically grounded basis. My reference materials were the 17th Century maps of the Bleau Workshop in Amsterdam, considered by many to be the zenith of the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography. To the extant possible, I emulated their results with a few deviations: 1) I'm using a Mollweide (invented 1805) projection, not a Mercator or a LCC which is what they would have used, 2) The heraldry in table form is something that was not done in the 17th century, although I'm sure they would have with priors.
Tools:
Wonderdraft: coastlines, mountains, hills, rivers, trees, parchment texture, borders. All vanilla assets
Inkscape (free): Lettering. Fonts: IM FELL English and French, Cormorant Garamond. These three are very period accurate.
GProjector (free): Map projection (I started with a rectilinear and then studied several options before choosing Mollweide, as it was by far the best projection for us in my 20-60 deg latitude band.
GIMP (free): All figures and drawings not done in Wonderdraft, stack and layer control, coloring. My colors are as follows: 1) Azure blue (4a6b8a), 2) Verdigris green (5b8a72), 3) Cochineal red (a83232), 4) Yellow ochre gold (b8860b), 5) Walnut black (2d1f12), 6) Plum purple (5c3a4e), 7) Malachite green (2e6f40), 8) Smalt blue (a2bdd1), 9) Umber brown (634236)
The large heraldic beasts are tracings from line art found from online sources. The man-at-arms and the compass rose are historical tracings. The draconic priestess is original concept art previously commissioned for my setting (in traced form). The cartouche design is a period reconstruction. The blazons themselves are all original.
Truth in AI: I used Claude throughout to consult on historicity and to provide feedback, and also on the Latin translation. I also used Claude and Gemini to generate some place names based on historical language grounding. No visual assets are AI generated.