Hello, and welcome back to another Random Fantasy Map post! It's been a long time since I have last made a post on this blog, and particularly with regards to this series - as you have guessed by now, 2024 has flown by quickly already. 'Nuff said, this post is going to take you through the process of making the fantasy map of the Land of Ternia, which is made in the style of Ptolemy.
What is the Land of Ternia?
The land of Ternia is located in the south-east of the continent of Marsillius. To the north of Ternia is the Mare Florentia ("the Florentian sea"), which contains the main sea port of Florentium that contributes to the vast majority of the territory's trade with other lands further north along the Florentian Sea. Down in the south is the Mare Sanctuarium ("the Peaceful Sea"), where there are 15 islands in the immediate vicinity of the mainland that also form part of the land of Ternia.
The territory is primarily inhabited by the Romans, who took control of most of the territory in a war in 153 AD after advancing from neighbouring lands to the west. In the plains of Ambiani to the east of Ternia, an indigenous tribe called the Ambianians exist, where thanks to the isolation of the Ternian Mountains, they have managed to avoid the worst of the battles of 153 AD, and have since been able to maintain a relatively peaceful existence with the few outsiders that they get coming into the plains.
In the land parcels to the south of the Ambiani plains, the Nolans, a separate tribe, lived in the settlements of Colonia Nola and Colonia Marta. In comparison to the Ambianians to the north, the Nolans' own lifestyle is more heavily influenced by the way of life in the neighbouring land of Parnelia to the east (a land that is heavily inspired by Mesopotamia), whilst maintaining some of the same traditions seen elsewhere in the territory.
The residents of both tribal lands were subject to different taxation rules for goods imports from other parts of Ternia due to the relative isolation from the rest of the province (and therefore lower incomes), with 0% tax being imposed on goods coming into, being traded within, and going from, the tribal territories.
Moving on to describe Ternia's economy, the more successful chunks of the Ternian population were employed in government offices, mostly working as personal assistants and clerks to the senior leadership in both the land administration as well as for municipal governments. For ordinary people on the other hand, the Ternian mountain range influences the territory's economy, due to the general difficulties associated with navigating the mountain passes to get between the two halves of Ternia, as well as the variety in climate.
In the south of the territory, where the climate is warmer and drier during the summer months, the economy primarily revolved around agriculture and the cultivation of olives, as well as the production of wine, alongside income generated from hydraulic mining works that are located deep in the valleys of the Ternian mountain ranges. The southern port of Portis Voconis also received imports of exotic spices, pearls and ancient furniture from towns along the coast of Parnelia, located to the south-east of Ternia along the Mare Sanctuarium, as well as other items that have been produced in lands further west.
In the north, where the weather is slightly cooler, more humid and wet, the economy was primarily focused on grain production, as well as around the town of Florentium, where the port regularly received imports of food, pottery, glassware, and fashion from lands further north.
The Mare Sanctuarium island settlements generally tend to thrive on a more traditional fishing lifestyle, with the local settlers making money from regular catches of tuna fish, mackerel as well as sea bass. The settlers also benefitted from regular goods imports to their islands, due to the low taxes (5% to be exact) that were imposed on goods coming in to the Land of Ternia - allowing for a wide range of interior design styles to be invented and created in their homes.
The arts scene was also a major driver in the economy, particularly during the summer months, when the Romans would perform theatrical shows, such as gladiator-style shows, as well as tibia performances in the amphitheatres. After the battle of 153 AD, and by 172 AD, libraries also started appearing in major cities across Ternia, featuring literary works that concern poetry, historic novels, as well as manuscripts on the pre-Roman history of the Land.
Overall, Ternia had a fairly strong economy for its times, with a GDP that was worth the equivalent of $109 billion in 2023 dollars.
Process of making the map
The project started out in your typical run-of-the mill fashion of me drawing the outline of the landmass as well as mountain ranges in the sketchbook. Then, the process of making the map got a little bit interesting, as I had to learn some Latin phrases for seas and objects which got a bit messy at times.
Eventually, after some more colouring in of the mountains and seas, we get the result in the image below. Notice that the phrase "Sanctuarium" in "Mare Sanctuarium" is written as "SANCTVARIVM" - that's intentional, because back in the days of Ptolemy map making and Roman times in general, cartographers would write out their U's as V's. As you will see, this writing style will also be replicated in the digital drawing of the map.
Once the landmass sculpting was completed, I then managed to get around to drawing the rivers and marking out the points where different places on the island would be situated at:
And after spending several hours marking out the 150 different place names that are dotted around the map, this is the end result of the hand-drawn map:
With the hand-drawn map complete, it was now time to start the digital map work! To make the map sellable at larger sizes, I decided to set the document size to A3, as illustrated here:
As in the previous project, I started off with setting up the canvas, firstly by drawing a yellow box to mimic the yellow latitude and longitude frames seen on real Ptolemy maps. Then, I added the picture containing the hand-drawn version of the map to act as an overlay throughout the course of the project, generating this result here:
With the overlay now set, it was time to get to the actual work, firstly starting off by setting the colour of the ocean to blue:
With the ocean colours now in tone, it was time to draw the outline of the map's landmasses and islands, using the overlay as a guide, with a white background and no outline. This generated the following end result from this stage:
The next step was to create the name plates for Ternia's oceans, again using the overlay as a guide, generating this end result on the map:
Once we have managed to get the map basics out of the way, it was time to begin the most fun part of the project... drawing the mountains!
...followed by drawing the base terrain on the inside of the mountain range to the east, to generate this result on the outline:
And with that, I got to the most difficult part of the project - to decide how I was going to style the mountains! To start off with, I tried using a bevel matte effect to illustrate the mountains in the way Ptolemy did it, however, I began thinking to myself - "This is not going to work very well with the rivers", as doing it that way, I had to apply some shadow effects to the area inside the mountains to the east - total mess. So I did a little bit more research around the designs, and I came across this parchment style that was used on one of Ptolemy's original maps that had a simple black outline around the outside:
Mountain parchment effect seen in Ptolemy's map of Palestine, 1482
However, getting in that style to my project was also easier said than done - firstly having to generate the parchment using the plasma effect in GIMP and a plain yellowy-brown background, then having to apply the parchment background to the mountain outline. Eventually I managed to produce this end result:
Phew... now that the hardest part of the project is now over - the overlay came back on, and the next stage of the project was to draw the rivers and lakes that are dotted around the landmass. For this part of the project, I used a stroke size of 0.265mm to draw the rivers, producing this end result:
And with the rivers now drawn, it was then time to start adding the place holders, which will be used to add the place names later onto the map. To do this, I created a 10x10 icon as shown here:
...and then add the icons onto the map. Along the way, I discovered one interesting trick to save some time - previously I would place the icons randomly and then drag the icons to their desired location, but here, I just hovered over the point on the overlay and then pressed that magical "Ctrl-V" to get the icons exactly where I wanted them, as illustrated here:
And this is what the map looks like after placing all of the icons:
The final step of this project was to add the place names for the settlements that are listed on the map. It wasn't possible for me to find fonts that would replicate the Ptolemy style exactly, so I used the Old English font as it was the closest font to the Ptolemy originals that I could find.
I had to play around with different font sizes and rearranging certain place locators so that I could fit all of the settlement names in, but after some playing around, this is what the final map of Ternia looks like:
Conclusions from Ternia
I have to say that the Land of Ternia is an absolutely fascinating project, and it also works as a proof of concept in that it is possible to recreate fantasy Ptolemy maps and harmonise it to modern standards. In terms of the actual design work, I have to say that making this map was not quite as hard as it originally seemed to be, with the hardest parts being the naming of the different settlements and seas at the start of the project (guess my knowledge of Latin needs much improving before I can start writing fantasy stories on Roman places), as well as choosing the right background texture and design for the mountains.
But the biggest icing on the cake with this project is the amount of business potential that maps like these can generate - in terms of scaling the map to different sizes and making "regional" remakes, Ptolemy maps are an ideal style of map to be able to make clones of, and I would say that there are many different variations of this map that could be achieved in a wide range of different sizes. For instance, it may be possible to create a smaller version of this map by removing the place names and just leaving the rivers and mountain contours intact.
On the other hand, another possibility that I have found for creating further maps within the scope of this project may be to explore the islands around the Mare Sanctuarium, as the islands have many interesting shape patterns that can be collated together to produce standalone map variants. Furthermore, the larger islands in Mare Sanctuarium may also be replicated on smaller scale maps (both with and without text), with the addition of less significant places on the islands that could not be featured on the main map of Ternia due to lack of space in relation to the grand scale of that map.
That being said, I hope you have enjoyed this post on how I made the map of the Land of Ternia, and I shall see you on the next random fantasy map post, which is a follow-on from this project in that it is a recreation of a black-and-white Ptolemy map. That should be even more fun!
Signing off now,
Jakub
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