Lost Souls & Midian

These are map templates for participation in the Great Midian Mapping Project. These are big files. Even if you have a really great computer for manipulating image files, expect to have long periods where your computer is doing nothing but crunching data & little else. If it crashes on you, it's not (entirely) my fault. These are big files because 1) it is the entire planet (or at least the land), and 2) this allows you to zoom into a very small portion to carve out & call your own. All of the land is represented, but we trimmed most of the Trackless sea because it is big empty nothing where even Trolls rarely venture. To keep things easy, all of the files are going to be in one of two sizes--world or continent--with the same number of pixels for everything of that size.

World-Plain.png is the world map with light grey landmasses & white lakes & seas. Mountains & rivers are represented, but no guidelines are present (hex or latitude/longitude). Geopolitical markers & boundaries are absent. The parchment-like texture of land & bluish woodcut effect of water on the main Midian map are lacking from this image file. It is meant to be clean & easy to manipulate. Most of the maps that are part of the Great Midian Mapping Project will be created from this file or the layered version (below). The parchment effect looks much prettier, but plain grey is much, much easier to match up when you combine different maps by different creators.

World-Grid.png is the battle-map version. It has an unlabelled parchment-and-blue colour scheme. The main feature of this image is the large hex grid. Each of the smaller hexes is 13,373-point-some-odd square miles in area. That seems an odd number, but it means that the small hexes are about 200 kilometers across. Not only is that an easier figure for us to use when we were constructing the world map, but it also is about the distance that a large army (even with siege & loot trains) can cross in open terrain in one week. This would be a minimum expected move for even the largest force in the most difficult (but passable) terrain. In other words, at a minimum any military force or other mass-movement will cross into a new hex every week. A typical small group of travellers can walk across a hex in half that time if they are not heavily encumbered & the roads are good. This then makes the larger hexes 1000 kilometers across. The big hexes are for easy guestimations of distance & comparative areas on the largest scale. This map will be used for providing quick locations, coordinate-style. I am fully aware that a round globe mapped onto a flat surface will have some distortion, either in the the hexes or the base image itself. On a local scale, this is good enough, and most of the distortion on the original projection was on the edges (part of the Trackless Sea) that were trimmed for these files.

Counting alphabetically across the top, then down, starting with a half-hex, gives a two-letter code. The very last half-column across uses an exclamation point (!), and is pronounced 'bang'. Within a large hex start counting from top to bottom & left to right, numerically from one to thirty, starting with the top row & including any portion of a small hex. For further granularity--if needed--divide the small hexes with lines from the center of each side across to the opposite side. These sections are alphabetically labelled across, left to right, top row first. If you need an even smaller division, you probably shouldn't be using a global scale map. Colons separate each section. Coordinates.png has been provided as an example. The red 'X' is AB:22:A. Omit any unneeded granularity. That is, you could describe the red 'X' as being in AB:22 or even just AB. Yes, this system does mean that AA:29 and BB:1 are the same small hex--even if different halves of it--and either coordinate can be used to describe that same hex. If something falls into more than one area, and most things will, use your best judgement.

World-Clear.png is an empty, completely transparent image file. It is the same size as the other global scale files in height & width, but is much smaller in size (only 5506 bytes or about as much as this text...). To facilitate exchanging files, add & change this file as though it were a plastic overlay for an overhead projector. Add this file as a layer to another global map, & make changes here alone. When saving, make sure that no other layers are visible, and that you save with the transparency intact. This way someone else can use your mostly-clear version of this file as an overlay for their map. To combine different versions of this file, make sure that only the two versions you are wanting to combine are showing before saving. To make life easier on each other, change the file name slightly for your own versions before exchanging them.

World-Layer.xcf is the huge layered file version on the global scale. It combines the above maps as separate layers. All of the various layers described below for Norditerre-Layer.xcf can be found on this map as well.

Norditerre-Label.png is a geopolitical map of Norditerre. Land & water features, major settlements, & political markers are noted. It has blue water & parchment-like land.

Norditerre-None.png is the plain version of the above. Nothing is labeled.

Norditerre-Clear.png is the continental scale completely transparent & blank image file. It is identical to World-Clear.png--and intended for the same uses--but sized for the smaller scale. The small size of this file makes transferring small changes with it easier. Everything that applies to the clear world map applies here as well.

Norditerre-Layer.xcf is the big layered file version on the continental scale. It has land & water on separate layers, with rivers as a third. One layer consists of national labels, and another for geographical features. Other layers include cities, with their names & markers on separate layers. A final layer is a big empty transparent layer, because you never know.