Consume Product

nate higgers. aimple ss.

yes (?)

on a more serious note, it's all of the above. creative vomit to free up my mind, visual aid(s), world building tool. bum wipe in an emergency u/#topkek

i wonder if there are map making programs for this stuff. or do serious authors just hire cartographers?

but yes, it's for an actual setting that i have established. too much and too long and too convoluted to explain but the tl;dr **for the novel i want to write within the setting** is that Thom goes off to a local monastery at 12, where knights are wintering, and next spring Thom (13) leaves with the knights, becomes a serf, then a squire on the trail after a show of bravery, they winter at the Bellfry Pass fortress, cross over into the Estlendings (14), cue 6 years, Thom returns to the west a man (20) and full-fledged knight of the Order, but with PTSD from all the shit they had to do and endure. The Order is called the "Order of the Dove", it's a sacral (church-bound) order which protects the faithful, evangelizes new places, serves as armed diplomats and missionaries and protection for diplomats and missionaries, builders etc.

let's just say, the Estlendars *really* hate it when the western kingdoms and the Church showed up to bring order and civilization to the plains, and "traitors to the old ways" who have settled and done good with the knight-settlers and church-evangelists are pogromed by torch-riders.

this map is just a snap-shot of a greater whole. it's the north-eastern most part of a continent. the Nortlendars of the Nortland kingdoms are descendants of Galthlendar settlers. That thin strip of the Galthlendings is just the southern-most coast of a far larger continent stretching north. Think of the Nortland kingdoms as "the Outremer kingdoms, but originally established by Norse heathens who then turned Norman English-French-German Christians".

there's the Nortland Church of Holy Martyrs (or Church of Saints) and the Sundaren Temple of the Bright One. let's just say, it's complicated and martyrs have been made.

yeah across 16 years. the shape of the coastline and the general idea for the area you see on the map first came to me during primary school. had that plonked in my mind for years, then years later came additional features like the channel and the other continent, the river lands, the border forest, the mountain ranges sort of enclosing some vast eastern plains, the east and south being savannah and desert.

then later still came the first WIP for names, titles, locations, relations, concepts etc. and then some 6 years ago or so i started writing some actual content, like scenes and stuff. retconned and rewrote and deleted and rinsed and repeated that a bunch. [and now i'm here.](https://jumpshare.com/v/CEz9BjUxqJ04jnak7XAL?b=X276Zpw7SoFPAU6cOX5i)