Finally got around to making a relatively clean map of the Envoy's homeworld, Ximenes.

The fantasy world is mapped onto an icosohedral grid. If you were to cut it out and fold it in along the lines of the triangle, you would get a twenty-sided shape exactly like that of a twenty-sided die from D&D. This creates an APPROXIMATE globe shape meant to simulate a true spherical body, but make it much easier to map onto a 2D surface without too much distortion of distances and land masses.

Anyway, Ximenes is divided very roughly into 3 continents--The Northern and Southern continents, on the rights side of the map, and the Western continent on the left. The Northern and Southern Continents have been long inhabited and are home to numerous kingdoms and cultures of various sophistication. They roughly correspond to the 'standard' fantasy tropes of a medieval magic-infused collection of nations similar in flavor to Europe.

The Western Continent once boasted a sprawling, advanced ancient empire that collapsed more than a thousand years ago. Very little is known of its interior, and much of what has been explored has lay abandoned and fallow for centuries. There are only three known native nations there, fairly primitive compared to their counterparts on the other side of the world, and a number of colonies established by the Eastern powers.

A quick rundown of the highlights:

1. The Envoy's home country is called Raelen, and his home city is also its capital, Myrdem. It is the most prosperous and secure kingdom in its region. This is where the chapter/ pic THE CLERIC'S FAREWELL took place, and where the Envoy begins his journey.

2. The Envoy sees the CARAVAN COUPLE ( the second pic/chapter) while on an overland passage through the Darlani Empire. The empire, though a major military power, has become very decadent and corrupt, and has been in a slow and steady decline for decades now.

3. To the west of Darlani are the Elven Enclaves. There are dozens of enclaves in the region, and their borders seem to shift every time a human talks to an elf, so its mostly just shown as a big consolidated region. This is where the envoy encounters Duana and Vevine ( HOT SPRING ELVES.)

4, 5,6. In the Royal Commonwealth of Athosia, a budding feudal republic, the Envoy encounters the FAERIE ADVERTISING TROUPE in the trading city of Shyrdarem. This leads him the legendary bordello the Debauchery nearby (AT THE DEBAUCHERY and THE DARK ELF'S CHASM)

7. On the way across the sea, he has a brief but very pleasant affair with his ship's WATER MAGE on a mid-ocean island

8. In one of the colonies, which is very vibrant and surprisingly prosperous with all the trade they do, he meets and talks with a young Centauress on her way to meet her Dwarf beau. (TATTOO FOR THE TAURESS.)

9. At the very edge of Raelen's claimed colonial territory, a team of scholars are excavating an ancient, mysterious library. The Envoy has a passionate month-long affair with one of the young female scholars there, an orc raised by humans (ORCESS SCHOLAR).


I know I have done other pics and have planned out others, but those are the ones and the order that I've more or less firmly settled on so far. I'm still deciding on where and how the others will fit in.

Also, I'm sad to say, TATTOO FOR THE TAURESS will likely be the last Envoy pic I post publicly for a bit. If and when I get the book project actually off the ground, I'll post the others as a way to help advertise it. So I wnat to save them for that.

Anyway, I know some of you were interested in this from your comments, so here it is. = )