Ithaqua does tend to be more an overland deity in the tales, but maybe a cult of worshippers with a near-deity-like offspring as their central focus for a subterranean setting?

Like they said, "Slow down, you move too fast..."

Seeing the replies to Monsen's original query, I seem to be something of an aberration, as while I do make maps for RPG use, and tabletop wargames sometimes, the primary reason I invested in Campaign Cartographer initially was to make historical and semi-historical real-world maps, particularly regarding military history, and its mythical counterpart, from what wargamers class as the "Ancient" period. This covers pretty much everything prior to the widespread use of gunpowder weapons during European medieval times.

One of the first maps I did with CC3 was for use with the Erin wargame rules produced by Scottish company Alternative Armies. This concerns the mythological island of Ireland, its waves of invaders, and the battles they fought in the mythical past. Alternative Armies make a unique range of cast metal 28mm miniatures to go with these rules, interpreting some of the mythic inhabitants of Ireland in interestingly unusual ways (to me, anyway). The background information in the rules included some details on a few places already, along with providing a sketch map based on a 15th century CE drawing from details given by Claudius Ptolemy (circa 90-168 CE). However, I wanted to go further than this, and embarked on a lengthy journey into the mists of Irish mythic history, and how that has been influenced by physical topography and prehistoric sites across the land.

Ultimately, in 2012-2013, I constructed three maps of this mythical place. The first was based on modern topography, with selected Curious and Ancient places of interest added using various red-labelled symbols or markers. The purpose was to provide a range of sites scattered across the whole of Ireland, without cluttering the map too greatly, to help stimulate ideas for Erin game scenarios, drawing upon real-world and mythical Ireland, where the latter elements were mostly taken from the different redactions of the 11th century Lebor Gabala Erenn (The Book of Invasions).

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Since this was intended as a poster-sized map, the labels on this image are mostly illegible, so to give a better idea of what was going on, this is a closer view of the central-eastern part of the island - still a little fuzzy to keep within the Forum's image parameters.

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Blue labels are for watery elements - so coastal features, rivers, lakes and so forth - brown place-names for physical features such as mountains and hills.

Next, I drew-up a revised version of that 15th century Ptolemy's map of Ireland with all of Ptolemy's place-names added using blue and brown labels, and red-labelled items taken from the Erin game background positioned in relation to the amended geography, as far as possible, along with green name-labels for the five peoples involved in the Erin setting.

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While compiling notes for this project, I came upon a paper by Robert Darcy & William Flynn, "Ptolemy's map of Ireland: a modern decoding" that had been published in 2008 in the periodical Irish Geography (Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 46-69, if anyone wishes to hunt it up). Their research suggested a rather different form for Ireland as understood by Ptolemy, and on the principle one can never have too many maps, I decided to draw a third version showing this, again adding features as for the "other" Ptolemy map, but this time making the named watercourses more closely follow patterns like their plausibly-identified modern ones, variant coastline permitting.

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Further afield, one of my particular historical-archaeological interests has long been the ancient Near East, notably from the 4th to 1st millennia BCE. Published maps often use only established modern geography when discussing parts of this region and period, whereas both coastline and river courses are known to have changed considerably in places. This can become confusing, especially where ancient coastal trading settlements seem to be nowhere near the modern coast, along with those places no longer served by watercourses or wells of any kind. Plus of course, even maps with the earlier coasts and watercourses shown (so far as such things can be established now) frequently failed to contain other details of greatest interest to me - isn't that though always the way?!

A couple of CC3 examples. This was one of the first maps of its kind I devised, back in 2013-14, for the 3rd millennium BCE, to illustrate the relative locations for a selected number of key ancient settlements around the Fertile Crescent region, notably in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).

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Those familiar with the area will appreciate the head of the Gulf lies significantly north of where it does now, and there are more channels - mostly human-built canals - on the lower Euphrates river.

The second example, from the same epoch, was to illustrate the places east of southern Mesopotamia known to have had trade links with the near-Gulf city-states.

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Here, there have been additional changes to the Pakistan-India coast and the lower River Indus, for instance.

Sadly, the FCW files for both these maps were lost in separate hard-disk and memory-stick failures, before the originals could be copied elsewhere, so all that survives are a couple of JPEGs.

Returning to more mythological themes, something else which has held a long fascination for me is the voyage of the Argo, firstly thanks to the Harryhausen "Jason and the Argonauts" movie, but in later times through the various ancient Greek and Latin versions of the tale. In 2015, I finally got round to doing some CC3 mapping for that too, regarding the outward voyage of the Argo from Greece to Colchis, at the eastern end of the Black Sea (modernly Georgia). The overview map:

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However, as this was designed as an A0 poster, I'd be amazed if anyone can properly read any but the largest labels on this reduced-size version. So this is just the mainland Greece part:

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Even that's not as clear as it might be, but the eagle-eyed may spot an unexpected inland lake where there now isn't one north of Pagasae, restored to its probable 1st millennium BCE appearance. And if you think some of the names look a little faded, you're quite right; that was entirely deliberate, because settlement names were often widely understood for the period, but regional names could be rather more fluid.

I did a whole series of maps for some of the places sailed-by or stopped-at in one or other version of the Argo's journey, using a similar "contoured" style to this Black Sea one for the more historical settings and places. However, I switched tack for those more mythological places, such as Colchis:

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You'll notice a lack of scale on this image. That's because even the relative location of the places shown isn't firmly-fixed in the tales, let alone how far apart they were from one another. Real-world geography is no help at all, as even the possible location of the city of Aea isn't as established as you might hope.

Along the way to Colchis, I devised a series of tabletop wargame scenarios, including mythical battles described in the tales as well as some "what if" ideas that didn't feature so, drawing on the "Hordes of the Things" (HotT) fantasy wargame rules. These allow small-scale actions to be fought on a handily square area - often no more than three-feet on a side. So I sketched the tabletop layouts for those too with CC3, like this one for the escape of the Argonauts from Colchis with the Golden Fleece:

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Can the Argonauts get to their ship and escape before the pursuing Colchians catch them?!

Working on all this, in conjunction with the HotT rules, which allow for longer wars to be fought too, I came up with a couple of on-land campaigns between the various peoples along the southern Black Sea coasts and further inland that the Argonauts had met, knew about, or had sometimes fought with, many of whom also featured in the more historical ancient texts. So another mapping style could be explored as well, if of a more abstract nature suited to the standard HotT campaign procedures:

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It may not be obvious that Dorylaeum and Ankyra are intended as independent, unaligned cities, separate from the named powers illustrated here. For orientation, Cius and Amycus represent places near the eastern-southern Propontis/Sea of Marmara coasts, while the line from Calpe via Mariandyni City (modernly Eregli) to Sinope is effectively the southern Black Sea coast east as far as the modern Sinop headland of Turkey.

Having been tasked with constructing a Solar System for the Community Atlas world of Nibirum, only a few things were clearly in-place at the outset. Expressed preferences, coupled with the nature of Nibirum as depicted in the surface maps and descriptions of the world itself so far, showed Nibirum to be an Earth-like planet in size and nature, including with seasonal effects and climatic zones, illuminated by a single Sol-type Sun. As noted before, I'd opted for a simplified 360-day year for the planet more or less from the start too. One, probably Luna-type Moon, was preferred at least (Quenten), although perhaps with one or more additional moons (Dogtag). I assumed impressive astronomical phenomena like solar and lunar eclipses would be required additionally, to provide Nibirum with extra flavour and reality. The solar eclipse factor gave a first physical parameter beyond the planet, since Earth-type total solar eclipses could only happen if one of Nibirum's moons had the same apparent size as its Sun.

The "multiple moons" question led me back to an idea I've played with previously in RPG settings, a variable effect or object usually seen in one part of the sky, when visible at all, which can become a convenient plot-device or subject of game-omen lore. I settled on a group of small cometary objects loosely "trapped" around the leading (L4) Lagrange point on Nibirum's orbit. The L4 and L5 Lagrange points on a body's orbit are gravitationally stable points where relatively small objects can become caught for very long periods (centuries to millennia). Their own pre-existing space-motions mean the objects usually continue to orbit about that stable point, so are not necessarily fixed in one spot. Each point lies more or less at 60° from the Sun as seen from the main body - such as a planet - forming one apex of a conveniently equilateral triangle, with the planet and Sun at the other two apices. This means, handily, that the planet's distance from its Sun is the same as the distance to either of these two Lagrange points. One lies 60° ahead of the Sun as seen from, say, Nibirum, the other 60° behind the Sun. Thus objects around Nibirum's leading Lagrange point would be visible close to the ecliptic in the morning sky before sunrise. So these little comets quickly became the Phoenix Asteroids Dawn Heralds.

Leaving the L5, trailing, Lagrange point empty - at least of anything visible from the surface of Nibirum - opens the door to scholarly speculation on the planet by those seeking symmetry. So maybe the misty stars of the Dawn Heralds shine showing the approaching richness (or otherwise) of the magical-mystical potential into which Nibirum will soon be moving (for a 360-day year, 60° = 60 days on Nibirum). That there is no equivalent group of Dusk Heralds could suggest that potential has been exhausted by the passage of the magical world of Nibirum, and will take much time - most of a year, say - to recover.

However, fitting a second, much smaller moon into the trailing Lagrange point on the orbit of Nibirum's main Moon seemed an ideal reworked symmetry, which also gave the planet more than one natural satellite. (The Lagrange point geometry is the same for the lunar orbit. Just substitute "Nibirum" for "Sun", and "main Moon" for "Nibirum" and "the planet" in the earlier description.) Thus was born the Red Moon, always faithfully following the larger White Moon around the sky. Not quite Gloranthan, though with names ultimately inspired by that fantasy world, via the old "White Bear, Red Moon" board wargame name, later revised as "Dragon Pass". Still more perfectly, and following from typical Earthly precedents of similar celestial behaviour, this can also be called the Dog Moon. So naturally, another name for the White Moon had to be the Q Moon (only from Nibirum's southern hemisphere, however, and then only by societies that recognise the significance of the apparent pattern forming said letter on the lunar disc).

Then 'twas time to see what else lay beyond Nibirum. There are of course numerous random solar system generators available for RPG use. Given the experimental nature of the whole Night Sky for Nibirum concept, I decided on one I've had for a while, but never used this way before, Galactic Baroque's "Instant Universe" (available for purchase via DriveThru RPG). This proved interesting, if not quite so straightforward, rapid, or complete as its name might imply.

Needing a Sol-like Sun, and given there is some scholarly debate still as to whether Earth's Sun is spectral type G2 or G4, I went with a class G3 sun of standard stellar type for Nibirum. That means it has sunspots from time to time, and a solar wind able to produce polar and sometimes mid-latitude aurorae, just as we see from Earth. At one solar mass, it seemed sensible to also go with a similar size to our Sun, thus Nibirum's Sun has a diameter of 1,400,000 kilometres (Sol's is 1,392,530 km; if you want miles, divide by 1.6).

Dicing on the Instant Universe tables provided the System with seven planets, their distances from the Sun, masses, sizes, natural satellites and so forth. Some of these features were slightly reworked or rounded-off to give a Solar System a little less mathematically-challenging for GMs to work with, and a few parameters not given by Instant Universe were added. The obvious place to fit Nibirum into this scheme was as the third planet outwards from the Sun, because that had a rounded distance of 130 million km, not far from Earth's own circa 150 million km.

Next came a series of calculations to find out what of all this could be seen from Nibirum. The Sun has an angular size of 0.62° from the planet (Sol is about 0.5° as seen from Earth), so that decided what minimum angular size the Q Moon needed to be to produce total eclipses for Nibirum. A diameter of 2,130 km at 200,000 km from Nibirum did the trick, with an option (just like for Earth) to have the lunar orbit's centre be slightly offset from Nibirum's centre, so the lunar disc can be sometimes a little too small to completely block the Sun, producing not-quite-total annular eclipses occasionally. Random rolls came up with a Dog Moon size of 350 km, so showing a tiny, faint, red disc about 0.1° in diameter as seen from the planet. The human eye can resolve objects as small as roughly 0.07°, so this is quite near that limit. No other planet appears as anything other than a bright to extremely brilliant star to the unaided eye from Nibirum.

I wanted the Dawn Heralds to be quite easily visible sometimes from the planet, despite no individual object within them being brighter than a 3rd magnitude star - and that only very occasionally. So I decided on them appearing as a somewhat nebulous patch, with at most a few brighter (4th or 5th magnitude) star-like points within, which collectively should be roughly 0.5° to 1.5° across as seen from Nibirum. This equates to a physical cross-sectional area of around 1 to 3½ million km or so, an actual size easily achievable by one quite modest comet of the kind visible from Earth. Such an angular size is similar to that of the Earth-visible Pleiades star cluster of 9 or 10 mostly 4th and 5th magnitude stars in the constellation of Taurus the Bull, about 1° east-west by 0.7° north-south. Despite the relative faintness of its stars (only one is 3rd magnitude), this cluster is a surprisingly easy object for the unaided eye in even quite strong twilight. The proximity of the stars to one another seems to make it easier to spot than just their brightnesses alone might indicate, so the Dawn Heralds can have a similar ability to "tickle" the vision of Nibirese morning sky-watchers.

Choosing what to depict on maps from all this, and how to do so, was somewhat more of a challenge. As I don't have Cosmographer installed, mapping came down to a choice between two main Annuals, CA 22 (October 2008) Star Systems or CA 80 (August 2013) HighSpace Star Systems. CA80 has a greater range of planet symbol options, and I needed two ringed planets, but in the end, CA22 just won out, as despite it having no ringed planet symbols, it did have the option for dynamic lighting effects on its planetary discs. Moreover, CA22's Mapping Guide includes a short tutorial on creating your own planet symbols with said dynamic lighting.

Thus with help from the GIMP (with which I freely confess I am a veritable novice), and still more from the Great and Powerful Monsen (who kindly allowed me to extract from his rotating-world graphics, and provided new, FT-generated, north and south polar views of Nibirum for the purpose), I constructed a small group of dynamic-lighting Nibirum planet symbols for use with the Atlas, one set showing six views of just the world, the other half-dozen onto which I GIMP-added some airbrushed white cloudy shapes, to make it look a little more homely.

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After further deliberation, I decided on one chart to show the relative sizes and orbital distances of the planets, and a set of maps to show the satellites and features for each planet.

The relative-scale Solar System chart:

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The five planet and satellite description maps:

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Many of the details provided on these maps (collected with some further notes in a PDF to accompany them in the Atlas) cannot be discerned from Nibirum. However, I decided to preserve everything that had been randomly rolled or otherwise chosen, partly for the sake of completeness, partly because in some fantasy settings, there are ways of travelling to other planets - the classic sailing ships of the stars in some earlier incarnations of D&D, for instance. It seemed thus a useful adjunct to include this information for any who might wish to explore the Nibirum system more fully.

After that, I constructed some extra charts to help RPG GMs especially keep track of what's visible, where and when in Nibirum's night sky, starting with those Moons.