The penultimate map in this series of ten is from Hex 1611, Skara Hamlet:

Last of the three settlements marked on the Haddmark regional map for the area that is now the Whispering Wastes, this was in another hex that missed out on being randomly selected as holding a feature of interest, so one in its immediate neighbour to the northeast was simply swapped-in, which is how we have PlikPlok Cavern as a notable element on this map, or rather the entrance to it. Beyond that, looking at the general area map, it seemed likely this settlement would form a focal point for the surrounding farming and logging districts, given the western fringes of the Skara Bray hills, in whose southwestern tip Skara is located, have denser woodlands shown on them, along with the hills themselves, and the relatively nearby major Torne River. It also felt plausible that such places would be quite scattered, so the settlement itself was allowed to spread out here too, helping make it seem more important than the number of buildings alone might suggest.

While constructing the map, and having the overall close-by region in mind, I decided to add more walled, paved yards here than in other places, since the proximity of the upland surroundings - hinted-at by use of the contour and cliff symbols - suggested a more readily-available source of building stone for Skara. In-keeping with its somewhat lowly status though, the wall-lines aren't always especially straight. Nearer the centre, The Field and The Green ended up as open spaces almost by accident, as while I wanted to add some denser woodlands around the periphery, I didn't want those to become too dominant. Plus The Blade & Razors needed an outdoor space to expand its events into, and the significance of Skara to the surrounding areas meant some kind of open space for occasional markets - even though no specific market place was randomly assigned to it - seemed a natural addition as well. As mentioned before, sometimes these things just happen almost by themselves. Meanwhile the random option for a chirurgeon was amended to become also a vet, given the significance of livestock hereabouts.

Final map now approaches!

You should always map the way you want to, and you don't need to justify that to anyone except yourself!

To an extent, yes. At this scale, they don't need to be substantial necessarily, but long straight lines, and those arcing curves (those between Mounts Haymish and Beck, under the Gongodur banner, and northwest from Middleham) look artificial. They'd be fine as canals; not so much as natural rivers.

I think this is accentuated, for me at least, because many of the road lines have more natural-looking small curves and slight changes of direction along them than some of the rivers.

Actually, looking closer at the roads, that long curving line between Tuncaster to the Jolly Hedgehog clips the foot of one of the smaller peaks on the western side of the Wirbel Mountains (about opposite the Dhegburim Mines), so might be tweaked a little to avoid it, since the rest is in the broad valley there otherwise.

You could perhaps try Avalon Quest, Cagliostro or one of the Mason Serif fonts as an alternative to Copperplate (they're all fine for Atlas use).

The river lines seem a little too regular presently, which is accentuated where the kingdom border lies alongside them, leading to some unlikely sharp corner angles in places that look unnatural as well, including the non-river angle NW of Mt Feynon.

The shading effect to highlight the kingdom looks good. It might work better if you were showing the entire kingdom on this map, as it looks a little strange to have the border heading off two map edges, suggesting this is only one small part of a much larger area. The title scroll so close to the right map edge also implies this.

In case Remy doesn't spot this, from the original post way back on Page 1: The competition ends October 1st 2024, 12:00 UTC.

So that's 20 full days as I type this, plus a bit (the exact amount depending on how UTC = Greenwich Mean Time correlates with your local clock time).