Well I've handed the thing in now, so its all over but the crying. I managed to finish up a so-so document, though the last section is a bit sketch since I was running out of time and feeling tired. I'm posting the final version here:

Some pretty whimsical stuff on there. I thought it would be good for people to get some inkling of the stuff in there without reading a long document.

An hour and twenty minutes to go!

Here's my selection, including an area map and document. With the document, I'm not sure what to do. It won't work properly just in a .txt document. I've seen other people with longer writeups, so I'm wondering how we go about that? Anyway, I'm including a docx as well as a txt document. I did it in Google Docs, and I don't think I can just post it here, as its 13 pages.

Hey, thanks to the generous gift card I received from ProFantasy, I was finally able to pick up Character Artist 3, and I've finally made something with it. This is an NPC my players picked up during their adventures. It's an interesting story, so I'll share it below the pic to those who might find it entertaining. If you're not interested , feel free to skip :).

Caelyn's Story: Caelyn is a cleric of Leira in the Forgotten Realms. The group came upon her while investigating a mysterious death. She was in a mine, driven mad by the voices of the various beholderkin that had invaded it. She was holed up in a room, having conjured some zombies to protect her.

The PCs left her alone, but some town guards killed her. When the group returned to the local temple of Helm, some kind priests were planning a trip to take her body on a long journey to a temple she had mentioned. The paladin/monk in the group offered the party's services, and away they went.

En route, the party was hunted down by an organization and one of the players killed. The party decided to travel to the afterlife to rescue him from the dead, where they had to participate in a fashion show of the recently dead to try and locate him. He wasn't there, but Caelyn was, and they made a deal with the dead to rescue her as well.

And so Caelyn was reborn, and is currently serving as a player-controlled NPC cleric for the party.

I'd say a couple of things.

First, on mountain placement, I'd make narrower ranges. Mountain systems are generally no wider than 2000 km, though that means several actual ranges. Examples include the western United States and the Himalayas. You'll notice in both cases that there are ranges, plateau lands, and then more ranges. Another interesting example is South America, where the mountains are made up of three parallel ranges in some places, though the overall system is much narrower.

If you have access to it, the One-Day Wordbuilder from 2020's annual is a great way of dealing with mountain issues.

Second, I agree with Julian for the most part about civilization placement. On our world, the first civilizations all came about in the 30 - 35 degrees north range, and that had a lot to do with the recession of the ice age and the development of farming. Another thing to note is that contrary to what some folks think (and have published), cultures tend to arise in areas where there are different resources being exploited. This is because those areas become important nodes on pre-existing trade routes and tend to build up large populations. The result of this is you will often see "civilizations" (in anthropology we call them "complex civilizations") developing in areas with large variation in elevation. This is because different elevations create different micro-climates where different different resources can develop.

There's all sorts of exceptions, of course. For instance, the peoples of the Canadian west coast are now considered to have been a complex civilization, and their above the 49th parallel. Another intriguing example is central Europe, which seems to have been pretty well developed pretty early as well. Both of these examples involve the height variation I mentioned, along with very temperate weather at sea level.

Anyway, glad to use the archaeology education for something :).

For background information, the world I'm mapping is an attempt at a loose revision of the 6th century which will assume that mythological events and the places that they refer to are real, though of course the exact version of the mythological events will be different. At present I'm mapping something like the "world-system" that existed around 12th century b. c. e., which comprises a rough equivalent to the area between India and Spain in our world.

A little while ago, for a Facebook challenge, I presented the following island which was based very roughly on the geographical region of Connacht, in Ireland, although in retrospect its too large. There is a second island, to its south, that I originally intended to base off the old Irish province of Ulster, but am now thinking of dividing up between Leinster and Munster, and then having Ulster on the mainland even further to the south. I should note that the region is being mapped in the southern hemisphere, so that south is toward the pole, which should explain my thinking. These three areas, would then have roughly the same area as Ireland, though Leinster and Munster would be smaller, while Connacht would be much larger than it was historically. Clearly I should have planned better, but I just kind of dove into the challenge without thinking about all of these intricacies.

Anyway, regarding this island, the straightness of the eastern coast bothers me a little, and I had explained it away by referencing the straight coasts that do exist in the world (ie. the Iberian peninsula). I can't shake the feeling that it still looks unnatural though. I'm wondering what others think?

I wanted to share a couple maps I've done recently to see what people think of them. These are two maps in my campaign world, one a local area map and the other a village map.

I'm not sure what to say. I honestly didn't expect to win with so many beautiful maps entered. I was really only able to produce this thanks to looking at other threads, watching Monsen's ice caves video, and some really good feedback from Wyvern. Thanks to everyone for your inspiration and encouragement.

I also want to echo what Monsen said about people who didn't get votes. The first time I entered a competition here I didn't get any votes (also a dungeon competition). It definitely doesn't mean that your maps aren't worthwhile; I was quite surprised that some of them didn't get votes.

Great maps everyone. I hope to see more from all of you in the future.

After a little more playing around:

This is a map of the final arrangement and orientation of the dungeon. I still have yet to fix the numbering in the mausoleum area, add numbering to the snow caves at the top of the map, and change the labels to suit some changes in the conception of the dungeon. Also a title and all that good stuff.

I'm wondering how people feel about the background colour as opposed to the black? I've really struggled to find a good background for this map, as I often do with dungeons. The basic stone fills look too regular when zoomed out to do a good job here, thought they're beautiful when zoomed in.

I'm working now to finish the write-up I started. I'm so far into it that it would be a shame not to finish it for the deadline, especially since so much of the "ice theme" of the map is actually wrapped up in the inhabitants of the dungeon. I'm hoping to find a little time to find a way to add some frost to some of the mausoleum floors as well.

By my reckoning I have till 7 am tomorrow morning to finish, so I'll probably just submit it before I go to sleep.

Hey folks. I somehow missed this news, and am very sad to hear it. Really supportive guy, and some truly unique approaches on some of his maps that I saw, anyway. I've been mostly away for a little while with the busyness of my job, but happy that folks are remembering him here.