This is more of concept piece for a scalebar for this specific compass rose, but hopefully gives you and idea of what I'll be trying to do. I'm not crazy about the placement of the roses, but don't hate it either. Input is welcome because it will guide me for other styles.

I learn so much from everyone here and really appreciate this discussion. I feel like I finally understand something that I've had trouble wrapping my brain around. If you were standing here I'd probably give you a little hug out of sheer joy. LOL

Sounds like there is interest in expanding this into something that would be suitable for an annual. I think if I did that I would want to make them more compatible to current mapping styles. Maybe make them a bit more hand drawn looking while still keeping the same level of detail. Scale bars are needed, and I like Remy's idea of legend boxes too.

I'll experiment and come back to see what you think.

@Simon Rogers I draw them by hand, scan them, use photoshop for coloration, then upload them to several AI image to image generators until I get something that resembles my original hand sketch. Then back to photoshop to clean up the AI sloppiness.

I have been doing a lot of design and art for my gaming world lately. Not a lot of mapping.

One thing I've been doing is making specialized compass roses for regions of my world. I'm not sure how well these would work for anyone else, but if you would like me to make them available for your use, I can try posting them here. I am just starting to make scale bars to go along with them, so have nothing to show for that yet.

Let me know if you would find them useful.