Gorgeous!

Can I talk you into describing how you managed the mountains?

And/or maybe a screenshot of the map without effects? :)

I made a mess. Please learn from my mistakes. ;)

Next up in line came the gate-town Hopeless (see original map).

It took me over a month to get to this point mainly because I kept avoiding it. And I kept avoiding it because of the following...

First, I assumed I could simply reuse all the bunch of symbols I'd made for the previous maps, but the issue about the orientations (briefly explained on my previous post) came back to bite me in the... nose. If you've used the John Speed city style, you might have noticed that the symbols are neatly organized and grouped by angle at which they were drawn (0º, 15º, 22º, 30º, 45º, 60º...). And then the symbols grouped inside the collection are the directions where that building is facing. I should have done the same.

Then, I managed to mess up everything about the scales. I've since read Remy's article "Scale Matters" and I wish I'd read it a couple of months ago. Everything in my Symbol Manager (still haven't dared creating a catalog) has a different scale. That means I ended up changing the scale 'by eyeballing' too often. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that it took me too long to realize I had huge houses right in front of tiny buildings. ::sigh::

Believe it or not, I've actually fixed the worst offenders. Too many times I wondered if I should scrap it all and start over. At times it all seemed so Hopeless (yes, I did that on purpose). Actually, John Speed's symbols might be enough -and better- for these maps. But really... I decided to recreate this style to learn. So I kept going.

By the time I determined I didn't really want to keep fixing scaling and orientations ad infinitum, I also realized something more important: I hadn't really learned any new tools or techniques. So I decided to see if I could customize the background. Now, I know there's an Annual issue with much fancier parchments, but I don't own it (yet?). Plus, this venture is all about learning.

The first thing I tried was seeing if I could once again use the Color Key effect and just cut out stuff from the background image, but you can't use Color Key on an inserted raster image. So I removed the picture, created a fill style based on it, and created a new drawing tool. Easy. As I type this, I opened the map and checked if I could use Color Key for this newly created drawing tool, and yes! It does work if do it that way (something with which to tinker later).

Perhaps I should try to add burn marks. If Lillhans can make gorgeous watercolours, surely I can add some stains. Right?

Lessons learned? I could use some planning (I mean, I knew I wanted to make several maps from the beginning). Make sure everything (scale!) is consistent (especially when creating symbols). I shouldn't feel rushed.

Oh man... just yesterday I read Remy's article "Scale Matters" in the World Builder's Compendium.

If you own it (it's included in the ongoing Humble bundle) it's very much worth reading!

Unless I'm misunderstanding your issue...

... you should be able to place a filled polygon with your desired texture there.

Does this forum support animated GIFs? (EDIT: No, it does not)

I captured an animated GIF to illustrate what Monsen explained. This is what you should be seeing...

https://imgur.com/Dq8s2G2