Had you been the proverbial fly on my wall recently, then beside gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair, you would also have heard the scratching of quill upon parchment. Well, okay, actually the squeaking of pencil and fine liner pen upon heavy duty translucent paper and the thrubbing of an eraser as it eventually was called upon to rub out all the pencil marks. “Gosh,” I thought as I finally finished this stage, “what do you call all those tiny scrubbly bits of eraser that end up on the floor?”
“Wherefore art thou making such noises and leaving such a mess?” I hear you ask? Well, the time has come for another episode in the Wars of the Faltenian Succession (interlopers section), in which those ragamuffins from the regular Ayton group merrily invade my little universe with their strange armies of mercenaries and have a bit of a tour around the countryside before the mighty scrum that the Ayton weekend always is.
Having already ruined the economy of Granprix with their post-match demands, carved up most of the Dark Continent (so-called simply because I’ve shed so little light on it so far), kicked the Grenouissians out of the popular nightspots of Pescadrix and sent them packing, accidentally invading a neutral country in the process, the time has come to shift focus and impose this bothersome conflict on yet another unsuspecting host.
Welcome, then, to Borgenmark, home of the… well, I’m still working that out actually, but they’re jolly nice people, thoroughly democratic and run by an Elector rather than the monarchical model that surrounds them. They have a very twiddly coastline (I’m hoping for an award for that), and a landscape that ranges from flat-as-a-pancake plains to oh-jeez-don’t look-down Alpine peaks. Somewhere between Phlegmark in the west, Polstovia in the east, Schwitz to the south east, Gelderstaad to the south west and Grenouisse to the south, there’s bound to be trouble. Make no mistake, I know these blokes and there’s no way they’re going to just sit and wave at one another when there’s a chance of a bloody good fight.
I’m about to start colouring in the map, naming places and so on, so that our belligerents – about whom, more anon – can start trying to advance along national borders they think are roads and slogging up precipitous slopes that they have underestimated by a factor of 10.
Tally ho!
Swarf, I suspect, H, is the name for those bits of rubber. As previously discussed, your map is a work of art – all the best with your invasion plans!
Swarf! Of course! (And it makes me think of Swarfega…) Thanks for stopping by, Christopher.
You’re welcome! As for Swarfega – Dad often had a jar of that in his garage. I always thought it should have been edible, in fact, I wish I had an excuse to go and buy some right now. Not to eat though. That’s be stupid. Wouldn’t it?
The version of the map posted on TMP today is downright gorgeous! We like. We like.
Jim
Thanks Jim. 🙂
Nice “Guide” reference, should I be calling you Slartibartfast from now on?
You can call me whatever you like, Tim! 😀
Beautiful map Henry. Do you find drawing a map by hand a different experience to using a computer?
Yes, absolutely. I’ll always use a hand-drawn map as my starting point – and occasionally my end-point too. I find it immensely satisfying and therapeutic.