Darkhive Worldbuilding (Part 7) - Maps

To work out how cultures might develop in a setting it might be a good idea to understand where they develop in relationship to specific locational elements and to each other. The majority of interest in this setting will be on the middle cluster of shells.The simplest way to draw a map will not be to scale, but through drawing an icosahedron net divided into hexes (the way this is drawn, the points of the icosahedron form pentagons rather than hexes).

The outermost of these layers will have a naturalistic appearance. But to maintain a sort of "crumpled mechanistic" feel I'm ensuring the high points on this map tend to be at the icosahedron vertices and along the midpoints of the edges. Not always, because it needs to look a bit more organic, and I haven't particularly worked out what this upper layer would be made of...maybe a scattered layer of soil over a low density rock (like a pumice). The actual shells would be a high-density/high-resilience metal.

Now we can start adding a few settlements of different sizes, only the larger ones would appear on the map. Since this is the layer with the most water, it makes sense that this would be the layer with the highest concentration of the aquatic based racial type (the Ichthyans). So I'll shade in an area of water and an area of land where the Ichthyan people have a higher likelihood of appearing.

Next we move "underground". Some sprays of colour highlight some important areas on this map. The genetic heritage of the Panaho race is known to be concentrated is a specific area, so this is marked in magenta. The shellbrood have established a major territory, and a few minor territories on this level, so they get marked in yellow. The hiveguard have focal points at each of the vertices, and I'll mark some streaks in cyan to indicate some pathways where they are commonly encountered.

Next I mark in some parts of the darknive that are known to be generally abandoned and decripit. These shouldn't be near the hiveguard territories, or near locations where established population exist, unless we're going to see some good story reason for the set up. Finally I'll add some towns. 

With the addition of some small towns (the pulling the town layer to the top so they can actually be seen under the territorial sprays), it's time to start applying some established, cleared pathways across the layer.

Then we go through the same steps for the bottom layer.

...and that's just the central cluster of shells.

But I'll leave it there for the moment.