Sandbox: Civilization part 1

Having completed the map, I am ready to move on to other aspects of building the sandbox. The next step is adding civilization to the map.

Now, the good news is, I don't have to worry too much about placing population locales. The map I am drawing from has them already. The map has stars on big cities ("capitals") and smaller dots for smaller settlements. Since I know I want this to be a pretty brutal post-apocylpic world where most sane people stay inside the Sanctums, those stars are the Sanctums.

However, I do want a few extra settlements, so the smaller dots will be (heavily) fortified outposts known as Citadels. The differences between a Sanctum and a Citadel is generally size. In D20 terms, a Sanctum is a metropolis (or planar metropolis if the Dragonking is an epic dragon), A Citadel is something between a large town and a large city. For now, the mapped Citadels are Large City sized. These are generally stable enough to warrant mapping.

Civilization is based upon the Sanctum and the Sanctum is built by the dragons. Each Sanctum is named for the dragon clan that built it. The Chromatic clans dominate Nod and (to a a lesser extent) Aesir. They also moved out into the other realms at varying levels.

Since I have quite a bit of the "Big picture" of the Maelstrom world, it is likely time to start focusing on a smaller area of the map. With 165 islands, choosing one to focus on is difficult.