Recently acquired in the Keirtography mailbag: a draft copy of “The Wayfarer’s Guide to Aeos,” my brother Bryn’s homebrew D&D sourcebook for which I created the maps and cover image. Bryn began worldbuilding his own D&D campaign about a year before I did, and our first play-test in it was a game session in February 2020—so far the only one we’ve done in person, after over two years of campaigning.
Bryn is also the faculty advisor for his high school’s D&D club, and so between us adults and the club’s students, his game setting of Aeos has seen plenty of playtesting—enough to compile the setting into a faux-sourcebook, which he printed last month. When you world-build one planet, sooner or later you end up doing multiple planets—or in this case, moons. Bryn’s world-building went literally off the charts to outer space, and as any sci-fi fan knows, even fictitious outer space must be mapped.
As the campaign moved from its post-apocalyptic, dead-tech main world Aeos (with its settings of The Spiral Archipelago and The Continent of Aperántos) to that planet’s moons—dragon-ruled Iara and frozen horror-scape Iola—the found-texture maps just kept on coming. I made four maps in my found-texture style from his notes (two regions and two moons), which he cropped for use in the layout, printed up like a college reader. Things got really fun when I used NASA’s awesome G.Projector app to create one of those “artist’s rendition” composite images of all three worlds. Next up? A space station!
My understanding is that this is a living reference document that will be revised as we play through any given region or storyline. It’s been great fun to help realize a fictional place that’s given us much joy amidst the ugliness of recent years. All worldbuilding by Bryn DuBois, all map and planet images by me, Keir DuBois. Want a found-texture map for your table-top role-playing campaign? I do commissions, so contact me with project details and budget!
Update 12/15/22: In the months since this was first posted, Bryn’s continued his world-building enough to where his settings could be compiled on a poster, so that’s what I did (much like my own Game Board), creating some “Worlds of Aeos” wall art:
