In my current work in progress, Kingdom of the Lion, I have been getting very involved in writing the tale of Pryad as he turns from a powerless street urchin from the dark alleys of Ur into something else much more powerful. But in doing so, I’ve found some not-at-all-useful historical maps of the Fertile Crescent. Each one looks different, puts cities in different places, spells them differently and just muddies the waters for someone trying to set their fantasy novel in humanity’s ancient history. Damn you, Archaeologists!
So, may I present the map I’m using as the bare-bones of the world I am writing about in Kingdom of the Lion. Some of the locations are based on the historic sites of the ancient cities of Sumeria, Akkadia and Babylon. I’ve also added places such as the Sargon forest, the Teeth of Tiamat, Apsu’s Tears and the Ghul desert. I used the Akkadian names for the Tigris and the Euphrates, as well as adding Enoch and Nod (which I couldn’t find as historically placed using Google – so they are mine now).
I used Inkarnate– a free online map creation tool that I often use to make maps for Role Play Games or to pootle about in for fun. I may go back to the tool to edit, adapt and change the map later on as the story unfolds.
I highly recommend Inkarnate as a tool for fantasy writers. There are many paid-for mapping tools but this site has a simplicity that makes it easy to use and allows for mastery early. I think you can agree that the end results are pretty high quality.
If you needed a guide to use the site, I’d recoomend WASD20’s video on Youtube, which I’ve included below:
Let me know how your mapping goes! Maybe send them to me so I can share them on the blog, if you like.
Imagine Erratically 