Politics and Settlements.

As I start to look into the factions of the land - the big and the small. A political map would be smart. I have a region map with main settlements which are in process of being drawn. Super rough map. But helpful as one explores dominion. Take the Island of Bysby. It is an island "dominated" or controlled or influenced or led by three "kings". So then the dominion map or the political boundaries of the island would be determined by what business the "Coast king" has in the lives of the hamlet on the river. Does the "Hill king" really control or influence the witch in the forest or the farms the feed them in the winter or again, the hamlet on the river.

Which then starts an incredibly curious experiment in my own thinking. I live in a city of over 600,000 people. I am not a citizen but most of my life politically, is determined or influenced by the government of the land and that government has taken / been given, borders. Both sea and land. But In the grand duchy, there is a Grand Duke behind the scenes, off screen, as it were. And their influence is quite strong in the central regions, but for the north and the edges, not so much. And even in the centre, his influence is through low lords.

The religiously, the duchy has quite a large gamut of belief systems and leaders of those belief systems. Some are separate to politics, and in the case of the northern monotheists, it IS the government in their controlled lands.

Not to speak of trade or language. And if one steps away from a large overview of these networks and umbrellas, the hamlet on the river was founded by a grandfather whose progeny still live. Their micro dominion still exists and determines reactions and dreams.

So whilst a thieves guild might have specific boundaries and hopes an wishes that would be easy to track and easy to write and easily gameable, a family, dynasty would be similar and in some cases more tangible to understand.

To return to mapping. On a large scale overview, how helpful would these maps be. The maps could determine random encounters, uniforms, world events, factions one could join etc. And on a small scale one could make generic tables for "families" "religion one" and as you enter a space that belongs to such factions, the creativity continues.

Below is the settlement map. I left first edition of the influence map at home. But I will add it and see what we find. How we colour it. How we use it.