This is the initial sketch map for a historical-fantasy novel I'm writing, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. I'll probably produce more maps or tweak this one as the setting develops, but this should be enough for me to use while I block out the outlines of the story.The basic setting is northwestern Europe in the very early Holocene era, by our reckoning about 9400 BCE. This is just a few centuries after the end of the Younger Dryas period, the last big cold snap of the most recent Ice Age. Most of Europe is still open steppe country, shading into polar desert as one approaches the retreating Ice. Forests are spreading across the continent from the south and south-west, first a wide band of boreal hardwoods, then deciduous forest following behind. Sea levels are about 60 meters below the current level, although the height of the land is more complex in areas that are rebounding from being covered under miles of ice. Big regions of coastland will be submerged by our time, including much of what we think of as the bed of the North Sea. The British Isles are still joined to the continent, and the Thames River flows into the Rhine before finding the sea.The dominant population of Europe at this time is various hunter-gatherer peoples, mostly at a high Paleolithic level of culture, shading into Mesolithic technology in places. These are successors to the so-called Magdalenian cultures: anatomically and behaviorally modern humans, dark-skinned and speaking pre-Indo-European languages, using sophisticated technologies based on flint and bone. The total hunter-gatherer population of the entire continent is probably less than 300,000 people.Of course, this is a fantasy setting, so there are fantastic elements to be found. The continent is not called Europe, but Mortalani ("the Great Lands"). A few centuries ago, the distant country of Artalan ("royal land") fell, most of its people destroyed in the cataclysm. All that remains are a few former colonies, scattered around the world's coastlines. In western Europe, the main Artalanian successor-culture is a loose alliance of five fortress-towns, placed near the shores of the long firth that will one day become the English Channel. These towns support themselves mostly through fishing and water-borne trade, although they also have small agricultural hinterlands carved out from the surrounding forests. Even the largest of the five, Kerarden, the "Fortress of the King," has an urban population of less than 5,000. The total "civilized" population of the region is no more than about 150,000.Outside the "civilized" territory, some of the hunter-gatherer peoples are starting to assimilate Artalanian technologies and ideas, not always with positive results. Tribal leaders gather goods to trade for metal tools and weapons, and some of them have taken to raiding or coercing their neighbors to gather more trade into their own hands. Other groups are starting to experiment with agriculture, sedentary settlement, ideas of kingship, and slavery. The tension between old egalitarian ways and the stratified Artalanian culture is causing a great deal of disruption and resentment.Meanwhile, humans are not alone in the world. The Elder Folk, ancient cousins of humanity with strange agendas and even stranger powers, still exist in hidden enclaves. Out in the deep wilderness, other creatures lurk, fierce and monstrous, pawns of inhuman gods of the sea, the Ice, and the stars. Civilization is a tiny candle-flame, flickering in the winds of a hostile universe. And always, the survivors of Artalan fear that the rising seas will one day come again, and overwhelm the last remnant of their people . . .Technical notes: original base map projection was taken from a Google Earth snapshot, with supplementary maps and independent research to help me place early-Holocene coastlines, rivers, and other terrain features. All work was done in Photoshop CC. Most terrain features were placed using fantasy mapping resources found at Sketchy Cartography Brushes . On-map text uses the Matura MT Script Capitals font. Total work time about 25 hours.© 2017 by Sharrukin-of-Akkad (Jon F. Zeigler).Youcopy, alter, or repost this work without my express written permission, nor may you in any other way treat this work as your own.