The Blitzkrieg Peninsula

So I've been doing some initial work on turning my old Blitzkrieg board into a sandbox wilderness. It's been slow so far because I'm trying to develop a method rather than simply diving in by slinging stuff onto hexes. The first step is simply a listing of what is already to be found in each hex and naming major physical features. Here's what a sample of the Southwest Region (pictured above) looks like right now:

B31 - coast (Duchy of Splitfang), rivermouth (Hurwood Seaway)
B32 - coast (Duchy of Splitfang), water (Western Sea)
B33 - water (Western Sea)
C17 - light terrain
C18 - light terrain
C19 - light terrain (Abbey of St. Jacob)
C20 - coast, cultivated (Abbey of St. Jacob), water (Kurtz Bay), St. Jacob Abbey

Hex C20 is the home of the Abbey of St. Jacob, while C19 contains farms and hamlets that are part of the Abbot's feudal territory. "Light terrain" is my term for an unmarked land hex, which can contain hills, forest, swamps, streams, etc., just not enough such terrain to amount to anything on the 5 mile/hex scale of the board. Each lone hex of cultivated land indicates a barony, probably with a village (100-900 people). Two adjacent cultivated hexes are a county, probably with a town (1,000-9,000 people). Three hexes indicates a duchy with a city (10,000-19,000), while the Red and Blue capitals are cities of at least 20,000.

The northern regions of the peninsula are mildly temperate, shading into semi-tropical in the south. Fashions in the north tend towards renaissance fair garb, while clothing can reach Hyborian levels of scantiness in the far south. Dress in the southwest tends to be less skimpy, as the Church of the Great Gold Dragon dominates religious life in the western regions. The central map regions feature an uneasy mixing of faiths, while the east is full of unrepentant pagans of the neutral and chaotic pantheons.

One neat thing about this top-down approach is that I'm slowly building a list of all the noble families in the region:

Counts of Burbiko
Barons of St. Hubbins
Barons of Finduncle
Counts Deathsinger
Barons of Amphert
Dukes of Auren
Thanes of Eterond
Thanes of Mno
Thanes Starchanger
Barons of Redlash
Barons of Gantar
Dukes of Splitfang
Thanes of Teresha
Counts of Donnan
Barons of Vostorra
Grand Dukes of Cerulea
Thanes of Heriwic
Thanes of Bearhammer
Thanes of Ernforth
Barons of Kertsam
Barons of Kishur

Barons of Swithoo

I made up some of the names for the places and families, others came from my big pile of randomly generated names, which features a vast quantity of print outs from Chris Pound's pages.