I've been for a while working on a fantasy world of my own, with its own continents, countries and provinces (vaguely) detailed into a very innacurate world map that wouldn't really be possible, but that ain't the focus. One of these countries, I've decided that in their flag would have a globe focusing the continent the nation's on, but I'm having a difficult time trying to imagine how it would look.

So, my question is, is there any sort of web page or app that could, by inserting an image of the world map, visualize a 3D model of the globe I would draw into the flag?

So I'm making a world map and this is one area, how would I go about making this look better?

NOTE: The lore is in very early stage. Below you have a rough sketch of the history of the first ruling dynasty of Ephedia. Any suggestions are welcome, and please point out any contradictions/plot holes/unreasonable details.

According to our most ancient scholars, who kept unbroken records, it is the 2114th year after Adaro the Father returned to the city of Ephedia and founded the Empire. His residence, the White Palace, towers above the enormous city from the Golden Hill, and is now known far and wide for its size and splendor. The palace started out rather small, but over the next thousand years, Emperors both loved and hated expanded it. Now, the palace takes up almost 20 acres, and the main courtyard alone is 1 acre in size. The Great Hall is truly a throne room fit for an Emperor, over 300 feet long, 100 feet wide and 100 feet tall. It can comfortably host a thousand people and still leave enough room for servants and guards.

Like the palace, the empire around it has grown. Some sources state that Adaro had found the city. We know this for a certainty to be wrong, as the crypts and dungeons hide ruins twice as old as the White Palace. The few scholars who dared to read the old scripts found a forgotten language, and the name of Hattika everywhere. To their best knowledge, Hattika has settled on the Golden Hill some 4000 years ago. Other, even more questionable sources, claim that even deeper under the old ruins, lie some mysterious chambers and halls that predate the oldest ruins above by thousands of years. They're also built from a strange stone, dark grey with speckles of black and white, looking like wet ash. It has a dusty, queer feel to it, being smooth as silk, yet harder than anything known to us. Those who touch it are left weakened and sickly and die slowly while rotting alive, if the tales are to be trusted.

The town of Ephedia and its dominion before Adaro the Father

What is certain is that before Adaro, the future Empire comprised Ephedia, Akossa to the south and Barydon to the west, thus holding a small dominion over the rivers Ephos to the north and Ydarnas, 70 miles to the south. Soon enough, Sychresia to the north joined the fold, followed by Abysos and Aspagra to the east, and so the seed of the Empire sprouted. Emperor Adaro died at the age of 80 in the 44th year of his reign, having secured a city in each direction around Ephedia and having built a true state out of scraps. Ephedia now ruled over one of the strongest and most solid factions in Eastern Usaelon [the continent] and engaged in trade with most of the continent. He was now known as The Father, both of the empire and of its strongest family, the house of Berylla, named after the five green beryl stones studded on his crown. It was a strange crown, from a steel light and pale as a cloud, and stronger than any other metal known to man. Where the crown was commissioned and when or how it was forged is beyond our knowledge. Adaro's last wish was for a new, grand throne to be carved out of bloodstone. Sadly, this proved to be a sign of the horrible things to come, as the mighty empire would be forged in rivers of blood.

When his son, Kyros, ascended to the throne, the peaceful realm his father left came to face the cruel world around its borders. Countless lords and chieftains, both great and weak, were in good relations more with Adaro himself than with his empire. Thus, Kyros spent his first 3 years crushing the now rebellious Barydon and the next 10 years bringing the lords of the Mysian Plains under the Empire's banner. He ordered the Palace Guard to be completely transformed. From the few hundred men that previously guarded the palace, the emperor had now six thousand professional soldiers, their equipment and training paid for by the imperial treasury, guarding the entire city. They quickly became the most disciplined and feared force on the continent. While they lacked the sheer strength and stature of the Sagates or other mountain tribes, their unwavering ranks proved as effective as stone walls, if not more so. As more and more nobles and generals started training their own personal guard, the number of professional soldiers in the Empire doubled, and the Mysian Plains were trampled under the locked pace of the Ephedian armies, from Dydis and all the way south to Orotros and Sycidra. In the 12th year of Kyros' reign, the new imperial army fought perhaps its most famous last stand on the road to Tegerma. Algax, the leader of the Tegermans and their allies, were pushing towards Ephedia. With this show of force, his desire was to smother the threat of a foreign power before it became too strong. Just 50 miles from the city, in the White Marshes, the imperial host faced their foes. Algax ordered his warriors to charge. The Imperial Guard held the center, while lighter troops held the flanks. Some scholars think of this as an attempt to form an arrowhead and slice through the enemy host. How many times the Tegermans charged in vain cannot be said, but the Ephedian victory was absolute. When the Imperial Guard was surrounded, they formed a square and their infamous spear wall to protect the emperor. They succeeded. Two days later, the Tegermans, having grown weary of fighting and willing to cease the killing, presented Algax's head to emperor Kyros. The Ephedian army had lost ten thousand of their twelve thousand force, while the Tegermans and their allies had lost thirty thousand: three quarters of their force. The White Marshes got their name from the forty thousand men whose bones could be seen for many years jutting out of the ground, before sinking beneath the endless stretch of ponds and grass patches. The Tegermans had not been conquered, but they learned their place.

Kyros died in the 18th year of his rule, aged 60, leaving the empire to his son, Aldion. His reign was peaceful, as too few have been ever since, strange for an emperor who loved wine so much. Tales tell that he was never angry, but would often get sadder the more he drank. Many a scholar praised the amiable nature of Aldion, while others chose to praise the excellent council around him, going as far as to call Aldion a puppet of an emperor. Ultimately, the wine - his first and greatest love - brought his demise. He died young, a few moons after his 49th year.

Dominion then passed to his youngest son, Kaedon, who is best remembered for building the first paved roads to link the capital to the surrounding cities. His nickname, "The Wise", is truly founded, for none others had such a sharp eye for solving dire problems. One of them was travel. Neither traders nor nobles were safe on the rugged, serpentine dirt roads. Thus Kaedon constructed roads from the capital to the surrounding cities. Tens of thousands of commoners were put to work: they flattened hill slopes, drained marshes, chop down forests, dug trenches, filled them with stones and dirt. "The old roads" as they are known today, are still in use, though they are now doubled by wider, stronger roads, made of stone, sand and ash. They are wide enough to fit four wagons side by side and still leave room for people to walk by.

At the age of 66, Kaedon ascended to the Gods and left the bloodstone throne to his son Phollos. Stories say that he almost worshipped his father and his achievements and swore to exceed him. He further improved the imperial army, by splitting it in separate "armies" of ten thousand. He then ordered each and every city to muster one such army. Now forty thousand strong, his armies pushed north and east like never before. He built many fortlets north of Barydon and east of the White Marshes. He then assembled his armies at Sychresia and went north to conquer Tragaemos, 130 years after Adaro the Father sat on the throne. The town and villages willingly surrendered to Phollos, but Tragaemos put up a valiant resistance. Outside and inside the walls, the fighting was fierce. After a year-long siege and tens of thousands dead, Phollos resorted to war machines. The emperor proved strong enough to level the Tragaemese walls, yet wise enough to rebuild them. And so Tragaemos was conquered. Cythos to the north-east, unwilling to share the same fate, sent its armies forth. A hundred miles east of Tragaemos, the Cythese forces ambushed the imperial army, already tired of a week's march, in a wide ravine the common folk called Goat's Pass. Had it not been for the discipline of the Guard and the quick thinking of Phollos, the campaign would have died then and there. Alas, he repelled the Cythese ambush with the same spear wall that had saved his great-grandfather in the White Marshes. He then proceeded to conquer and punish Cythos. Next, Aegiope fell, followed by Ialyda and the mighty Phesmae, whose strong walls held for almost two years. The emperor Phollos then returned to save Aegiope from an attack of the Kymenians, and took the city of Kymenia after a single battle. The emperor then proceeded to surround the city of Leboka and attack it from four sides. The emperor Phollos returned to Ephedia after seven years of conquest. In his last years, he tried to consolidate the empire's new cities and frontiers. He died aged 61 and left an empire larger and more fortified than ever before, but with a frail economy, that could barely keep up with the cost of the greatly inflated army.

His son, Mollo, and his son after him, Tylenor, ruled for half a century without resolving the issue. They tried and failed to pay the army with spoils of war, for which they pushed westwards. Tylenor, worst of all, grew paranoid of a rebellion and tried to control the army directly by having his best generals murdered. Both of them, nearly forty years apart, tried and failed to conquer the cities of Pydeia, Idomia and Athagyra. Tylenor's campaign has been remembered by scholars as the most disastrous campaign the empire has ever fought, having lost fifty thousand men for no more than two miles of land. History has later redeemed both of them, defining them as incompetent, rather than evil.

It was not until the ascension of Tylenor's son as emperor Kyros the Second that the rotting wound in the economy would be cured. He ordered a new, regulated industry to replace the hectic production centers that existed before. He built a new system of dirt roads that were leveled, guarded and maintained permanently, and limited the money, grain and other goods that a noble house could keep from what its common folk produced to no more than a quarter, the rest being split evenly between the imperial storage and the peasants. Moreover, he ordered all noble houses to export their goods and invest in improving their production. Through excellent diplomacy, Kyros II ensured steady trade between Ephedia and nearly half of the continent, including all its neighbors. Oaths were sworn that no Ephedian blade shall draw blood beyond the borders. "The Golden Pact", as it has been remembered has stood as long as House Berylla ruled. The talks and trade that filled the imperial treasury and even the common pockets have cemented Kyros II as Kyros the Kind. His peaceful and just demeanor have atoned the empire of his father's and grandfather's mistakes. The Gods truly favor the just, it seems. Kyros II died in his 84th year, and the 258th year since Adaro's Return. The 66 years of his reign are considered to have been some of the greatest the empire has known in all its history, better even than the long-gone days of Kaedon the Wise.

And The Golden Pact, or The Peace of Kyros, has stood. The son of Kyros II, Orylos, and his son Hybleos, and his son after him, Ithyleon, and Ankaros after them, all ruled in peace and plenty. Ankaros, however, was a lustful man, fathering six trueborn sons, four trueborn daughters and countless bastards. His love for history made him name his eldest son Adaro, after the Old Father, but the Gods would not smile down on him like they did on his namesake almost four centuries before. The son of Ankaros had been a cruel man for all his life, and was seen as unfit for the throne. As fate would have it, the year of his ascension as Adaro II, the 385th after the Return, would be plagued by droughts in the south, floods in the north, and the Capital was torn by storms that broke almost all the roofs. Earthquakes followed, and monstrous waves on the shores of the Silk Sea. At a procession, the commoners demanded money for repairs. The begging became demanding, and the demands quickly grew into screams, and Adaro, afraid of the masses, unleashed the army upon them. Some blessed hands have written news of the events in the capital and asked for support to depose the tyrant. Before long, ravens delivered the messages throughout the realm, and large houses, weary of the short yet cruel reign of Adaro II, flocked to aid or suppress the revolt. After just a few hours of fighting, the army has had enough and sided with the people. The decision taken by the general Abens deepened the split among the great lords. Many still sided with the emperor, but most went behind general Abens, some even calling him the new emperor. Then, the search for Adaro's siblings began. Some wanted to capture all of Ankaros's offspring, some wanted them to bargain with the emperor, while others wanted to replace Adaro II with a more suitable ruler of the same family. Eventually, the people and the army overran the palace guard and dragged the tyrant emperor in the Square of Heroes. "Kill them all" he kept screaming. "The whole lot of them!". Then silence, as the emperor's head departed from his body. His brothers and sisters managed to disguise and run away to the north, in the kingdom of Sitolla, or even further north, past Maegor's Wall. To try and quell the turmoil, the High Council assumed the duty of ruling. The chaos and confusion endured for almost a year, until some high lord from Aspagra, by the name of Laemos, presented the Ephedian council with ten heads, their hair of walnut and hazel, and their eyes of beryl and sapphire. Were they the sons and daughters of Ankaros? To this day, scholars debate. But the common folk did not debate. They believed Laemos to be the killer of the house of Berylla and bringer of peace. Laemos seized the Council and took seat in the bloodstone throne. The beryl crown was nowhere to be found. It could have been smuggled when the siblings of Adaro fled, but why did they not have it when they were captured.

The people saw no power in Laemos anymore, for he was busier scheming and drinking than he was asserting his power. Two moons later, he was found dead in his chambers. The one thing Adaro II had been good at was gathering all the hate. Some argue that a realm united in despising its ruler fared better than a realm drowned in confusion and fear. With Laemos gone and the resentment still rooted deep within every heart, nobles turned against each other. Hundreds of factions arose, some lasting mere weeks, while others threatened to create their own empire. The first years of the fourth century after The Old Father founded the empire were drenched in blood between four noble houses, each bringing forth their own crown and their own emperor. This bloody episode remained in the texts as The War of the Stones, named after the crowns sported by each family, with their distinctive precious stones: rubies, sapphires, emeralds and amethyst.

One family in particular, the house of Symina, had a stronger claim, tracing its roots from some respected merchants centuries before Adaro I was even born. How much of their lineage was true and how much was just a good forgery cannot be told. For the people, it did not matter. The head of the family, Nynthos, has waged wars with his words more than with his soldiers and finally peace was restored in the empire. Nynthos was fit for an emperor: he stood over six feet tall, his long hair was of gold and his eyes of silver. He ended eight years of fear, chaos and bloodshed and put his crown of silver, studded with five large sapphires, whose deep blue sparkled in the sun like eyes of living ice. With him began the reign of the house of Symina, later remembered as the rule of the Sapphire Emperors.

[To be continued]

The Ephedian Empire after the first dynasty

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Years passed, houses came and went, and the Empire grew ever stronger, ever larger. At its height, during the reign of Seldolos the Great, the Ephedian Empire had conquered almost half of Usaelon, and at last. From Phesmae in the east, one had to travel 2500 miles to reach the western frontier of the province of Arsa, and almost 2000 miles from Dyossa in the south to the northernmost fort on Malor's Wall. Seldolos the Great, known as the Mighty Emperor, inherited an empire in turmoil and left it stronger, larger, richer and more united than ever before. He nearly doubled the network of paved roads and linked all major cities, 14 of which were home to half a million people each. Ephedia grew to a monstrous size. Almost a million people called it home, three quarters of them living inside the enormous granite walls. The city grew so large, that from Sylon's fountain in the center of the Square of Heroes, one could walk for two miles in any direction before reaching the outer wall. New ways of keeping track of population, armies and expenses had to be created. The Empire's enormous size made riders and even ravens so ineffective for carrying messages, that hawks started being bred for this purpose. The carrier hawk, as it is now known, can carry a letter from the Capital to any city in a matter of hours, but their training is notoriously expensive. These methods proved extremely effective at keeping track the empire's affairs and state. In that golden age, fifty million people took pride in their Ephedian citizenship. As for the army, Seldolos the Great could call some 200,000 men to arms, excluding allies and mercenaries. Luckily, no war had to be fought on such a scale, as scholars and generals alike are certain it would spell disaster for any realm, be it winner or loser.

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The Ephedian Empire at its height, ca. 1900 AR (After the Return)

As the Ephedian Empire grew, prying eyes were watching from across the Sapphire Sea. The mighty Empire of Kartash, that stretched for almost 3000 miles to the east, before reaching the Terzesh river and the fabled Kingdom of Dhivakar. The Kartashi were already ruling over an empire when Ephedia was a little more than a market town,. A realm of such unfathomable size is too much for one ruler, as the Kartashi annals prove time and time again. Instead, each major region has one capital, whose governor has the right of decision making to a certain extent. In turn, these governors answer directly to the governor of Kartash, whose power is absolute over all provinces. It is thus closer to a freehold or republic than to an empire. There is no proper emperor, and the few who tried turning it into a true empire ended on spikes, at the order of their peers. Nevertheless, Kartash is an enemy Ephedia wishes to avoid at all costs. It is rumored that half a million men could answer Kartash's call to arms at any given time. Truth is, not a single soul wants to find the answer.

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The remnants of the Ephedian Empire after the Great War, ca. 2100 AR (After the Return)

But the answer did arrive. The Great War. After a thousand years of peace and trade, the two great empires clashed for the first time, in a war so monstrous, that it frightened even distant lands, so bloody that almost a million men would not see their homes again, and so costly, that it fractured the Ephedian Empire and nearly crumbled their rivals as well. Means of killing people had advanced so much, that tens of thousands could fall within the hour. A hundred-eighty years after the war, the echo of this titanic conflict still haunts the politics of the two empires.

Some argue that the Ephedian Empire's toughest days are ahead, not behind. It is the year 2114 after the return of Adaro the Father. In the face of internal crisis and new, unknown threats from the deep north, Ephedia must struggle to keep its dominion over whatever remains of its empire. And the threat of another war across the Sapphire Sea seems harder to avoid.

ARTIST FOUND - Thank you all! If I didn't only need a single map, I'd reach out to you all.

Hi there! So, I'll make this quick. I'm a professional GM (DnD mainly), and I've got a chance to bring my homebrew world into a new game once more. To this end, I am looking to commission at least one high quality, professional map of a region/subcontinent, and if all goes well this could expand to be several more maps (other regions, continent, world, and smaller scale such and city, etc...).

Don't hesitate to ask questions! Feel free to comment or DM me.