Ooh.. that looks cool.
Yuria looks as big as I imagined with your map.
It doesn't look big in the arcade games since we could travel very quickly with just walking.
In the original Golden Axe game, the map presented shows the heroes travelling from Firewood to Southwood. Given I plan a sequel with an explorable world map, no point for the first game to have the whole world. I will have to change the story a bit for it to all work, but while the story will be different, it will have all the same elements.
Also, I might put a tropical or rocky island in the centre of the map. It maybe the
Island of Axir where Tyris Flare tribe is located. Though, I either I rebrand Tyris' Amazon island tribe or relocate them to the jungle.
I have rough ideas for how each of the regions will look like. If you ever played
Fallout: New Vegas and familiar with how big the map is then I imagine each region roughly that size. (As much as I liked Fo:NV for its accuracy to lore and story that allows you to be a more independent and flexible character, I always thought the
Mojave Wasteland was rather small compared to the
Capital Wasteland or
the Commonwealth.)
About elves, well, so far we only see male elves in Golden Axe.
Keel and the thieves.
While I could call Keel beautiful, that's not the case for the Thieves.
The thieves were also identified as "gnomes". In my fan-lore, I reidentified them as bluecaps... and maybe greencaps.
One of Britain's (particularly Scotland's) known types of fairies is called the
redcap (also known as redcomb, bloody caps, powries and dunters). The more infamous redcap known as
Robin Redcap.
The redcap is a goblin that scours the battlefields of recent conflict for the recently deceased. Some sources say it actually bends over and dips its scalp into pools of blood, others say it has a cloth hat which it soaks with blood. Either way, it's regarded a vamperic, ghoul-like sort of goblin. They live in abandoned castles and if encountered, they will attack you. While they wear iron-clad shoes, they can still run very fast and when they kill you, will feast on your flesh and bathe their caps in your blood.
In Scottish folklore there is such thing as a
bluecap but it's much different to redcaps. Bluecaps appeared like blue flames (not to be confused with above ground
will o' wisps), like
knockers or
kobolds, would guide miners towards rich deposits or warn them of dangers such as on-coming cave ins.
In my Golden Axe fan-take on the thieves, instead of elves or gnomes, they're rebranded as these kinds of cloth-hat wearing goblins that are identified by their caps.
I might include variants such as:
Bluecaps- Common variety. They sneak into storages belonging to temples or wizards and steal their potions and magic oil. They would also target unsuspecting travellers.
Greencaps- The gatherers. They go around collecting food for their colonies. Wild fruit, herbs, berries, though will steal fruit and meat from travellers and market places.
Redcaps- Goblins with daggers. While just as agile as the other goblins, they're aggressive and will actively attack you.
Goldcaps- Might be exclusive to GoldEdge, I like to imagine them wearing little crowns. Basically, they have a lot of horns/money on them and maybe other valued collectibles. Rare to come across them.
