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Description
I've been wanting to make a region out of this location for a while. The place it's based on is really well framed by the geography, so it's a natural fit for the kind of stuff I make. ...On the other hand, however, I may have wasted this opportunity by cramming it with too many cities. This is what happens when I reach the logical extreme of my "Make more places available! Add more details!" phase. That philosophy works great in regions like Mesoccital, where you need to fit a lot on just a little land. Here, with very little water...? Well... It only makes this harder for me (or whoever else claims it) in the future - this has /more cities/ than Sinnoh.

However, reasoning which cities to include is almost the first step in my process (and I don't want to do this all over again), and having many places DOES allow me to address the tons of different people groups and international issues in the Near East. One of the main themes that runs throughout these projects is cultural inclusion, and that means including details that some might miss. There aren't any routes in between Turkey and Armenia, or Azerbaijan and Armenia for that matter. The only way to get to the Russian-owned city of Derbent is around the mountains, as the mountainous part of the border is heavily guarded. The Kurdish cities are more interconnected with Iran than Turkey; the desert cities in Syria and Iraq stick to water sources and each other. No one's reading this, so: how bad is it really that I'm making ISIS and anti-Kurd Turkish nationalists this region's goofy but still immeasurably evil villain team? Also - this has nothing to do with politics, but - I'm really proud that I got Mount Ararat to be located almost entirely in the center. There's likely going to be some ingame themes regarding it similar to how Sinnoh's Coronet was handled.

Two more things to address about this specific image: one, I've finally settled on a set of desert colors I enjoy, and I'm going to be using them in an Oirat Region edit in the future. The other thing is addressing an issue that's come up about how "same-y" all of my work is to each other. To be clear: that's intentional! There is a specific map style that the artists working on Pokémon Diamond & Pearl spent a lot of time perfecting. The goal of my work is for when someone plays the game, loves it like I did, and realizes it's based on a real place, they can go onto the internet and find /their/ home represented in what is (or might become) another Pokémon game set in the same style. (That's right - every somewhat-populated land on Earth is eventually going to get some sort of content.) Additionally, every place having the same style makes it MUCH easier and eye-pleasing when I ultimately publish the whole world as one large, conglomerated playable region. (Uy. That's gonna be fun to piece together. /s)

Oh, and one last thing before the city list: DON'T BE AFRAID TO SEND ME YOUR IDEAS for what you want to see next. Chances are, I'll eventually work on it anyways, so this is your chance to frame it the way you wish it.

CITY LIST (in alphabetical order, no way I'll be able to show which city is which just with text):

Aleppo, Syria
Ar Raqqah, Syria
Baku, Azerbaijan
Batumi, Georgia
Derbent, Russian Dagestan
Diyarbakir, Kurdistan
Elazig, Kurdistan
Erzurum, East Anatolia
Ganja, Azerbaijan
Gaziantep, East Anatolia
Hamedan, Iran
Kirkuk & Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
Mosul & Erbil, Iraq
Tabriz, Iran
Tbilisi, Georgia
Rasht, Iran
Samsun, East Anatolia
Trebizond, East Anatolia
Urmia, Iran
Van, Kurdistan
Yerevan, Armenia

Pixlr link, if you want to edit it for yourself: sta.sh/0dx6gh5z6j7

Description
I've been wanting to make a region out of this location for a while. The place it's based on is really well framed by the geography, so it's a natural fit for the kind of stuff I make. ...On the other hand, however, I may have wasted this opportunity by cramming it with too many cities. This is what happens when I reach the logical extreme of my "Make more places available! Add more details!" phase. That philosophy works great in regions like Mesoccital, where you need to fit a lot on just a little land. Here, with very little water...? Well... It only makes this harder for me (or whoever else claims it) in the future - this has /more cities/ than Sinnoh.

However, reasoning which cities to include is almost the first step in my process (and I don't want to do this all over again), and having many places DOES allow me to address the tons of different people groups and international issues in the Near East. One of the main themes that runs throughout these projects is cultural inclusion, and that means including details that some might miss. There aren't any routes in between Turkey and Armenia, or Azerbaijan and Armenia for that matter. The only way to get to the Russian-owned city of Derbent is around the mountains, as the mountainous part of the border is heavily guarded. The Kurdish cities are more interconnected with Iran than Turkey; the desert cities in Syria and Iraq stick to water sources and each other. No one's reading this, so: how bad is it really that I'm making ISIS and anti-Kurd Turkish nationalists this region's goofy but still immeasurably evil villain team? Also - this has nothing to do with politics, but - I'm really proud that I got Mount Ararat to be located almost entirely in the center. There's likely going to be some ingame themes regarding it similar to how Sinnoh's Coronet was handled.

Two more things to address about this specific image: one, I've finally settled on a set of desert colors I enjoy, and I'm going to be using them in an Oirat Region edit in the future. The other thing is addressing an issue that's come up about how "same-y" all of my work is to each other. To be clear: that's intentional! There is a specific map style that the artists working on Pokémon Diamond & Pearl spent a lot of time perfecting. The goal of my work is for when someone plays the game, loves it like I did, and realizes it's based on a real place, they can go onto the internet and find /their/ home represented in what is (or might become) another Pokémon game set in the same style. (That's right - every somewhat-populated land on Earth is eventually going to get some sort of content.) Additionally, every place having the same style makes it MUCH easier and eye-pleasing when I ultimately publish the whole world as one large, conglomerated playable region. (Uy. That's gonna be fun to piece together. /s)

Oh, and one last thing before the city list: DON'T BE AFRAID TO SEND ME YOUR IDEAS for what you want to see next. Chances are, I'll eventually work on it anyways, so this is your chance to frame it the way you wish it.

CITY LIST (in alphabetical order, no way I'll be able to show which city is which just with text):

Aleppo, Syria
Ar Raqqah, Syria
Baku, Azerbaijan
Batumi, Georgia
Derbent, Russian Dagestan
Diyarbakir, Kurdistan
Elazig, Kurdistan
Erzurum, East Anatolia
Ganja, Azerbaijan
Gaziantep, East Anatolia
Hamedan, Iran
Kirkuk & Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
Mosul & Erbil, Iraq
Tabriz, Iran
Tbilisi, Georgia
Rasht, Iran
Samsun, East Anatolia
Trebizond, East Anatolia
Urmia, Iran
Van, Kurdistan
Yerevan, Armenia

Pixlr link, if you want to edit it for yourself: sta.sh/0dx6gh5z6j7