#arcaneexploration

🗺️✨ New Release: Magical Geographic ✨🗺️

There are still places where the maps end...

…and the adventure truly begins.

Magical Geographic is the newest release in the Starforge Tales – Forged Tome Collection, featuring 16 original painterly fantasy illustrations celebrating the wonder of exploration, forgotten civilizations, mythical landscapes, and ancient magic waiting to be rediscovered.

Journey to places beyond legend:

🗺️ Hidden underground libraries

🏔️ Floating mountain kingdoms

🦄 Mythical migrations across bridges of living light

🌳 Colossal world trees

✨ Ancient magical ruins

📜 Forgotten maps and lost civilizations

🔮 Quiet moments of discovery that remind us the greatest treasure is the next horizon.

Whether you're a fantasy fan, worldbuilder, writer, Game Master, or simply someone who loves exploring impossible worlds, Magical Geographic invites you to take the first step into the unknown.

📚 Available now: https://payhip.com/b/ix5LE

Every expedition begins with curiosity.

Every map begins with a single discovery.

Every world begins at the Starforge.

By tradition, every expedition ended the same way.

No matter how successful the journey had been, no matter how many discoveries filled their journals, the explorers gathered one final evening before returning home.

They climbed the highest point they could reach.

They lit a single lantern.

Then they waited.

No speeches were given.

No medals were awarded.

The silence was part of the ritual.

When Elian joined his first expedition, he found the custom baffling.

"We've crossed three mountain ranges," he whispered to Captain Selene. "We've uncovered forgotten temples, mapped rivers no one has seen for centuries, and cataloged creatures believed to exist only in legend."

She nodded.

"We have."

"So...why are we sitting here?"

Instead of answering, she pointed toward the western horizon.

The sun slipped beneath the distant peaks.

Twilight settled across the world.

One by one, tiny lights appeared.

Not stars.

Lanterns.

Dozens of them.

Then hundreds.

Far across the valleys and mountains, other expeditions were ending their own journeys.

Each team stood on a distant summit, raising a single light to the coming night.

The mountains became a constellation of explorers.

Elian stared in wonder.

"We're not alone."

"We never were," Selene replied.

"Every generation thinks it's the first to chase forgotten roads."

She smiled as another lantern flickered to life on a faraway ridge.

"But every generation leaves a light for those still searching."

Elian carefully removed his own lantern from his pack.

He set it beside the others.

Its warm glow joined the countless lights stretching beyond the horizon.

In that quiet moment, he understood that exploration was never about being the first to arrive.

It was about making the next journey a little less lonely.

When darkness finally embraced the world, the lanterns remained.

Not to mark where the explorers had been...

...but to remind those still walking that somewhere ahead, fellow seekers waited beneath the same sky.

The map was blank by sunrise.

Every morning, without fail.

Its parchment erased itself as though the previous day's discoveries had never existed.

New members of the Arcane Survey Guild found this infuriating.

Veteran explorers considered it the map's greatest lesson.

"Knowledge isn't something you carry," Guildmaster Oris would remind them. "It's something you learn well enough to find again."

When the expedition entered the Valley of Echoing Glass, they expected another week of careful surveying.

Instead, they found a landscape that refused to remain the same.

Crystal arches shifted with the movement of the sun.

Rivers wandered across the valley floor without leaving a trace.

Entire hillsides shimmered into existence at twilight before fading with the dawn.

Every sketch they made was obsolete before the ink had dried.

Frustration spread through the camp.

"We'll never finish," one apprentice sighed.

An elderly scout simply smiled.

"Perhaps finishing was never the goal."

That evening, the explorers climbed a ridge overlooking the valley.

As darkness settled, countless stars reflected from the crystal landscape below until earth and sky became indistinguishable.

Then the impossible happened.

Lines of silver light began to connect the stars overhead.

The same lines appeared across the valley beneath them.

For a single quiet hour, the heavens became a map.

The cartographers worked in silence, tracing the luminous pathways before the stars drifted apart once more.

When dawn arrived, the magical parchment erased itself as always.

No roads remained.

No landmarks survived.

Yet every member of the expedition instinctively knew the way forward.

The map had never been keeping a record.

It had been teaching them how to see.

Together they packed their journals, shouldered their gear, and followed a trail no ink could ever truly capture.

Some discoveries, they realized, belonged first in the heart and only afterward upon the page.

If they were fortunate, another explorer would someday look up at the same stars and continue the journey.

The expedition reached the valley just before dawn.

There should have been a city there.

Every surviving journal agreed.

Every ancient chart marked its location.

Instead, they found an empty basin wrapped in morning mist.

One by one, the younger explorers began comparing maps, convinced they had taken a wrong turn.

Captain Elian simply unpacked the camp.

"If the old records brought us here," he said, "then here is exactly where we belong."

They brewed tea, repaired boots, sharpened pencils, and waited for the sun.

As the first rays touched the valley floor, the mist shimmered.

Stone streets emerged.

Then bridges.

Gardens.

Fountains.

Tower after tower rose silently from the earth as though the city had merely been sleeping beneath the light.

No gates opened.

No spirits appeared.

No ancient guardians challenged their arrival.

The city welcomed them with birdsong.

Every building stood intact.

Libraries waited with open doors.

Workshops held tools arranged neatly upon their benches.

Greenhouses overflowed with flowers that somehow still followed the sun.

It felt less like a ruin...

...and more like someone had stepped outside for a morning walk a thousand years ago.

The explorers spread through the streets in respectful silence.

No one hurried.

No one searched for treasure.

The architects measured arches that had survived impossible ages.

The botanists collected seeds carried on the morning breeze.

The linguists copied inscriptions from doorways polished smooth by forgotten hands.

Near the center of the city stood a broad stone plaza.

Upon a single pedestal rested an unfinished map.

Its edges were blank.

Beside it lay a chisel and one final inscription.

Every generation discovers a world the last could never finish exploring.

Captain Elian smiled.

He handed the youngest member of the expedition a piece of chalk.

"Go ahead," he said.

"Add the first place that belongs to our time."

The young explorer knelt beside the ancient map.

For the first time in a thousand years...

By every known law of navigation, the observatory should have fallen centuries ago.

It stood upon a pillar of stone no wider than a village square, rising through an endless sea of storm clouds. Lightning circled the tower like silent guardians, yet never once touched its weathered walls.

Every expedition had seen it.

None had reached it.

Until Mara's.

Her team carried no siege equipment, no enchanted weapons, and no grand prophecy. Only journals, surveying instruments, climbing gear, and an unreasonable amount of optimism.

"The old builders always left a way," Mara said.

"We just have to learn how they thought."

Three days later, they discovered it.

Not a bridge.

A melody.

Hidden among the wind was a sequence of clear notes, almost too faint to hear. When the expedition's crystal chimes echoed the tune, ribbons of pale blue light stretched across the empty air, weaving themselves into a luminous staircase.

One careful step at a time, the explorers climbed above the storm.

Inside the observatory, countless telescopes pointed in impossible directions.

One looked beneath the earth.

Another toward memories.

A third followed paths that had not yet been walked.

At the center of the chamber rested a brass globe surrounded by hundreds of tiny floating stars.

As Mara approached, one star drifted gently into her hand.

The globe awakened.

New constellations blossomed across its surface.

Ancient routes spread between forgotten cities, hidden sanctuaries, and places no map had ever imagined.

An inscription appeared around the globe's rim.

The sky was never drawn to limit the traveler. It was drawn to invite the journey.

No one spoke.

The cartographer quietly unfolded a fresh map.

The historian opened a blank journal.

The expedition had arrived searching for one forgotten observatory.

The maps of the Arcane Survey Guild were unlike any others.

Most showed mountains, rivers, forests, and roads.

Guild maps also marked places that did not yet exist.

A bridge that might be built.

A village that could one day flourish.

A forgotten pass waiting to be rediscovered.

Young apprentices often assumed the silver ink was a mistake.

Master Cartographer Brann never corrected them.

"Reality is only one of the world's habits," he would say.

"When people stop imagining, the map shrinks."

Lina had spent three years learning the craft before she was trusted with her first expedition.

She expected to chart valleys and ruins.

Instead, Brann handed her a blank parchment.

"There isn't anything here," she protested.

"Exactly."

Together they climbed to the highest ridge overlooking an untouched wilderness.

"What do you see?" Brann asked.

"Trees."

"Look again."

She studied the landscape.

A river curved gently through the valley.

A line of ancient stones hinted at an old road.

Cliffs sheltered a meadow from the northern wind.

A flock of brilliant birds circled above a spring hidden beneath the canopy.

Slowly, possibilities emerged.

"A village could thrive there," she whispered.

"A bridge could cross the river."

"An observatory belongs on that peak."

Brann smiled.

Her quill touched the parchment.

Silver ink flowed across the page.

Not recording the world...

Inviting it.

Years later, travelers would marvel that every village, bridge, and observatory appeared exactly where the guild's oldest maps had predicted.

They assumed the cartographers had seen the future.

The guild knew a quieter truth.

Sometimes the greatest explorers do not discover the world.

Every expedition carried the usual necessities.

Maps.

Rations.

Rope.

Lanterns.

And one Arcane Compass.

Unlike ordinary compasses, it ignored north entirely.

Instead, its silver needle pointed toward the nearest undiscovered wonder.

Some explorers disliked them.

"They never lead anywhere easy," they would complain.

Captain Selene considered that their finest quality.

On the twelfth day of an expedition through the Emerald Expanse, her crew expected the compass to guide them toward another forgotten ruin.

Instead, the needle swung sharply upward.

They looked to the sky.

Nothing.

Only drifting clouds.

Then the clouds parted.

An island, invisible from below, floated silently overhead.

Stone bridges hung beneath it like the roots of an ancient tree.

Gardens spilled over its edges in brilliant cascades of glowing flowers.

No map had ever recorded such a place.

The crew cheered.

Selene only smiled.

"The compass has earned its keep again."

After hours of careful climbing, they reached the island.

There were no treasures.

No vaults of gold.

No legendary weapons.

Only a quiet garden surrounding a weathered pedestal.

Upon it rested a single inscription.

The greatest discoveries are those left beautiful enough for the next traveler to find.

The crew stood in silence.

No one reached for a chisel.

No one filled a sack with souvenirs.

Instead, the cartographer sketched every path.

The botanist cataloged each flower.

The historian copied the inscription.

Before leaving, Selene placed a fresh journal on the pedestal.

Inside the cover she wrote only one sentence.

"We found this place because someone before us chose to leave it untouched."

When they descended, the Arcane Compass trembled.

Its needle slowly turned.