Using Wikimedia Commons To Flesh Out Your World

I’ve been working on this weird Earthsea/Odyssey/de Camp/Howard setting for a while now, but was having trouble describing some of the locations of the world. For those who haven’t heard it before, the Middle Isles are populated with thousands of tiny aisles. Vengeful, accursed Titans await, as do weird cities with black ziggurats and drums in the night. Sea raids are a fact of life for many, and cold steel avails one much more than dangerous magic.

As I mentioned above, I knew how I could write about these places, but it felt like I was meeting those very special details to bring it all home.

That’s when I decided to try Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons has a huge number of landscape pics that may often be freely used (check the license). Below are just a few I’ve found to flesh out my world:

Norvuland is a place full of rolling, green mountains, where chieftains still rule in secluded valleys that are cut off from one another in the winter:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license; author Duncan McGoldrick

Further north, towards the edge of the world, the Eshem mountains see frozen rivers lead to a frozen sea:

Public Domain Photo

I also wanted some nicely evocative jungle scenery for some of the southern island settlements. I think this pic outside of a Thai village fits the bill:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license; author Paul Brockmeyer

Those are just a few examples, but whether you’re looking for a old bridge, a mountain vista, or an abandoned, dark beach, it should all be there for you at Wikimedia Commons. I also really like the idea of being able to produce photos to show my players when they ask what this part of the world or another actually looks like.