The Ever-Evolving Emia

Emia

It took me many hours and almost a full eraser to finally come up with the look of my world. I thought about the conflict of the moon of Pooria, and Emia's proximity to Yuthar, it's mother planet that it revolves around, and then jumped into some space websites that talked about the impacts of asteroids during the development of planets. If Yuthar is the larger mother planet and Emia and Pooria were her moons, then perhaps Pooria was once part of Yuthar, as maybe was Emia. What kind of cataclysmic event bombarded the surface of Emia? What would Emia then look like? After that, it didn't take long for me to develop a map I could be proud of, with some very unique land masses. The oceans, being hit with massive bombardments of rock, lifts its crust, the majority of the masses of land being the remnants of the asteroids themselves. After some cutting and pasting I created the world of Emia on Photoshop CS, adding the majority of my current world view for the players along the eastern edge in the Land of Mysts.
You'll note there are locations marked without names. Because it's a new world! The places that are known are labeled, either by traveling to the place or because it's mentioned in game or on a map. But the unknown places, are left to the player to find, explore, and help create.
One of the things me and one of my players would talk about using the older more developed world of Faerun was that, it was pretty much all discovered. And he wasn't wrong. He liked the idea of being able to find something new... to discover. And I liked the idea too.
Being able to keep parts of your map and world blank, for it to be discovered later, helps to narrow your field of view as a DM, to focus on the finer points of the world around your players. Keep it simple, stupid, is a great way to begin your campaign and make it your own and a world that your players can say easily, "Hey, remember when we found that swamp village full of monster crickets?" and have it be unique to your world.