Arm of the Immortals, 24 miles per hex
Behold, the Arm of the Immortals, at 24 miles per hex!
After spending the morning writing the previous article, I spent the afternoon and evening whipping this up.
The Brun outline from CM1 allowed this expansion, providing a guide for the coastlines. It was quite a good match, except for the top left and bottom right of Dragon 200’s map. But this is no problem — at most it results in two or three extra rows of hexes in a couple of locations.
The bottom half of the map is from Dragon 200, with shallow and deep water added in. The tip of the Orc’s Head Peninsula is visible on the right — for now, just enough to see the dimensions of the Strait of Yalu. I will undoubtedly expand the map to include the Orc’s Head Peninsula and the whole of Yalu Bay before long.
The top of the map is divided in half, with the right hand side adapted from Red Steel and Savage Baronies, and the left hand side (including the plateaus) completely my own invention.
I noticed that the Endworld Line doesn’t come all the way down to the Arm of the Immortals, so I have left a gap between the mountain ranges in the north. The idea is that the mountains in the top left are the beginnings of the Endworld Line.
This is very much a work in progress, so feel free to chime in if you have any thoughts, ideas, etc.
3 January 2016 @ 9:47 pm
Slight typo in the little village of Preuve, should be (Renardy) not (Rendary), otherwise excellent work, as usual!
I am interested in why you combined the 2 different types of trees in the north, but I suspect that will become clearer when your latitude topics come up.
3 January 2016 @ 9:59 pm
Thanks! I’ve fixed the typo and will include it with the next update.
There’s a latitude line on the map above which the trees are generally marked as evergreen in official maps. This is roughly where that line is, so I had some fun. 🙂
3 January 2016 @ 10:48 pm
Awesome map.
Ideas?…ok
My idea is to keep the Plateaus populated. The winged elves and winged minotaurs would moste surely have investigated and made use of these excellent locations. Maybe no more a part of the Southern kingdoms, but surely some mutual source.
Secondly, i would leave the western coast line and lower inlands to the local creatures.
Traces of some of the passing elves centuries ago could exist, although i believe the majority would be more inclined in following the eastern coast. The small strip west i feel is too small to encompass the whole elven flight from vulcania without causing severe problems or side effects.
Third; the large green valley northwest would surely draw both lines of elves together again …on the eastern side of the Endworld line… ergonomically spoken this must have been the most logical and thus reasonable.solution..or…..there must be a reason they continued to follow the difficult mountainous and treacherous west coast instead.
Also i think that the depths in the western sea would be inclined to go rapidly deeper, (as similar to USA and South america mountain chains) due tectonics. So i would add more depth near eachtother on that side.
Thus giving possibility to deepsea cultures…(some lovecraftian maybe? 😉 )
if the yalubay is indeed thus shaped, local races would populate it. As an inland sea, it would give warmer temperatures, and other climate, ecology and thus cultures.
4 January 2016 @ 1:44 am
Great ideas, Robin. Thanks! I hope that the community will be able to come up with stuff to fill these gaps in due time.
About the water depths, I was thinking the same thing as I drew them in. I’ll have to go back and change them — and perhaps add in another level of depth to emphasise that this is no coastal shelf.
4 January 2016 @ 2:46 am
Regarding the elves, Carillion mentioned that the eastern side of the Endworld Line should be dry and inhospitable. That could be one reason. Another reason could be that the culture occupying the space between the Great Immortals’ Shield and the Endworld Line could have been very unwelcoming to elves…
4 January 2016 @ 1:40 am
The original plan was to have the Princess Ark visit all these areas along the Arm of the Immortal and around Yalu Bay. It never happened, but the assumption ought to be that various and assorted realms exist there, much like the the rest of the Savage Coast.
4 January 2016 @ 1:42 am
Thanks for the input, Bruce! That’s great to know. 😀
I tried to make the terrain look inviting as well as naturally divided into nice little parcels for miscellaneous kingdoms to be added.
4 January 2016 @ 1:43 am
Thorf, yes, it looks great. =)
5 January 2016 @ 12:09 pm
Populating the west coast of the Arm, you could imagine seafaring people from Skothar bravely make the trek.
5 January 2016 @ 2:19 pm
Quite how much of a trek it is depends on your view of Mystara’s size. You may have noticed that I deleted the Strait of Tangor label. This is because I’m of the opinion that the Far End Ocean spans almost half the world between Brun and Skothar. So there is no Strait of Tangor, because the continents are in fact thousands of miles apart.
Some people choose to overlook this, but that’s not an option for the Atlas.
Of course, there could still be settlers from Skothar, but it would be a major trek to get to Brun. 😉
5 January 2016 @ 2:40 pm
Polynesians found a way to get across vast distances of ocean too. It would be far outside the scope of this project, but why couldn’t the Farend Ocean have its scattered island chains of atolls like the South Pacific.
Speaking of island, the sea south of the Known World has such fantastic archipelagos giving so many islands that when I was mapping the Savage Coast region I was having a severe withdrawal of awesome island chains to provide interesting destinations. 😉 I felt that when I got around to hex mapping the coast of Davania opposite of the Savage Coast that since I wouldn’t have to worry about canon that I might throw in some off-coast islands all over that coast of Davania.
5 January 2016 @ 3:23 pm
You’re quite right, there. It’s a long, long way, but that doesn’t mean no one could make it.
I also agree with you about islands. The Savage Coast itself did have a few, but Red Steel didn’t add any more when it added in empty swathes of the Western Sea.
My take on islands is that as long as we keep them small, we can add small islands anywhere that hasn’t yet been covered by 8 mile per hex maps. I also feel that Mystara doesn’t have small islands in such number as the real world; archipelagoes tend to be limited to 2-4 islands, with a few notable exceptions. And lone islands are quite common, if the Sea of Dread is anything to go by.
The Far End Ocean is going to need something added to it, I think. Leaving it empty leaves a bit too much blank space on the map, and makes the world look a bit lopsided. As to what it contains, that is up to the community. It seems like a great opportunity to do add an Atlantis-like continent to the world, but Mystara’s complex history makes this a daunting task.
It might be interesting to add a second “known world” of sorts round that side of the world. The obvious inspiration would be a Mystara version of the orient, but I’d be happy with anything that fits with the rest of the world. Of course, its remoteness would mean that influence on the rest of the world would be minor.
I still feel strongly that the map for this should be based on another ancient earth map — something like this would be best:
http://cpgeosystems.com/430Marect.jpg
What excites me about these ideas is the opportunity for us to produce a new sub-setting.
Christian’s Western Brun, 24 miles/hex | Atlas of Mystara
20 June 2021 @ 9:50 pm
[…] Atlas version of this map is not yet available, though a work-in-progress updated map of the Arm of the Immortals, 24 miles per hex is at Thorfinn Tait Cartography. See also Appendix C for annual chronological snapshots […]