Today I have launched a Patreon campaign. If you would like to support my mapping activities, please check it out, and consider becoming a patron.
Here’s a short excerpt:
This Patreon is about helping me to make more maps for you and others to enjoy, and use in RPGs. During the day I work as a high school teacher in Japan. So all of my mapping is done in what little spare time I can find. I also have two (soon to be three) small children, so my time is quite limited.
That’s where I need your help. With a little funding, I could afford to spend more time on mapping. I could also invest in more software to assist with my efforts.
In short, I could make more maps.
I want to produce more Calidar maps. In fact, I want to map the whole world, continent by continent.
I hope this will open up new possibilities for my cartography, but I can’t do it without you. Whether you decide to pledge or not, thank you for your continued support! Please help by spreading word of this campaign.
Back in August 2014, when Bruce Heard’s first Calidar book, In Stranger Skies, was released, I wrote a review from my insider’s perspective. Please indulge me once again, as I’d like to do the same for the new book, Beyond the Skies.
Even in its early stages, it quickly became clear that Beyond the Skies would be a much larger beast than its predecessor. Bruce started working on it soon after In Stranger Skies was finished, and it went through various drafts before it became the 248 page book it is today.
The heart of the book is its chapters describing Calidar’s gods, split into pantheons based on each nation. There are more than 90 gods detailed in all, which is really quite mind-boggling. The write-up for each god follows a pattern, with a profile giving details of personality traits, dates of origin, places worshipped, etc. This is followed by “mythology”, which usually presents the god in terms of a story its followers often tell, or sometimes just a narrative introduction. Finally there is a description, detailing the god’s appearance, motives, secrets, and relations with other gods.
Thor, by Joe Garcia
Without exception, the write-ups are very well thought out, carefully constructed, and a pleasure to read. This is thanks to Bruce’s diligent writing process, with many gods seeing multiple (often extensive) rewrites and revisions over the course of the project. Within each pantheon the gods are all connected, and one of the delights of the book is discovering the connections between the different pantheons.
While the god profiles are undoubtedly the core of the book, in fact these chapters also present a wealth of other background material on each nation — so much so that CC1 Beyond the Skies is just as much a core setting book as CAL1 In Stranger Skies.
Specifically, each nation receives a historical timeline revealing its early history from the point of view of the gods and their faithful. Some of these are even more detailed, such as Belledor’s, which includes the story of the fellfolk migrations from throughout the Great Caldera.
One of more than 90 divine symbols
There’s also a temple floor plan, a map showing the geographic distribution of different faiths, and a diagram showing the relationships between the gods in each chapter.
Did I mention that each and every single god has its own divine symbol?
The remainder of the book details demons and divine followers, secret societies of the gods, mortal religious organisations, and even benefits and divine favours granted to faithful followers. Not to mention articles providing a closer look at essential Calidar topics such as the netherworld, seitha, and the Dread Lands.
Temple of Odin
Beyond the Skies is illustrated with a beautiful cover by Den Beauvais, and internal black and white art by Joe Garcia, Eric Lofgren, and Simon Todd. There are some really nice pieces in there, and I found myself really enjoying the different styles of each artist — particularly since each pantheon was assigned to a different person, so the pantheons all have their own art style.
The focus of the book being what it is, there wasn’t as much call for maps this time round. But I did have fun creating thematic maps for each pantheon.
My main contribution this time round is undoubtedly the layout, which was a long and painstaking process, although of course worth it in the end.
We are rapidly approaching the conclusion of this project. This may even turn out to be the last post, if community feedback is mostly positive. So let’s get into it.
The Atlas of Mystara World Model
Mystara 2016 Diagram 1
Diagram 1 shows the world model, as determined by the world dimensions we came to previously. All of the diagrams and images in this post are derived from Placement 5, which seemed to be the most popular of the placements I proposed. (There was also support for placement 4, with its tunnel-shaped polar openings, but if we can preserve the polar openings in their original shape, that would be preferable.)
I have split the world into four parts, as illustrated on the right of this diagram: the Hollow World, the Outer World and the two Polar Lips. The north-south measurements of each of these are also given; these are essential for fitting the world maps to the 3D model correctly.
The next three diagrams show the model itself, which is very simply a 3D extrusion of the shape in diagram 1.
I made the rendered diagrams blue to differentiate from the 2012 versions of these same diagrams.
Finally, here’s the sunlight diagram:
Mystara 2016 Diagram 5
The areas of black marked in the northern polar opening show the extent of the Darklands — where neither sun shines. An area the same size exists in the southern polar opening. There’s also an area which experiences both day and night in summer, marked in grey, but most of the land at the poles gets constant day in midsummer and constant day in midwinter.
With that out of the way, it’s time to explore the model.
Atlas of Mystara 3D Model
This is it: hopefully the final model and placement. I put some clouds on this one for fun, but the rest of the mock-ups are cloud free for better clarity.
From straight on, Mystara looks like a ball with its top and bottom cut off:
The latitudes seem to be working rather well, don’t you think?
Here’s a better view of the Arm of the Immortals and the Savage Coast area:
Skothar:
And Davania:
When it’s on the model, Davania is far more visibly South America and Africa with Antarctica and Australia added on. It’s very clear to see in this image.
Next, let’s take a look at the polar openings. The north pole:
Frosthaven sits just south of absolute north. The composition of the polar opening seems close to the official maps. Note that Nentsun is actually quite small — it’s only marginally larger than Frosthaven in size.
Next, the south pole:
Just the very southern tip of the continent falls into the opening, but it goes about halfway in. As expected, southern Davania is far smaller than it looks on the world maps, due to the pinching effect of the poles, which is lessened on Mystara thanks to the polar openings, but it still significant.
Now let’s delve into the Hollow World. In these shots, you can see the polar openings as well as the Hollow World itself.
The extent of the expanded Grey Sea and Sea of Keleb is apparent in this last one.
Let’s take a closer look.
The fuzziness is because I haven’t rendered these shots, as it takes close to two hours to do so. That can wait for the finished Atlas versions of these maps, hopefully in a few years’ time.
It’s perhaps a little hard to make out how the curvature works here, so let’s try some perspective shots.
The placement of the Hollow World’s landmasses seems pretty good.
Conclusion
I’m quite happy with this model. What do you think?
If you have any feedback, please don’t hold back. Now is the time to iron out any issues.
If nothing major comes up, I will declare the project closed, and all my maps from that point on will use this as the model. Of course there’s a huge amount of work needed to turn these collages back into usable maps, but that is for the next project.
