Thorfinn Tait Cartography

2 December 2015

Mapping Osriel in CC1

Yesterday, Bruce Heard announced the beginning of the Kickstarter for his second Calidar book, CC1 Beyond the Skies. You probably already know that it’s a book of deities and demigods, divided into pantheons, with one for each Great Calderan nation. Osriel, however, is a special case.

The lands of Osriel were originally known as the Dawn Wilds, and they were fought over by all of the lunar races and their colonies. To further complicate things, their gods made a number of deals with the Gate Keeper to bring in new colonists from the Vortex. These cultures from another dimension mixed with the lunar colonists, eventually forming eight or nine states, each with different culture and language.

Eventually the disparate realms joined into a single nation, unified by its interest in multiculturalism and trade. As a result, the gods of Osriel are many and varied; known as the Calderan Pantheon, Osriel’s pantheon draws its gods from all over the Great Caldera.

tm1 tm2 western and eastern countries 8 png24

26 November 2015

Known World Trail Map

Atlas of Mystara, hex maps, Mystara 2

Growing up with the Known World of Mystara, TM1 The Western Countries and TM2 The Eastern Countries were always two of my favourite products. They combined most of the Gazetteer series maps into two massive super-maps, allowing us to see for the first time what the whole region looked like. I never had enough wall space in my room to put either of them on the wall, and unfolding them side by side took up the whole floor of my living room, so it wasn’t something I could do very often.

Some years later, at university, Mystara had already finished its run, and the nascent Mystara Internet community was going from strength to strength. I shared a large room with my brother in an Edinburgh flat, with a big blank wall right behind my bed.

You can guess what I did with that wall.

25 November 2015

Welcome to thorfmaps.com!

Welcome to the official website for Thorfinn Tait Cartography.

I am in the process of moving all of my web content here. The Atlas of Mystara has already been rehosted to this domain, as have my other Mystara projects such as the Font FAQ. I am building a new Portfolio here, which I hope to unveil soon. I will also post details of my commissions process, for those of you interested in commissioning a map.

My old blog will eventually be rehoused here, and I will be posting new articles on this site from here on out.

In the meantime, please check out my Facebook page, and indeed my Google+ page. Both of these are full of my most recent work, including previews of my latest Calidar work as well as my ongoing work on Mystara.

If you need to contact me, feel free to use the contact form available in the menu above, or just message me through social media channels.