Alphatia

Bellissaria Revisited

Thus far, the consensus seems to be to base Bellissaria’s position on the 72 mile per hex map centred on Alphatia’s 24 mile per hex map.

Here’s what this looks like:

Note how well the 72 mile per hex map lines up with 24 mile per hex Alphatia.  It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s pretty good — especially Sundsvall.

You can also just make out the little corner of Bellissaria that was visible on the Alatian Islands map.  Bellissaria’s coastline is only a single 24 mile hex away from this — although the Alatians themselves are not in sync.

If there’s agreement, I will move forward with this configuration as the basis for both Bellissaria and Esterhold’s positions — and therefore Skothar’s too.

72 mile per hex map alignment

While we’re on this topic, I’d like to call attention to something that we discussed in the Piazza thread for this project more than two years ago: the consistency of the 72 mile per hex maps.  There are four of these: one in Dawn of the Emperors, and one from each Poor Wizard’s Almanac, I, II and III.

In general, these maps line up rather well with each other.  The coasts were obviously redrawn for each map, but they are very similar otherwise.

The 72 mile per hex maps in general are the best sources for Bellissaria, Esterhold, Minaea, and the other small areas of Skothar visible on them; and for the regions of Davania shown on Dawn and Poor Wizard’s Almanac II‘s maps.  They are also the only sources for the area across the Icereach Mountains from Norwold.

However, though they align nicely with each other, we have already seen that their alignment with the other scales of maps is rather lacking.  For this reason, as well as the extremely zoomed out nature of this scale, we need to take everything on these maps with a grain of salt.

Here’s a combined reference map I hacked together from all four maps.  The only thing that it doesn’t show is the conflict between Dawn and Poor Wizard’s Almanac II‘s Davania.

Note that Davania and Norwold both require their own treatments, which I will tackle in upcoming articles.

This map merges the poster maps from Dawn of the Emperors (adding the edge of the Isle of Dawn, missing from the original Alphatia poster) with evergreen/deciduous forest info from Wrath of the Immortals, with some conversions of Bruce Heard’s excellent 8 mile per hex Alphatia maps in there too.  I haven’t even scratched the surface of this last category, but other than the coastlines and tiny islands, I’m not really sure I want to anyway.  Maps of this scale are supposed to be general and vague, after all.