Gulluvia

The original version of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess (1981) included a map of Gulluvia, in the region that would later be the Adri Varma Plateau. The module itself was recalled and destroyed — you can read the full story at the Vaults of Pandius here, as well as download a PDF of the original module, which Wizards of the Coast made available more than twenty years after its abortive release.

The Gulluvia map was almost certainly unknown to Mystara’s designers due to its history, and as a result of this no other products reference Gulluvia, and the Adri Varma Plateau was developed in another direction, taking on a wastelands theme with extensive badlands and cacti.

Because of all this, as well as the nature of the map itself, integrating Gulluvia into Mystara is quite a challenge at this point.

Michele Carpita and the Italian Mystara community chose to adapt it to the new conception of the Adri Varma, placing various elements from B3’s map into the terrain from maps in Wrath of the Immortals. I have posted an archive of the original post for reference. Francesco Defferrari has created a larger scale version of Michele’s map, available at the Vaults. Omnibus has written a gazetteer for this version, bringing it and other fan ideas for the Adri Varma into a cohesive whole. Gary Davies produced the English version of this, together with an English version of the map.

But my Let’s Map Mystara project demands that I place it using only contemporary maps if at all possible. So I’d like to explore the map with reference only to the original X1 map.

Before we continue, it’s also worth noting that Entire Party Killed has already created an 8 mile hex replica of B3’s Haven map, but it requires an account to access. This is relevant because if possible I’d like to make my map fit with the placement of their hex grid.

A Problem of Scale

The first challenge is working out the scale. The map itself has a label claiming 1 inch to equal 15 miles. It was likely printed on a standard US Letter-sized page (8.5 inches across), and indeed the scan measures 8.227 inches across, which seems consistent. Taking this at face value, we can work out the exact scale as follows. First, I created a 15 mile ruler, scaled to my georegistered version of the X1 map. Next, I scaled this to 8.227 times its original width, which comes out at 123.4 miles.

With this measurement done, the exact scale of the map should match X1. Next, I noticed that the map was a little squint on the page, so I rotated it ever so slightly to make the borders look a bit straighter. It doesn’t seem possible to make them completely straight, however, as they were clearly drawn a little squint.