Hollow World Set Northern Iciria, 40 miles per hex
The Hollow World Set‘s twin maps of Iciria presented a fantastic overview of the setting with a surprising amount of detail. Compared with the Known World, the Hollow World’s maps were amazingly regular and consistent, due to the far more structured birth this subsetting enjoyed.
The scale is unique to this map and its sister map. Far more detailed than 72 miles per hex and yet more compact than 24 miles per hex, the 40 mile per hex scale suited the sprawling empires of this land of lost civilisations. It also converts to 8 miles per hex reasonably well. In a strange twist, the scale was entirely left out of the Hollow World Campaign Set and its maps, and only came to light a few months after publication when Bruce Heard answered a question about it in Dragon Magazine.
This map holds a special place in the Atlas, as it was the first to be started, way back in my first attempts at mapping in 1999. For the full story, see Threshold Issue #11.
Replica Map (November 2020)
Sources
- The Hollow World Set (1990) (PDF at DriveThruRPG)
- Poster map C
- Cartography supervised by Dave Sutherland; executed by Dave Sutherland, Diesel, Dennis Kauth, and Frey Graphics
Map Types
The Atlas of Mystara includes a few fundamentally different types of maps. The colour of the castle wall border on each map shows which category it belongs to.
- Replica maps (white castle border) are exact replicas of primary source maps. They present the world of Mystara as the original source materials depict it, warts and all. No attempt has been made to fix errors of any kind — even typos. As far as possible, replica maps use the same art as the original maps, though in many cases they are colourised. These maps are the main source material of the Atlas of Mystara, forming the base of all of the updated maps.
- Updated maps (green castle border) present the Atlas of Mystara’s consistent view of the world, with all errors, alignment issues, and so on fixed. They use standardised hex art and fonts. Anything not marked as a replica map is an updated map.
- Chronological maps (yellow castle border) provide snapshots of Mystara at the end of a certain year in its publication history. In effect, they are updated maps created from a limited list of sources. The years in question appear in the title of each map.
- Fan-made maps are unofficial maps created by other fan cartographers. As such, they do not follow the Atlas’s castle border colour scheme. The Atlas presents these maps in their original form, with the permission of the cartographers. The Atlas considers these maps secondary sources, and updated maps of areas not covered by official maps make extensive use of them. In a few cases, the Atlas also presents Replica fan-made maps (red castle border).
Hollow World, 40 miles per hex – Atlas of Mystara
28 March 2018 @ 10:14 pm
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