By the way, Thorf, I don't know if this was already discussed, but considering the Princess Ark and Red Steel maps' gap, which will be the destiny of the Keep of Vastrovek, Tower of Brugzol, Narvich and Bukovosko (between the City-States and Kladanovic)?

Well, so far I have ignored that part of the map completely. But perhaps we could rescue them... The terrain on the Red Steel map should obviously be completely ignored, but there's no reason to discard those settlements and their names completely. We might have to tweak their positions a bit, I'm not sure.

Actually though I had forgotten about them completely, until you brought them up now.

At least with Keep of Vastrovek we might not have problems, it was placed very close to Kastr (in the other side of the "Yavdlom Outer Reaches" border). This seems to be the easiest one.
Narvich is definitely between Kastr and Kladanovic. Pehaps Bukovosko is close to the Throat River... And I have no idea about Tower of Brugzol... Pehaps in the Konumtali Savannah? By the way, I don't even know what inhabits this tower (pehaps hobgoblins?)

This one took quite a while - drawing in all those mountain contour lines. I'm glad that not too many maps have them!

Incidentally, this is part of my continuing effort to finalise my updated Gazetteer series maps. Yes, that's right: it has finally come time for me to deal with the nightmare that is B10.

Well, what with all the trouble the "Lost Valley" caused me in my workings with Karameikos, I decided to get rid of it... as in, remove it from Mystara.

I made it a "Faerie Realm" sort of like Haven, except that it is never truly in Mystara, it is next to Mystara. Plarr removed it from Mystara and dropped it into the Spirit World shortly after the collapse of the Hutaakan Empire. The only way to access the Lost Valley is through the Gateway, at the end of the Firefoam Valley. It is a literal magical gateway that takes those who pass through it from Mystara to the "Lost Valley" in the Spirit World. In Mystara itself, the area of the Lost Valley is a series of tall mountain peaks and high valleys, cold and unwelcoming save for monsters and hermits. You could climb all over those peaks and never find any sign of the Hutaaka...

That's how such a big, honking valley can remain "lost" for so long...

Interesting theory, though if you're going to put it in some other realm, why not use the Hollow World? Those who are able to find the path leading to the valley are actually transported into the Hollow World. Ofcourse, leaving the valley for other parts of the HW is so difficult it almost doesnt matter...

Håvard

That's one solution, and not a bad idea. It certainly deals with the problem of having such a large valley lost in a world with flying carpets, flying monsters, flying ships, air cavalry, and so on.

There are other solutions, though. I think my favoured solution would be to explain the valley's lost nature with a combination of nigh-impassable mountains and covering enchantments and illusions. These could even be the work of an Immortal - perhaps Pflarr decided to hide the civilisation from the eyes of the world rather than move it completely from Mystara.

I like this solution because it leaves the valley accessible for those who know about it, without removing it from the world completely. There's definitely something to be said for having the valley exist in Karameikos - for me it adds a certain feeling of ancient history that I wouldn't get otherwise.

In any case, I am thinking of creating two final versions for the 8 mi per hex Karameikos map: one with the valley marked on, and one with it hidden from view. The Foamfire Valley of course will be marked on both.

I tend to agree with this solution. I think that if Pflarr wanted to put away his surviving followers, he'd place them in the Hollow World rather than in another "faery realm".

BTW, I'm looking forward to the Karameikos/B10 integrated map!

hey Thorf

just a little typo in this one

Thanks Shawn. I fixed it.

Regarding the B10 maps, preliminary work shows that the three hex maps in B10 do not line up properly with each other. The size and shape of the Lost Valley are slightly different on each map.

Also, the other two maps - Eastern Karameikos and the Foamfire Valley - were both done on rotated hexes. It's especially strange considering that the Lost Valley and Foamfire Valley maps are both the same scale and actually overlap each other.

In any case, the conflicting parts are not too serious, so I should be able to incorporate all the important features onto the Karameikos map.

I'm really looking forward to this one!

Had any thoughts on a TR map yet btw?

Håvard

Your one was so good, I don't know that I need to do one.

I'll probably do a hex version eventually, but I'm afraid it's an extremely low priority for me. I don't have all the Thunder Rift products, even as PDFs, and I have never been able to get hold of the actual Thunder Rift accessory. (Hence my conspicuous lack of replies in your project.)

But eventually I will get round to buying (and reading) the PDF version.

I will finish drawing in those pesky but nice-looking lines on the mountains at a later date.

FWIW, I came up with this version of a map to try and solve the various problems of scale and general different mappiness of the B10 and Gaz maps.

The Foamfire Valley itself is a big deal, but I personally prefer a map more like the one in B10, which, IMO fits better with the description and information of the Threshold region from the Expert set than the location of Threshold on the Gaz map- though I think we've had this discussion before.

Yep, in fact your map was the first I knew of the B10 maps. I still don't have the module myself.


I agree. The most significant point is that B10 is not alone in its portrayal of Threshold and the Foamfire Valley, but in fact it was a direct follow-on from the Expert Set maps. Add to this the map of Threshold, which remained unchanged from the 1981 Expert Set all the way through to 1994's Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure, despite the seemingly-obvious problems with Threshold's position on a river flowing out of a lake...

Add to this our treatment of Kelvin earlier in this thread, where we moved it so that its city map would make more sense, and there is a very good case for reinterpreting the position of Threshold, and adding in the valley.

The only problem then becomes how far to move it, where to put Verge, and so on.

Thorf

I assume that you know of the B10 maps on Thib's site?

Regards
Gary

Yes, but thanks for reminding me Gary. Does anyone know where those maps came from? They were done using Campaign Cartographer. It would be very nice if I could get copies of the original files - especially copies that I could import into Illustrator.

I do have a PDF of B10 by the way, so I have copies of the original maps to trace. But I have yet to get round to reading through it.

Thorf my game is in the year 1006AC right now, and an 8mile hex map of the crater region would be awsome. But I know your still recreating the old existing maps (like B10) right now, but do you think you might end up doing a map of the crater?

It shouldn't be a problem. I'll move it to the top of my list.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only sources for the crater are Wrath of the Immortals and Glantri: Kingdom of Magic, right? It may have been in an Almanac too. And of course Andrew did a very nice map of the crater a few years ago.

My map will be based on those sources, and likely very similar to Andrew's. Let me know if there are any other sources I missed.

Hi Thorf,

Are there still plans for an 8 mile/hex map of the Heldann region?

Cheers,

LJ.

Thorf, I just came across your maps yesterday. I can't remember why I wanted to look up D&D maps again (just feeling nostalgic, I suppose), and I discovered the Phase I of your secret project that you appear to have started sometime after the last time I went looking for maps online.

WOW.

Thank you so much for all the hard work you have put into digitizing all the maps you can find. That's absolutely amazing. I was bemoaning my parents for chucking out all my old D&D stuff (including TM1, TM2 and the gold Immortal box set), but having such an excellent set of maps available online is a great resource. Kudos and keep up the good work!

Any chance I could get the illustrator files of the map symbols?

Thanks,
Gary

Of course. You can download them here.

My mapping files are released under a Creative Commons license, which basically allows anyone to use them as long as they give me proper credit. For more information, check the link on my site.

Thorf, outstanding work on these maps.

I wonder if and how these features could fit on the map of Karameikos:

-Any official placements of adventures marked with a bullet point like is done on the black & white Expert set map.
-The official boundaries of the Gnome-Kingdom of Highforge
-The official boundaries of the Elven-kingdoms within Karameikos
-Reconciled locations from AC2 adventure "Treasure of the Hideous One"
-Details from DUNGEON magazine adventures. For example, the area along the Westron Road from issue #24
-Reconciled locations from the novels.
-At least on the vicinity map of Threshold (the one based on B10), including symbols for the Caves of Chaos and Caldwell's Castle to the west of town, and Castle Mistamere north of town - maybe at the end of the road.
-For that matter, I wonder how many other of the adventure locales, such as Stefan's hunting palace from Skarda's Mirror, or the Sukisyn homestead from B10, can or should fit on the 8-mile hex map, and what symbols would be appropriate.

Shane

I'd be interested in seeing a new kind of map that showed the location of every official Mystaran adventure. It would be be like Thorf's 24-mile hex map of the Known World, but would include every module that has an official placement. Therefore, it would have to cover more than just the KW. Also, it might be best to fade out all the other features so that the map wouldn't be too busy. For single-location adventures (e.g. Caverns of Quasqueton), there'd be the circle-with-pointy-bits symbol and the module code (e.g. B1). For adventures that included various encounters spread out over a wilderness area (e.g. B10), the map would have a line enclosing all areas for which the module has encounters for, along with a smaller version of the pointy-circle symbol for all of the mapped encounter areas (e.g. Rifflian, Sukisyn, Xitaqa, etc.). There'd be a sidebar on the map listing adventures that are located on other planes or dimensions. Ideally, it would also include the location of all Mystara DUNGEON magazine adventures and the location of any mapped and statted adventure locales found in Gazetteers and other sourcebooks (not just adventure ideas or synopses). There'd be a table to accompany the map, which would cross reference the module code (e.g. B10) with the adventure name ("Night's Dark Terror"), suggested party level, country or countries and planes or dimensions the adventure has encounters in, along with any official IC date of the adventure (e.g. AC1000). One difficulty would be to rationalize the locations of adventures that were officially placed, but which really didn't quite fit - such as the lost city of Tuma, presumably located somewhere in western Karameikos or southwestern Darokin, according to B1-9 "In Search of Adventure".

We (i.e. LoZompatore, Havard, and me) had already suggested some enhancements to Karameikos' map on page 19 of this thread. However, I think it would be rather difficult to add all of them without increasing the scale of the whole map (perhaps drawing some zones in the '1 hex = 1 mile' scale - that would be the point with Threshold area).

One more question about Threshold area: what are the right sizes of Windrush Lake (the lake of Threshold)? According to the non-hex map included in the adventure booklet of KKoA, the lake seems as large as an 8-mile hex! Could it be represented in the '8-miles per hex' map of Karameikos?

First of all, compliments for the amazing work.

Second - after the praise - is there any chance we could get a single HUGE map merging together all the 8 mile hex maps - at least those of eastern Brun (something like TM1+TM2)? The problem with 1 nation = 1 map is that whenever you want to play stuff that's happening over a border (say, a war!), hopping from one map to the other and back is a somewhat frustrating experience.

*bump*

I haven't seen Thorf around in a while (probably busy with RL. Doesn't he know that Mystara takes precedence over everything else? ), but I found some map issues the other day and thought I'd see what everyone else's thoughts were. (I seem to recall there was a Map Problems thread separate from this one, but danged if I can find it.)

Anyway, the main issue is Ierendi Island. Gaz4 mentions that Port Siers was destroyed when Mount Haumea erupted, but the Trail Map has Mount Makalaui right next to Port Siers. Given that none of the volcanoes were named on the Gaz4 map, and the later description in Gaz4 of the Makalaui Crater, I think that Mt. Haumea should actually be the name of the volcano near Port Siers, and that Mt. Makalaui should really be the volcano currently named Mt. Kununuroa. (In which case, there is no such volcano as Mt. Kununuroa- again, these were all named after the fact, as they have no names on the map, and only in the text.)

Alternatively, I suppose we could just assume that Mt. Haumea is another volcano located near to Mt. Makalaui, but not visible on the 8 mile hex map (but on a larger scale map it would be).

In any case, I note that Thorf's Ierendi map is missing the volcano hex for Mt. Makalaui near Port Siers.

Also, Thorf, on the Thyatis map, you have Halathius in northern Thyatis marked as a Duchy, when it is actually a County.

I'm curious about one detail in the Darokin map.

Where did the Fort Marny appear to that map?

Another thing is why you have seen it necessary create a separate marker for the fen in Fenhold. Why wans't the swamp or bog feasible in this case?

This comes from GAZ14 Atruaghin Clans. They needed a fort in that part of Darokin due to the aggresivenessof the Tiger Clan just over the border.

I finally announced the full project, including title and all sections, a couple of days ago. And I think it's fitting for me to bring back this thread to give you the link to the project's new home:



Please come and join me and many of the other contributors to this thread as we discuss this mammoth new undertaking.