30 May 2025

Shawn’s Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex

Shawn Stanley is well-known in the Mystara community as the webmaster and archivist behind the Vaults of Pandius. Rightly so, because he has been collecting and preserving almost everything we have made since 1996. It’s a massive undertaking, and his dedication and perseverance are truly amazing. In short, we are lucky to have him.

He has also contributed various works of his own over the years, which you can see on his author page over at the Vaults. Sadly for us, he has only shared one map over the years, but it’s a rather nice one.

For Threshold #1, Shawn wrote up an adventure setting in the Central Altan Tepes Mountains. He adapted Simone Neri’s map of the area, reproducing it with some of his own additions. The adventure’s genesis was similar, drawing from a wide range of sources at the Vaults of Pandius.

You can find more information on the features of the map in Simone Neri’s MGAZ1 The Central Altan Tepes, as well as in Shawn’s article in Threshold #1.

Shawn used my Adobe Illustrator tools to create his map — something that’s actually quite rare in our community, as the vast majority of cartographers who use my hexes do so with free tools such as Isomage’s GIMP icons, or Ashtagon’s Worldographer icons. I only know of a handful of people who have used my system natively in Illustrator, and Shawn is one of these.

He saved the original version as a PDF. It used the Baldur (Feinen clone) font. When it came to including it in Threshold, one of the editors converted it to a GIF, using a different font. The Threshold version also had a grey hex grid, without the transparency effect usually applied in my mapping template. When Shawn posted the HTML versions of Threshold articles at the Vaults late in 2013, he posted the original PDF — in fact, an Illustrator PDF, which means that it is still fully editable if loaded up into Illustrator.

I have now taken Shawn’s PDF version and applied a few little upgrades. I avoided making any adjustments to the content of the map, so it’s still very much Shawn’s map. The main difference is the addition of haloes around the text labels, and I also fixed some alignment problems with the hex symbols, and switched in updated versions of the symbols.

Thank you for this map, Shawn, and also for all of your hard work over the years! May there be many more to come. (Both maps and years, that is.)

Fan-made Map by Shawn Stanley (May 2025)

The Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex by Shawn Stanley, revised by Thorfinn Tait, May 2025 — The Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex by Shawn Stanley,
revised by Thorfinn Tait, May 2025

Fan-made Maps by Shawn Stanley (October & August 2013)

The Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex by Shawn Stanley, October 2013 — *The Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex*
*by Shawn Stanley, October 2013*

The Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex by Shawn Stanley, August 2013 — *The Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex*
*by Shawn Stanley, August 2013*

This is an original map created by one of Mystara’s excellent fan cartographers. For more information on the cartographer, including a gallery of all their maps, see also Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara.

Sources

GAZ1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos (1987) (PDF at DriveThruRPG)
- Karameikos, 8 miles per hex

Fan Sources

Central Altan Tepes Mini Gazetteer by Simone Neri (March 2009)
- Zendrolion’s Central Altan Tepes, 2.7 miles per hex (March 2009)
Threshold #1 (1 October 2013) (Vaults of Pandius)

References

All of Shawn’s maps at the Atlas of Mystara
Shawn’s entry in Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara (upcoming)
Shawn’s author page at the Vaults of Pandius

Chronological Analysis

This is a fan-made map. It was published in August 2013, and then again with updated art in May 2025. The updated Atlas version of this map is not yet available. See also Appendix C for annual chronological snapshots of the area. For the full context of this map in Mystara’s publication history, see the upcoming Let’s Map Mystara 2013.

The following lists are from the Let’s Map Mystara project. Additions are new features, introduced in this map. Revisions are changes to previously-introduced features. Hex Art & Fonts track design elements. Finally, Textual Additions are potential features found in the related text. In most cases, the Atlas adopts these textual additions into updated and chronological maps.

Under Construction! Please check back again soon for updates.