Handbook Wednesday: Map of the North
Two Fridays ago, our intrepid Empire explorers stumbled across the Folded City.
Little remains of the city now besides a strange semi-circular scar on an uplifted area of land and some rubble at the base of the face of the mountain. The base structures of a few buildings still cling to the near-vertical face, particularly at the perimeter.
The closest northern village [to the Folded City] is Itakith, several days travel to the west, and everything portable and remotely useful has long since been scavenged from the site. Spring flooding down the face of the mountain has eroded yet more of the remaining city, though a few relics may be found downstream of the site by lucky searchers.
Mirthless Valley (article forthcoming) is the deadly, grassy valley that the Empire explorers found a few installments ago - and shortly afterwards, they lost their horses, making their trip much more challenging. Northerners aren't sure why the valley is so fatal, but they steer well clear of it, and local game has largely learned to avoid it. (Likely, there is heavy metal poisoning in the groundwater due some buried Ancient object that was damaged in the Upheaval!)
Let's look at a map of the area! (And this map, you guys, let me tell you how much work the map for Torn World has been in general... it took geometry and math, I used the details from padparadscha's astronomy article, including the tilt and the diameter of the world, to figure out where the arctic circle should be, and the distances on the map I'd thrown together, which changed with latitude because the roundness of the world mattered at this scale, making this a projection, and I must've cross-referenced a gazillion different bits and bobs. Every time I thought I'd gotten it nailed down, I found a conflict with some point of history and the location of a shard boundary. Seriously. This map has not been an easy thing, and it's not nearly as pretty as I want it to be. Someday, when my brains have recovered a little, I will sit down and clean it all up a bit. In the meantime, we work with what we have.)
This is a scaled section of the larger map, each square is approximately 100 miles x 100 miles. On horse or snow-unicorn, traveling 25-30 miles a day is a dedicated day of travel at a moderately determined pace over somewhat forgiving trails... with a lot of room for variation based on terrain and weather. A day's travel of 10 miles might be good through areas with a lot of elevation change or during winter when breaking trail, and you might make 40 miles on a summer day over open ground. This travel time takes into account the fact that the Northerners need to stop and browse or graze the snow-unicorns several times every day, and generally applies for horses, too.
The red route in the map above is the traveled path of the Empire explorers. The green path was their projected path, the blue path: their newly revised plan. (It is not so precise as to be a dot per stop, sorry!)
A few other things you may note on the map:
Smokewater Valley: One of the most lush valleys in the North, Smokewater is protected and thermally warmed, so it is home to a number of fruit and nut trees that can't survive anywhere else. The three Northern villages share a small settlement there, taking advantage of the mineral hot springs that are particularly suited for human enjoyment.
The Mouth of the Mountain: This foreboding entrance leads deep into the mountain and finally to Lichenwold, the eerie, isolated ecosystem that is the source of many Northern dyes and building materials - including the lye ingredient to their concrete. The trip to Lichenwold takes five or six long days from Itrelir, three of them in the darkness of the tunnel.
Akovu's Crown: Named after the Ancient figure who founded the first Northern village, this distinctive triple peak is used for orientation for a wide area around Itrelir. White goats prized for their white pelts can be found high on the peaks, and plucky rangers may dare the heights for these rare treasures.
"Wild Snowies Here": This is the new shard that Jrilii and her age-mates are exploring in Wild Snowy Chase.
1 / 20 comments towards a bonus episode (or piece of artwork) this Friday... Make it happen with comments on any artwork, poetry or fiction at the site. After this, it's all new work!
Little remains of the city now besides a strange semi-circular scar on an uplifted area of land and some rubble at the base of the face of the mountain. The base structures of a few buildings still cling to the near-vertical face, particularly at the perimeter.
The closest northern village [to the Folded City] is Itakith, several days travel to the west, and everything portable and remotely useful has long since been scavenged from the site. Spring flooding down the face of the mountain has eroded yet more of the remaining city, though a few relics may be found downstream of the site by lucky searchers.
Mirthless Valley (article forthcoming) is the deadly, grassy valley that the Empire explorers found a few installments ago - and shortly afterwards, they lost their horses, making their trip much more challenging. Northerners aren't sure why the valley is so fatal, but they steer well clear of it, and local game has largely learned to avoid it. (Likely, there is heavy metal poisoning in the groundwater due some buried Ancient object that was damaged in the Upheaval!)
Let's look at a map of the area! (And this map, you guys, let me tell you how much work the map for Torn World has been in general... it took geometry and math, I used the details from padparadscha's astronomy article, including the tilt and the diameter of the world, to figure out where the arctic circle should be, and the distances on the map I'd thrown together, which changed with latitude because the roundness of the world mattered at this scale, making this a projection, and I must've cross-referenced a gazillion different bits and bobs. Every time I thought I'd gotten it nailed down, I found a conflict with some point of history and the location of a shard boundary. Seriously. This map has not been an easy thing, and it's not nearly as pretty as I want it to be. Someday, when my brains have recovered a little, I will sit down and clean it all up a bit. In the meantime, we work with what we have.)
This is a scaled section of the larger map, each square is approximately 100 miles x 100 miles. On horse or snow-unicorn, traveling 25-30 miles a day is a dedicated day of travel at a moderately determined pace over somewhat forgiving trails... with a lot of room for variation based on terrain and weather. A day's travel of 10 miles might be good through areas with a lot of elevation change or during winter when breaking trail, and you might make 40 miles on a summer day over open ground. This travel time takes into account the fact that the Northerners need to stop and browse or graze the snow-unicorns several times every day, and generally applies for horses, too.
The red route in the map above is the traveled path of the Empire explorers. The green path was their projected path, the blue path: their newly revised plan. (It is not so precise as to be a dot per stop, sorry!)
A few other things you may note on the map:
Smokewater Valley: One of the most lush valleys in the North, Smokewater is protected and thermally warmed, so it is home to a number of fruit and nut trees that can't survive anywhere else. The three Northern villages share a small settlement there, taking advantage of the mineral hot springs that are particularly suited for human enjoyment.
The Mouth of the Mountain: This foreboding entrance leads deep into the mountain and finally to Lichenwold, the eerie, isolated ecosystem that is the source of many Northern dyes and building materials - including the lye ingredient to their concrete. The trip to Lichenwold takes five or six long days from Itrelir, three of them in the darkness of the tunnel.
Akovu's Crown: Named after the Ancient figure who founded the first Northern village, this distinctive triple peak is used for orientation for a wide area around Itrelir. White goats prized for their white pelts can be found high on the peaks, and plucky rangers may dare the heights for these rare treasures.
"Wild Snowies Here": This is the new shard that Jrilii and her age-mates are exploring in Wild Snowy Chase.
1 / 20 comments towards a bonus episode (or piece of artwork) this Friday... Make it happen with comments on any artwork, poetry or fiction at the site. After this, it's all new work!