Community Atlas: Errynor Map 40 - Faerie Land

Wyvern

As mentioned recently in another Forum topic, the next of my 40 250 x 200 mile maps detailing the Errynor area of NW Alarius on Nibirum is now ready for submission to the Community Atlas. Despite becoming "distracted" into preparing more additional maps for the first Errynor map than I'd expected initially, Map 01 - The Cliff, I decided to continue with the next one in the order I'd originally intended, by switching right across the map to its opposite, lower right, corner:

Beyond that though, much of the pattern for the mapping - using the Herwin Wielink style, some Cartographer's Annual 62 Geometry varicolor symbols, the Cagliostro (from the 2017 CA), Candara and Gabriola fonts, the latter both from standard Win 10 installations - had been set already by Map 01. There were though some differences. This time, I'd be mapping the most landlocked area in Errynor, not one that was almost entirely under the sea. While that simplified the number of different map views I'd need to create, because - clue in the title "Faerie Land" - I wanted to illustrate the effects of the two overlapping realms, the Mortal one and that of Faerie, it didn't reduce them to zero.

The initial layout was fairly straightforward, and largely involved hand-copying the details from the Errynor map area above into the template for this new map, with additional items from the hand-drawn original as discussed in the "Construction" topic. There things rather stalled though, as I realised I needed to work out details on what the Faerie influence areas were going to look like and exactly where they were going to be. Plus I also suddenly had lots of features that clearly would benefit from being named.

The Faerie areas were relatively easily worked out by simply hand sketching some ideas on a tracing-paper overlay to the original squared-paper map, and I already had some feature names from my decades-long work with earlier versions of Errynor that could be reused.

However, you know me and my fondness for random design mechanisms... One of the early Judges Guild printed works I got was their "Village Book 1" tome, from 1978, and in that is a system for generating random village names. Up to 368,000 of them! The names will work perfectly well for other sorts of places too, with the addition of terms such as "Wood", "Forest", "Marsh", "River", "Brook", etc. So I rolled up a long list of possible names. Each series of rolls generates a two-part name, prefix and suffix, effectively, though you can add more parts to vary things from time to time too. Not every combination works well, as you might imagine, but the names can be subtly altered, or only one part used, or merely used as inspiration. I was pleasantly surprised to find most were actually very suitable for what I wanted; some that seemed obvious, some a little odd, some that could be humorous, some a warning, many intriguingly evocative, much like looking at a map of real-world places in fact. So here we have Map 40, complete with place names:

And a close-up of just the NE corner to show a bit better detail at the usual Forum resolution:

If all goes to plan, there should be a toggle in the Atlas FCW version to allow access to the latitude lines, and an arc indicating the southern limit of Nibirum's polar auroral zone, too:

That slightly offset-from-the-corner compass rose is to allow for the numerous creature markers and labels in that corner, as elsewhere across the map, to be shown (again, another Atlas version toggle is intended to allow these to be displayed or hidden):

Which looks rather messy at this resolution, so another close-up may help, this time over in the NW map corner:

Plus of course, there needs to be a map key as well:

The areas where the Faerie realm overlaps most strongly with that of the Mortal plane can be shown via a further pair of toggles to indicate the core areas, and the maximum extent of the overlap on a few special nights each year. The following images are of those whole-map core areas and a close-up of the separated patches west of the great Faerie Run river, followed by the line of the maximum Faerie overlap extent:

These can be shown combined with any of the other toggleable map overlays, and for anyone concerned at the lack of a scale, that's because to try to improve the resolution, I've shown just the map rectangle here till now. This is how the map really looks:

The complete layout is then this:

The Atlas will also have a 23-page PDF, and a text version, with its accompanying detailed notes, explaining a little more about the settlements and the significance of some of the creatures and resources.

I haven't quite finished with Map 40 yet either, as the River Clack valley with the great Faerie city of Embra (see the first of the detail maps above, the NE corner one, for these locations) is to receive some further mapping in the Atlas shortly too.

Loopysue

That's a beautiful and awesome project, Wyvern! :D

Wyvern

Thanks very much Sue!

Monsen

Thanks for a great submission. The map is in the atlas now.

https://atlas.monsen.cc/Maps/Errynor%20Map%2040%20-%20Faerie%20Land

JimP

WOW !

Wyvern

Thanks Jim - and everyone else! And particularly Monsen for getting it into the Atlas so quickly!