Historical Maps of the Forgotten Realms 02: The Dawn Age

In this series I will look at the history of the Forgotten Realms world and publish a series of maps depicting the continent of Faerûn and the wider world of Toril at various points in its past. Like my previous series, Nations of the Forgotten Realms, this series draws on The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas and other Dungeons & Dragons resources for the setting, particularly The Grand History of the Realms, Netheril: Empire of Magic, Cormanthyr: Empire of Elves and Lost Empires of Faerûn.

The work of Richard Baker, Ed Bonny, Eric L. Boyd, James Butler, Thomas Costa, Ed Greenwood, Dale “slade” Henson, Brian R. James, George Krashos, Steven Schend and Travis Stout was particularly useful in compiling this series, along, obviously, with the work of everyone who has ever put pen to paper for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting (officially or unofficially).

The supercontinent of Merrouroboros during the time of the domination of the giants and dragons, when the elves had only just first appeared on Toril.

The coming of the dragons, spawned some say in the Tearfall, ended the time of the original Creator Races on Toril. The aearee were destroyed, or forced to flee to remote corners of the globe. The dragons were triumphant, but the nature of dragons is individualistic and they soon fell to bickering and infighting. The murder of Nagamat, General-Priest of Tiamat, by followers of Xymor (as Bahamut was then called), triggered the Dragonfall Wars, themselves part of a wider religious conflict known as the Draco Holy Wars. The dragons eroded their own numbers, slaughtering themselves in the thousands. The early draconic “nations” of Argissthilliax, Caesinmalsvir and Tharkrixghontix were soon destroyed, leaving only Darastriverthicha to survive somewhat longer in the lands later claimed by Netheril. Notable at this time (c. 30,000 Before Dalereckoning) was the establishment of Darastrixhurthi, a vassal-state of the horned, lesser dragon-kin known as kobolds.

As the rule of the dragons weakened, there was a resurgence from the giantkin. As already related, the titan-led Jotunbrud clans had emerged from the uttermost north to establish dominion over parts of the continent before being driven back by the ferocity of the batrachi and their primordial allies. The giantkin then returned to establish the Colossal Kingdom of Ostoria and its allied states of Darchar, Grunfesting, Helligheim, Nedeheim and Rangfjell.

Relations between the dragons and giants were respectful if cool. The giants of this age were powerful warriors and employed mighty sorcerers and wizards among their ranks. They were also vastly more numerous than the dragons. The dragons decided that coexistence was a wiser course than conflict, and since, for the most part, their territorial requirements did not overlap, there was plenty of room for everybody.

However, the fourth Creator Race now began to impugn upon Toril. The Fey were not native to Toril, having instead established control of their own plane or dimensional realm known as Faerie, or, in more recent terminology, the Feywild. The Feywild had been created by the primordials circa 34,000 BDR, but the Fey had now taken it as their own and was used by them in their creation of lesser species including the korreds, pixies and sprites. The Fey also had a strong kinship with the eladrin and the elves, the species native to the realm of Arvandor (on the plane of Arborea). Many eladrin and elves moved to the Feywild, attracted by its magical nature.

The relationship between the Feywild and the primordials gave the Fey the ability to observe events on Toril, a world much to their liking. They were wary of the raw power of the dragons, fearing what would happen should they gain access to the Feywild, so starting c. 27,000 BDR, the Fey sent their minion species to Toril with the aim of undermining the power of the dragons. These minion races took root in the vast forests covering much of Merrouroboros. The first elves soon followed, including aquatic elves, avariel (winged elves) and lythari (elvish lycanthropes). Some of these settlements were more successful than others, with the aquatic elves flourishing in both the inner and outer seas, but the avariel being decimated in conflicts with the dragons and other winged species. A second wave of green and wild elf settlement began within a few centuries, settling the vast southern jungles and negotiating with the dragons to establish the first elven kingdom on Toril: Ilythiir, with its capital at Atorrnash.

In 26,000 BDR the detente between the dragons and giants ended at the command of the draconic god Garyx, who ordered his followers to destroy the Colossal Kingdom. The resulting Thousand Year War saw both giantkin and dragonkind bloodied, and the dragons reduced to a bare few thousand in number. Realising both species were threatened with destruction, at least according to legend, the giant god Annam All-Father and Garyx played a game of wah-ree to decide the matter. The game ended in a draw, so it was decided to end the war with the battle lines where they stood. Ostoria were reduced to the northern fringes of Merrouroboros (in the land now called Hartsvale, and some parts eastwards), several of the other giant kingdoms were destroyed, and others became enclaves in territory otherwise controlled by the dragons.

Merrouroboros on the eve of the Sundering, showing the major elven empires which had arisen in the preceding millennia.

Circa 30,000 BDR, the Seldarine, the (relatively) newly-established pantheon of elven gods, was riven by war and civil war. Araushnee, the elven goddess of destiny and artisans, had become the lover of Corellon Larethian, the chief god of the Seldarine. But she was also jealous and bitter, desiring his power. She arranged for a coalition of the enemies of the Seldarine to invade Arvandor and slay Corellon so she might usurp him. She was aided in this task by her son, Vhaeraun, but opposed by her daughter, Eilistraee, whom history and myth would later call the Redeemer.

During the final battle in Arvandor, Araushnee’s machinations were exposed and thwarted by Eilistraee and Sehanine Moonbow. Corellon was saved from death and he condemned Araushnee and Vhaeraun to exile. Eilistraee volunteered to go into exile as well, so she might redeem those whom her kin would seek to corrupt. Araushnee was given a further punishment, transformation into a tanar’ri, a demon of hideous, spider-like aspect. She took a new home on the 66th layer of the Abyss and also a new name and title: Lolth, Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

Almost five thousand years later, c. 25,400 BDR, the great island kingdom of Tintageer, in Faerie, was attacked by unknown warriors. The elves used High Magic to destroy the invaders, but this display of power had an unintended side-effect, namely the flooding of Tintageer and its inundation. Barely fifty elves, led Prince Durothil of the sun elves and Sharlario Moonflower of the moon elves, escaped through a portal. They found themselves on Toril, in what would later be called the High Forest, and Durothil uttered the word the elves would take to describe their new home: “Faerûn.” The elvish word for “One Land.”

Almost immediately the elves found themselves in a battle for survival with the ruling dragon of the region, Mahatnartorian, but were aided in their struggle by both lythari and avariel. They built the first great elven city of the north, Sharlarion, and Sharlario and his son travelled this new world in search of allies. Hearing of an elven kingdom in the far south, they arrived in Ilythiir and struck up friendly relations with its ruler, Ka’Narlist. However, they were wary of the dark gods Vhaeraun and Ghaunadaur worshipped in the kingdom. Eilistraee also appeared to Sharlario in a vision to warn him of the southern elves’ amoral nature. Ka’Narlist gifted Sharlario with a dagger ensorcelled so he might spy on events in the north. Upon Sharlario’s return home, he witnessed the great battle between Durothil and his silver dragon ally, Silverywing, and the dragon Mahatnartorian. All three perished in the conflict.

In 25,000 BDR, elven High Mages unleashed the power of their sorcery to create the Dracorage Mythal, an artefact of tremendous power. Drawing on the magic of the Kingkiller Star, they drove every dragon on Toril insane for several days, resulting in mass casualties among the draconic race. Every few centuries, the Rage of Dragons would strike again, keeping draconic numbers low enough so that they would never threaten the elves again.

Six centuries later, the demonic lord Haeshkaar invaded Toril with a vast horde of orcs, the first of the creatures to appear on the planet. He destroyed the gold elf city of Occidian but was unable to take Sharlarion. His forces were defeated, but he captured the high priest Anarallath in the process. Anarallath’s lover, the great archmage Kethryllia Amarillis, purused him back to the Abyss and, aided by the capricious goddess Kiaransalee, slew Haeshkaar in battle and rescued her lover. To this end she employed the magical dagger of Ka’Narlist. The presence of this weapon in the Abyss drew the attention of Lolth to Toril, where she located Ka’Narlist and allied with him, subverting of the worship of the Ilythiiri to her dark cause. By 23,200 BDR, Ilythiir had strengthened its hold over a vast swathe of the south, extending from the fringes of the Mhair Jungles through what would later be the Forest of Amtar and Lluirwood.

Occidian’s destruction saw Sharlarion become predominantly a sun or gold elf city. After their victory over the orcs, the elves flourished and numerous colony towns and cities were established across the High Forest, the vast woodland located south-west of the Narrow Sea. By 23,900 BDR these communities had allied into the kingdom of Aryvandaar.

Other elven kingdoms followed. Other sun and moon elves allied to found the realm of Shantel Othreier around 23,600 BDR, located in the forests north of the Cloud Peaks and extending east to the Gods’ Theatre (the modern Tunlands). A moon or silver elf colony state was also established at Ardeep to the north, near the mouths of the Dessarin and Delimbiyr, the two great rivers of the north. Syòrpiir was founded in the what later became the Ankhwood and Chondalwood (23,100 BDR), followed by Illefarn to the north-west of Ardeep, in the forested mountains along the coast (22,900). Orishaar was established in the lands immediately to the north-east of the Pourounkorokale (22,500), and Thearnytaar in what would become the Thornwood (21,400). Eiellûr followed in the Winterwood (21,000).

Relations between the kingdoms were mostly good, but occasionally strained. Orishaar and Ilythiir’s borders clashed south of what is now the Border Kingdoms and the two skirmished for a time around 20,000 BDR before settling a common frontier. The three kingdoms of the vast Satyrwood, namely Eiellûr, Thearnytaar and Syòrpiir, also had initial tensions before becoming more friendly and allied, known as the Kingdoms of the Three Leaves. Indeed, their rulers would occasionally ponder the positives of allying together into a single empire to rival Ilythiir or Aryvandaar.

Circa 18,800 BDR, a major political schism within Aryvandaar saw the nation’s wild and dark elf kindreds, fed up with centuries of being treated as inferiors, departing the realm. They crossed the Delimbiyr and established the realm of Miyeritar. In 17,800 BDR, moon and wild elf explorers from Thearnytaar crossed the mountains of the Iltkazar Range to colonise the vast woodlands that later generations would call Tethir, Darthiir and Mir. The great kingdom of Keltormir grew up in this region.

Despite their sheer power and profligacy, some elves began to experience pangs of regret for their species’ increased interest in politics and borders, and a retreat from the spirituality and mysticism their ancestors had experienced in Arvandor and Faerie. Many elves began to call for the creation of a new homeland, a land apart from the petty concerns of the mainland where the true spirit of elvenkind could be enjoyed. The elven High Mages began to prepare for the casting of a tremendous spell to establish such a homeland, where the mortal world of Toril and the elven spiritual homeland of Arvandor could mingle.

The effects of this spell would be extremely far-reaching…and disastrous.

Thank you for reading The Atlas of Ice and Fire. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content before it goes live on my blogs.

Historical Maps of the Forgotten Realms 01: The Days of Thunder

In this series I will look at the history of the Forgotten Realms world and publish a series of maps depicting the continent of Faerûn and the wider world of Toril at various points in its past. Like my previous series, Nations of the Forgotten Realms, this series draws on The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas and other Dungeons & Dragons resources for the setting, particularly The Grand History of the Realms, Netheril: Empire of Magic, Cormanthyr: Empire of Elves and Lost Empires of Faerûn.

The work of Richard Baker, Ed Bonny, Eric L. Boyd, James Butler, Thomas Costa, Ed Greenwood, Dale “slade” Henson, Brian R. James, George Krashos, Steven Schend and Travis Stout was particularly useful in compiling this series, along, obviously, with the work of everyone who has ever put pen to paper for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting (officially or unofficially).

The supercontinent of Merrouroboros, which existed in the millennia preceding the First Sundering. The supercontinent later split apart to form the continents of the modern era: Maztica, rumoured Anchôromé, Katashaka, Faerûn, Zakhara, Kara-Tur and Ossë. Please click for a larger version.

This first world map looks at Abeir-Toril, as it was then called, in the period after the Age of Creation. This is circa 40,000 BDR (Before Dalereckoning), some 41,500 years before the present day.

According to myth, the star system of Realmspace was created by the Hidden One, the entity Ao of whom little is known. Ao charged the first two gods of this realm, the twins Selûne and Shar, with nurturing life within the system. The two goddesses created a third, Chauntea, to help them in this task. Chauntea’s recommendation was to create light and warmth within the system, but the twin sisters quarrelled; Shar, Sister of Night and Darkness, hated the idea. The two sisters warred and Selûne proved victorious, creating the Sun. However, this activity attracted the attention of the primordials, powerful beings who desired dominion over all worlds in the multiverse. The goddesses united their power to defeat the primordials, driving them into hiding or imprisoned in remote corners of Realmspace. A fourth goddess, Mystryl, Lady of Magic, was created during this period. Mystryl withheld her powers from both sisters, bringing an end to their warring.

Although life flourished on all worlds in Realmspace, the most promising was Abeir-Toril, third planet from the Sun. The planet was completely covered in water, but a multitude of life grew in the deep oceans, during what became known as the Blue Age. Many other gods formed at this time, as sentient life spread through Abeir-Toril’s oceans and their need for faith and worship grew.

Alas, the primordials returned. One of the mightiest of their number, Dendar the Night Serpent, consumed the Sun to plunge Realmspace into freezing cold, an era known as the Shadow Epoch. His opposite number, the god known as Ouroboros, the World Serpent, led the gods of the system into battle. A long war resulted, but the two sides were too evenly matched. In the end, the primordials were defeated by one of their own; Ubtao swapped sides, helping the gods defeat the primordials in return for lands and worshippers of his own. The primordials were destroyed, or forced to flee across the planes.

The Sun was kindled into life once more, and Abeir-Toril again flourished. But this time the seas had retreated, much of their mass being locked away into ice. A single, enormous supercontinent was revealed: Merrouroboros. More than 10,000 miles across, the landmass contained all the lands that would later be scattered as the continents of the modern day.

For untold millennia or maybe even tens of millennia, life on Abeir-Toril developed. Then, circa 36,500 years ago, the first sentient lifeforms began to build cities, learn the ways of magic and ascend to greatness. This marked the beginning of the Days of Thunder, also known as the Age of the Creator Races.

A map of western Merrouroboros, depicting the reign of the sarrukh. Three powerful sarrukh empires ruled over the lands between c. 35,000 and 33,500 Before Dalereckoning. The sarrukh created the successor races known as the yuan-ti, naga, lizardfolk, pterafolk, troglodytes and other types of serpentfolk and scalykind.

The Creator Races, or Iquar-Tel’Quessir in the tongue of the elves, were immensely powerful, pre-human and even pre-elven species that ruled over Toril and, before it, Abeir-Toril, in the earliest of days. There are five credited Creator Races, although only three existed in this remote epoch.

The first to arise were the sarrukh. Also called the saurians or Progenitors of the Scaled Ones, the sarrukh established the first-known empires: Okoth, Mhairshaulk and Isstosseffifil. They also built the oldest-known surface cities in the Realms: Sar’Rukoth, the capital of Okoth, now believed to be buried under Azulduth, the Lake of Salt south of Mulhorand; and Oreme, long-since buried under the sands of Anauroch, the Great Desert. They worshipped the World Serpent, who first accepted their faith directly but then through vassal incarnations.

The sarrukh were also the first power – but far from the last – to suffer the depredations of the phaerimm. They encountered the phaerimm in the lands north of Oreme, where the creatures seemed to hail from caverns many miles below the surface (the ancestor tunnels of the modern Underdark). The origins of the phaerimm are unknown, but the creatures, then as now, were unrelentingly hostile. The sarrukh did successfully defeat the phaerimm and drive them back into the Underdark, but only through the unleashing of powerful magic to shift the entire course of the Narrow Sea, flooding the caverns below with millions of gallons of water.

Roughly 2,500 years after their first rise to power, the sarrukh peaked as a civilisation. Isstosseffifil collapsed as a result of the war with the phaerimm, although its capital Oreme endured as a multi-species library city for the study of magic. Mhairshaulk endured under the rule of the yuan-ti, but its sarrukh rulers left to explore other planes. Okoth continued to endure until around 31,000 BDR, when it abruptly vanished. Sages assumed it had declined and faded away, but some evidence suggests that the realm was transferred to the shadow-world of Abeir instead. The truth of the matter remains unclear.

A map of western Merrouroboros, depicting the reign of the batrachi. Four powerful sarrukh empires ruled over the lands between c. 33,500 and 31,000 Before Dalereckoning. The batrachi created the successor races known as the bullywugs, doppelgangers, kopru, kuo-toa, locathah, sivs and tako. The rule of the batrachi came to a rather abrupt end in the event known as the Tearfall.

Next to emerge were the batrachi, an amphibian species originating in the seas around Merrouroboros. With the sarrukh in decline, the batrachi were able to emerge onto the dry land and forge their own empires: Nadezhda, Boitumelo, Kolophoon and, greatest of them all, Zhoukoudien, the domain of the High One. These empires flourished for two thousand years before they came into contact with the Jotunbrud, a towering race originating from the freezing lands in the north-east. This race, whom history would recall as the first titans, were formidable but appeared slow and ungainly. Bazim-Gorad, ruler of Nadezhda, urged caution in dealing with the creatures, but the High One Zhoukoudien scoffed at such an idea and treated them with disdain. This led Omo, the titan thane, to slay Zhoukoudien in battle. This sparked a bloody war between the two species.

The titans proved the batrachi’s match and more, driving them back in defeat. In desperation, the batrachi sought magical allies and and found them in powerful spirits imprisoned in various parts of the world. Unfortunately, these were not allies at all, but some of the imprisoned primordials from the most ancient times. The primordials renewed their war against not just the titans, but also the gods of the Realms, who were taken by surprise by the return of their foe. Despite this, the gods were more numerous and more powerful, and quickly gained the upper hand.

In apparent desperation, the primordial Asgorath, the World-Shaper, also known as Io, hurled a moon of ice at Abeir-Toril, intending to destroy that which the primordials could not conquer. The moon was destroyed before it could hit the planet, but the resulting inundation of meteorites, rocky fragments and ice caused widespread destruction. The centre of the continent, between four great lakes or small seas, collapsed, resulting in the creation of the Sea of Falling Stars, also called the Inner Sea. Many of the smaller fragments of the moon which missed the planet looped back around it in a never-ending orbit, becoming known as the Tears of Selûne. Batrachi civilisation collapsed and the titans beat a hasty retreat into the lands of the uttermost north. This apocalyptic event became known in history as the Tearfall, and took place circa, 31,000 BDR.

Ao intervened, furious that, one again, the Balance that was in his care had been endangered. He split Abeir-Toril into two worlds, identical but separated by a whisper of a thought. He gave Abeir to the primordials and Toril to the gods, and split them apart so the two worlds could not meet or be travelled between, thus ending the great war.

But the Tearfall had an unexpected consequence: many of the rocks and stones that had poured out of the shattered moon were actually eggs. And, soon after the Tearfall, they began to hatch.

A map of western Merrouroboros, depicting the reign of the aearee. Three mighty aearee “flocks” ruled over the lands between c. 31,000 and 30,000 Before Dalereckoning. The aearee created the successor races known as wyverns, aarakocra, kenku and owlbears.

The third Creator Race to emerge were the aearee, an avian species originating on a large island in the Silver Sea. Some of the aearee had been enslaved by the batrachi, so the rest of the species kept a low profile until the destruction of the batrachi in the Tearfall. The aearee then moved to the mainland, establishing mighty holds at Viakoo (on Mount Havraquoar, in the lands north of what is now Maztica), Phwiukree (on the Star Mounts of the High Forest) and Shara (in the Orsraun Mountains of modern Turmish.

The rule of the aearee was rather brief. Having established three great holds, the aearee were hard-pressed fighting against enemies such as the lammasu (who assailed Viakoo but were driven back by vast numbers of wyverns) and the gnolls of Urgnarash, who sought to destroy Shara using a plague. The desperation of the times saw the aearee reluctantly join forces with their old enemies, the few surviving batrachi and sarrukh at Oreme, where they undertook great magical feats together. There, the magic of the three races united to create the greatest repositories of magical knowledge in the history of the world. Later history would call them “the Nether Scrolls.”

But word was already spreading from the east of a ferocious new threat, winged and fanged creatures of immense strength and cunning, not to mention magical power. The dragons born of the Tearfall had, after a thousand years, come of age. Led by Nagamat, a draconic general and worshipper of the goddess Tiamat, the first great Flight of Dragons seen on the face of Toril scoured the three aearee holds from the face of the world. The surviving aearee, sarrukh and batrachi were destroyed or forced to flee across the planes. Some believe that some aearee survived on Toril by returning to their original homeland in the uttermost west, but the truth of the matter remained unclear.

The Days of Thunder had ended and the Dawn Age, the Time of Dragons, had begun.

Thank you for reading The Atlas of Ice and Fire. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content before it goes live on my blogs.

A Map of the Undersea Realms

And now for something rather…different.

This is a map of Serôs, the underwater realms of the Sea of Fallen Stars, in the Forgotten Realms world. We previously mapped the overland continent of Faerûn here, but Serôs is the hidden world in the centre of Faerûn, a land of warring kingdoms, ruined temples, dark dungeons and ferocious monsters, all lying underwater.

A Map of the Undersea Realms. Please click for a larger version.

The Surface Waters

The Sea of Fallen Stars, also commonly called the Inner Sea, measures approximately 846,774 square miles (2,589,999 km²) in area. Located in the north-central area of Faerûn, it dominates the centre of the continent and provides an inlet for many of the rivers and lakes of the continent. The Inner Sea is connected to the outer oceans – the Trackless Sea and Great Sea – via underwater tunnels located many thousands of feet below the surface, providing an outflow for the otherwise landlocked body. Civilisation, certainly human civilisation, began on its shores with the early human empire of Imaskar extending along its eastern edges, whilst modern nations around the sea owe their founding to the ancient kingdoms of Mulhorand and Chondath. Today, the Sea of Fallen Stars is Faerûn’s most important waterway, providing both trade and rapid transit across the centre of the continent.

On the surface, the Sea of Fallen Stars is divided into several distinct areas: the Lake of Dragons or Dragonmere lies at its far western end, connected to the rest of the sea by the narrow channel known as the Neck. The Lake of Dragons is relatively shallow and is notable for the peaks of the Storm Horns rising to the north-west and the plains of the Horse Prairie to the south. Due north lies the powerful kingdom of Cormyr.

Immediately to the east, the Inner Sea expands into a wide gulf between the nation of Sembia to the north and an array of city-states to the south, the most powerful and notable of which is Westgate. The Isle of Prespur, which is divided into a Cormyrean and a Sembian area, lies at the eastern end of this stretch of water.

To the north, the sea enters the Dragon Reach, which divides Sembia and the Dalelands from the Vast. The shores of this gulf are dotted with notable city-states, including Port Scardale, Calaunt, Tantras, Ravens Bluff and Procampu. The River Lis connects to the Dragon Reach to the Moonsea to the north.

The central area of the sea is dominated by the forbidding Pirate Isles of the Fallen Stars (to differentiate them from the Pirate Isles of the Trackless Sea, also called the Nelanther). The Pirate Isles are, as the name suggests, home to several significant pirate fleets and groups. The other nations periodically clear out the isles, but the pirate scourge always returns.

Easting Reach is the north-eastern-most arm of the sea, and divides the kingdom of Impiltur in the west from the Great Dale and the nation of Thesk to the east. To the south, the Easting Reach turns into the Sea of Dlurg, which divides Thesk from the nation of Aglarond to the south-west.

The Vilhon Reach lies to the south-west and is the newest of the sea’s “arms,” being created in 255 BDR (Before Dalereckoning) by the destruction of the empire of Jhaamdath at the hands of elven High Magic. The modern nations of Chondath and Sespech hold shores along the Vilhon, whilst the nation of Turmish to the north extends to within a few miles of its shores. Independent city-states like Reth, Hlath, Nimpeth, Hlondeth and Torl dot its shores.

The Wizards’ Reach in the south-east divides the independent city-states of the north coast (of which Laothkund is the most powerful) from the nation of Chessenta to the south. The Reach opens into the Alamber Sea, sometimes called the Sahuagin Sea, which divides Threskel and Unther in the west from Mulhorand in the east and Thay in the north. The Alamber Sea is arguably the most dangerous part of the Inner Sea, with the volcanic island known as the Ship of the Gods constantly threatening to erupt and the hostile, powerful empires of Mulhorand, Unther and Thay constantly engaged in tensions and intrigue.

The Undersea Realms

However, below the surface lies a very different world. The natives call the Sea of Fallen Stars Serôs, a merfolk term meaning “The Embracing Life,” and it is an interesting and strange world where length and breadth is joined by a new direction: depth. The Inner Sea’s floor sits approximately 1,500 feet (457 metres) below sea level, but several trenches and undersea cave systems drop immeasurably further than that. The depths of the trenches are believed to exceed 2500 feet (733m) and connect to the Underdark and, some believe, the Glimmersea, the immense Underdark ocean lying a full twenty miles (105,600 feet, or 32,187m!) below the floor of the Inner Sea.

Those extremes are rarely travelled, however. In everyday life in Seros, the depths are divided into six approximate levels: the Shallows (0-150 feet/0-45m), the Gloom (151-300 feet/46-91m), the Twilight (301-600 feet/92-183m), the Upper Depths (601-1200 feet/184-366m), the Lower Depths (1201-2400 feet/367-732m) and the Underdeep (below 2401 feet/733m), with most civilisation clustering around the upper levels.

As well as by depth, Serôs is divided horizontally between several notable nations, as well as various open areas unclaimed by any polity.

As’arem or the Empire of Arem dominates the north-east of Serôs and is controlled by the shalarin, a (mostly) friendly undersea race. As’aren is divided between four lesser kingdoms, named Es’rath, Es’daan, Es’purr and Es’roch, with the empire’s overall capital located at the city of Us’rath.

Eadraal is the most famous nation in Serôs and arguably has the closest ties to the surface world. Eadraal is dominated and mostly controlled by the merfolk, but they are unusually tolerant and a large number of other races live in their domain, including shalarin, sea elves, tritons and a surprisingly large number of surface dwellers, surviving in the ocean depths with magical or technological aid. Eadraal is arguably the most powerful kingdom of Serôs, expanding around the Hmur Plateau (the undersea plains from which rise the Pirate Isles) as far north-west as Duna’s Kelp Forest. It has an administrative capital, Voalidru, although its most famous settlement is the semi-independent city-state of Myth Nantar, the centre of trade and commerce in Serôs.

The Triton Protectorates surround the Trench of Lopok and consist of three powerful triton city-states (Vuuvaxath, Ahlorsath and Pumanath), aligned with one another and with the Myth Nantar alliance for trade and mutual protection.

Olleth, south of Myth Nantar, is the undersea kingdom of the morkoth, noted for its impressive magical power. The Ollethi are somewhat distrusted and even feared by the other undersea races for their magical powers, but they are heavily outnumbered by the other Serôs nations, which keeps their ambitions in check.

The ixixachitl nation of the Xedran Reefs lies along the coast of Turmish and is noted for its occasional hostility towards the other nations of Serôs, although their ambitions have not so far extended into open warfare.

The sea elven kingdom of Selu’maraar lies along the floor of the Dragon Reach and is noted for its isolationism. The Coronal of Aluwand sees the other undersea nations of Serôs as potential rivals and enemies, and he prefers to keep his borders closed. However, other sea elves believe that Selu’maraar’s destiny lies in greater contact with the rest of Serôs.

Naramyr is another sea elven kingdom located in the relatively shallow Lake of Dragons. Naramyr enjoys friendly relations with the surface human kingdom of Cormyr, and there is an unusually high level of trade between the two nations (their capitals of Telvanlu and Suzail are also quite close together). Naramyr’s presence is useful in that the sea elves recover many survivors of shipwrecks on the lake and convey the survivors to the coast of Cormyr.

The Lost Lands lie between Naramyr and Eadraal and consist of a wide swathe of unclaimed territory, divided between bickering koalinth tribes like the Severed Fins and Kraken’s Rage. The sunken Netherese flying city of Sakkors is still rumoured to lie on the sea floor, somewhere west of the Haunted Plains.

The Selmal Basin, known on the surface as the Vilhon Reach, is the shattered remnant of the ancient sea elven empire of Aryselmalyr. Despite the passage of almost 1,500 years since that cataclysmic event, the sea floor is still littered with the ruins of the empire and is shunned by sea elves. The basin is today inhabited mostly by koalinths.

To the east of Eadraal, Olleth and the Triton Protectorates lies the Sharksbane Wall, an immense fortification built atop Hunter’s Ridge. The wall was constructed at the height of the Aryselmalyr Empire to defend against sahuagin attacks from the east. The Wall is 137 miles long and extends to within 100 feet of the surface, and is patrolled by sea elves, occasionally joined by other races. The wall cannot stop small bands of sahuagin passing over, but it does prevent any large-scale assault.

The Sharksbane Wall was breached by the armies of Iakhovas the Taker during the Twelfth Serôs War. The rest of the Wall remains intact, and patrols around the breach have been reinforced.

East of the Sharksbane Wall lies the sahuagin kingdom of Kurrimal, with its capital at T’Kalah, located in the Alamber Sea near the Alaor. Kurrimal’s territory is contiguous with that of the merrow kingdom of Poragga. The merrow control the shallows down to 300 feet below the surface, whilst the sahuagin control the depths from there down to the ocean floor. The sahuagin of the Wizards’ Reach and Alamber Sea are the most constant threat to the rest of Serôs, but they suffered grievous losses in the Twelfth Serôs War and an eruption of the Ship of the Gods volcano which destroyed much of their south-eastern-most lands.

Sources

The most detailed information on the underwater realms of the Inner Sea comes from the 1999 book, Sea of Fallen Stars by Steven E. Schend. Mel Odom’s Threat from the Sea novel trilogy expands on the sourcebook.

Thank you for reading The Atlas of Ice and Fire. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content before it goes live on my blogs.

Stellar Cartography: A Babylon 5 Starmap

Here’s a quick project I’ve been meaning to look at for a while: a Babylon 5 starmap. This map only shows a few systems and their relative positions in real space (not hyperspace, which is a very different thing). Babylon 5 is one of the few SFF franchises – certainly one of the few TV shows – which actually uses real stars as the basis for locations.

Please click for a larger version.

The map is partially based on the fine Stellar Geography article about Babylon 5, where the writer lays out persuasive arguments for the locations of both the Narn and Centauri homeworld based on in-text distances and directions. Unfortunately, insufficient data exists to map the locations of the Minbari and Vorlon homeworlds, and other locations of note.

This map shows Sol, the location of Earth and the heart of the Earth Alliance, and the neighbouring powers of the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republic. Epsilon Eridani, the neutral star system where diplomatic station Babylon 5 is located, is shown, along with the Earth Alliance’s major colonies at Proxima III and Vega VII. These are real-world stars whose distances are known. The location of the Narn homeworld can be inferred from the show (in the episode By Any Means Necessary): we are told that Narn is located 12.2 human light-years (10.0 Narn light-years) from Babylon 5. The only star located at this distance from Epsilon Eridani likely to have habitable planets (actually closer to 12.4 light-years, but that seems a negligible difference) is 82 Eridani.

The location of Centauri Prime is harder to discern, as the only clue we are given is that Centauri Prime is 75 Centauri light-years from Babylon 5 (in The War Prayer). However, the star Iota Centauri is located a pleasing 65.3 human light-years from Babylon 5 (approx 58 light-years from Earth), with a reasonable possibility of hosting planets, and located in a direction that would allow the Centauri to encounter the Narn before they encountered humanity.

Unfortunately we lack any significant clues to be able to identify the stars that are home to the Minbari, Vorlons or other species. One world that does appear is called Markab, and there is a real star called Markab (located 133.35 light-years from Sol and 130 light-years from Babylon 5), but according to J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5‘s main writer, who penned 91 of the show’s 110 episodes), he was unaware of this and the star is not meant to be the location of the Markab homeworld.

In the Babylon 5 universe, interstellar travel is conducted via hyperspace. Hyperspace is a parallel (but featureless) universe that exists alongside our own and intersects with it at every point, but is much smaller. Because of this, ships can enter hyperspace, travel several thousand or million kilometres and exit hyperspace several light-years away from their prior location. However, hyperspace features strange gravitational eddies, inclines and currents that prevent simple linear travel. Ships might have to fly “against” the current to get to a target destination, and in some areas hyperspace travel might become impossible, necessitating a return to real space and travelling across open space to get to another jump gate located “beyond” the obstruction in hyperspace. In other areas there may by hyperfast currents and eddies that can dramatically speed ships to remote regions in hyperspace, allowing them to re-enter real space thousands or even tens of thousands of light-years from their prior location in just a few days, whilst it might take weeks to travel a hundred light-years under normal conditions.

In terms of plot, of course, the vagaries of hyperspace travel allow the writers to be vague about travel times and have ships travelling at the “speed of plot.” That said, J. Michael Straczynski was reasonably consistent about travel times. It is a two-day jump from Earth to Babylon 5 (10.5 light-years) and a three-day jump from Babylon 5 to Centauri Prime, despite Centauri Prime being considerably further away (~58 light-years based on the map calculations). It is also a two-day jump from Babylon 5 to Z’ha’dum on the galactic rim, a distance approximating 25,000 light-years (assuming Z’ha’dum is on the rim closest to Earth, otherwise possibly considerably further; 75,000 light-years if it is located on the opposite side of the galaxy).

For these reasons, a literal distance map between stars is somewhat pointless, since stars relatively close in realspace might entail a long trip in hyperspace, whilst stars located thousands of light-years apart might be a very quick trip in hyperspace. As a result, various fan and quasi-canon Babylon 5 maps in licensed material show maps in terms of jump nodes rather than literal distances.

Still, this was a fun little map to put together, using Celestia to establish the relative stellar relationships.

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A Distance Map of Westeros

Tags

a song of ice and fire, book map, geography

A while ago, I received a request for an interesting idea: isochronic maps of fantasy worlds.

A distance map of Westeros. Please click for a larger version.

Isochronic maps show time over distance, and are very useful if the specific distance is less useful than knowing how quickly you can get somewhere. The scale might tell you that a location is 300 miles away in a straight line, but an isochronic map can tell you how long it will take to travel that distance given various factors (time of year, weather conditions, mounted or on foot, on good roads or across country, terrain etc).

I started looking at doing an isochronic map of Westeros but ran into problems that sorting through the morass of geographical factors would take a considerable amount of time, requiring a huge number of judgement calls on how good quality the Kingsroad is versus the Ocean Road, how impassable the Mountains of the Moon are in autumn and so on. For the time being I switched to doing a much more simple distance map which does not take account of geographical obstacles at this stage. The distance map is centred on King’s Landing, the capital city of the Seven Kingdoms.

The distance map is based on the idea of someone being able to travel 25 miles in one day. This would typically be someone travelling on horseback with moderate baggage and able to swap horses maybe once a week or fortnight (otherwise you could assume 2 days of rest for every 5-7 days travelled and extend the days required to travel accordingly). The journeys would be slightly faster on an excellent highway like the Kingsroad, and a lot slower in bad weather.

A full isochronic map would take account of such features. Historically they were more useful for ocean travel, given the more dependable regularity of ship speeds as technology improved, but land-based ones exist as well.

An isochronic map of the world in 1914, centred on London.

A fully accurate isochronic map is impossible, due to the number of variables being very high (pleasingly, for an author who hasn’t necessarily put this amount of thought into things), but it’s something to definitely consider for a future entry.

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A Revised Map of the First Law

I previously posted a map of Joe Abercrombie’s Circle of the World – the setting for his First Law books – a couple of years back. I decided to revisit it ahead of the publication of the next book in the setting, The Trouble with Peace, next month.

A map of the Circle of the World. Please click for a larger version.

This isn’t a major revamp, being the previous map colourised. A more thorough reworking of the map is possible in the future (incorporating the expanded maps of Styria and the Far Country from Best Served Cold and Red Country, for example), but that’s a way off at the moment.

Joe Abercrombie’s First Law world is divided into three continents and numerous large islands.

The North is a land of frozen rivers, towering mountains and ferocious creatures called Shanka. The Northmen are hardy warriors, living in a land of war, raiding and a rough kind of honour.

The western continent is land of prairies and plains, reminiscent of the American West. This continent is the location of the Far Country, where rumours of riches and gold have drawn settlers, and the Old Empire, a formerly great nation that has collapsed into civil war.

The southern continent, Kanta, is a vast land of deserts and arid plains with civilisation clustered around the great rivers. Kanta is the home of the massive Gurkish Empire, the largest and most populous nation in the Circle of the World.

Located between these continents are several islands, the most notable of which are Midderland, Styria, Suljuk and Thond. Midderland is the homeland of the Union, a large empire which includes possessions on all three continental landmasses: Angland in the North, Dagoska in Kanta and Starikland on the western continent. Adua, the capital of the Union, is located in Midderland. Styria is a collection of feuding city-states, the most powerful of which is Talins.

 

Note on the Map

This map is based closely on the map created by Dave Senior for Sharp Ends, the 2016 Joe Abercrombie collection of short stories set in the same world. I have added some additional locations and included a scale (based on the discussion of the distance from Aostum to Darmium given in the text).

 

The Circle of the World is the setting for the following novels:

The First Law Trilogy

1. The Blade Itself (2006)
2. Before They Are Hanged (2007)
3. Last Argument of Kings (2008)

Semi-Stand-Alone Books

• Best Served Cold (2009)
• The Heroes (2011)
• Red Country (2012)
• Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of the First Law (2016)

The Age of Madness Trilogy

1. A Little Hatred (2019)
2. The Trouble with Peace (2020)
3. The Beautiful Machine (2021)

Thank you for reading The Atlas of Ice and Fire. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs.

Stellar Cartography: The Maps of Freespace

This is a series of maps based on the Freespace video game franchise. This series consists of three space combat games widely regarded as the best in their genre: Conflict Freespace: The Great War (1998), Conflict Freespace: The Silent Threat (1998) and Freespace 2 (1999).

A map depicting known space shortly before the events of Conflict Freespace: The Great War. Please click for a larger version.

A Brief History of the Freespace Universe

Early History

More then ten thousand years ago, a powerful alien race, known colloquially if lazily as “the Ancients,” arose in our region of the galaxy and established a large, powerful empire spanning many systems, utilising the power of subspace to jump between distant stars. This empire flourished for several millennia before it encountered an extremely powerful, tenacious and relentless foe, the “Destroyers.” The Destroyers pushed the Ancients back to their home star system and eradicated them approximately eight thousand years ago.

Peace fell on this corner of the galaxy for a long period of time until two species in relatively neighbouring parts of the galaxy (at least neighbouring via the subspace node network, if not in physical space) reached the stars almost simultaneously: the Vasudans, based on Vasuda Prime, and the Terrans, based on Earth in the Sol system. The two species colonised multiple systems before running headlong into one another. First contact took place early in the 24^th Century and it appears that this may have been relatively peaceful. However, the flames of xenophobia were fanned in both civilisations, propelled by a joint fear that each other race was going to seize resources urgently desired by the other. When a Terran diplomatic party made a minor mistake during a ritual Vasudan greeting in 2321, extremists seized on it as an excuse for war.

The war, fought between the Vasudan Parliamentary Empire (PVE) and the Galactic Terran Alliance (GTA), raged for fourteen years. At several key moments it appeared that one power gained the upper hand over the other, only for their advantage to be checked. The conflict was expensive and wasteful, and peace initiatives several times came close to ending the war, but each time old fears and hatreds were reignited and the conflict gained new momentum. Still, after fourteen years it became clear that both races had lost the appetite for a prolonged battle to the death.

A map depicting the Great War of AD 2335. Please click for a larger version.

The Great War

In 2335, both species were taken by surprise by the arrival of an unknown alien race. Flying distinctive black ships and using energy shields (a technology unknown to either the Vasudans or Terrans), this race gained the name “Shivans.” The Shivans relentlessly attacked both Terran and Vasudan worlds and ships, devastating GTA holdings in the Ross 128 system and mounting a systematic assault through the Ribos sector. Faced with a mutual foe desiring nothing less than the annihilation of all other sentient life, the Terrans and Vasudans called a ceasefire, formed an ad hoc alliance and established a common front against the invading Shivans, drawing a line between Vega, Antares and Ribos.

Unfortunately, the Shivans deployed a superior flagship vessel, codenamed Lucifer. Equipped with a shield which regenerated almost instantly to any attack, the vessel appeared unbeatable. It jumped past the allied blockade to strike at Deneb. After massacring all forces in its path, it jumped into orbit around Vasuda Prime and bombarded the planet from orbit for half a day, killing more than four billion Vasudans.

As the war grew more desperate, Vasudan scientists reluctantly confirmed the existence of alien ruins on Altair IV that long predated their own civilisation. Examination of records from these ruins suggested that the Shivans were the “Great Destroyers” who had obliterated the Ancient civilisation. The Ancient records suggested that although Shivan shield technology was superior, it possessed a significant weakness: it could not function in subspace. The Terran and Vasudan forces augmented their best fighter and bomber wings with intersystem subspace drives and tracked the Lucifer from Vasuda to Delta Serpenis. From there, the Lucifer made the jump to Sol. The fighter and bomber wings pursued the Lucifer into subspace and confirmed that the shields on the Lucifer were no longer operating. They were able to hit the Lucifer’s reactor core with heavy torpedoes and crippled the ship; when it emerged from subspace, it exploded with such force that it created a subspace feedback loop that enveloped the entire Sol system. Although the system was unharmed, it did collapse every jump node leading to Sol, effectively cutting it off from the rest of the galaxy.

A map showing the explored galaxy after the Great War, but before the Beta Aquilae Convention.

Aftermath

The aftermath of the Great War was a chaotic time. The Vasudan Empire relocated its capital to Aldebaran and began a rebuilding process, whilst the GTA established a new base of operations in Delta Serpentis and attempted to find a way of reopening the jump node to Sol. All of these efforts proved futile. Several months after the war, the GTA’s intelligence and special operations division attempted to launch a coup against the GTA government and reignite the war against the Vasudans using an experimental warship, the Hades. This rebellion was halted in its tracks and the Hades was destroyed.

The GTA fragmented over the following few years, with regional governments including the Regulus Syndicate, the Adhara Coalition, the Antares Federation and the Luyten New Alliance forming. However, in 2345 the Vasudan Emperor proposed unifying Terran and Vasudan military holdings into a single alliance with the intent of propelling technological development forward so that they would be much better prepared should the Shivans return. After considerable dissent, argument and negotiation, this resulted in the signing in 2358 of the Beta Aquilae Convention (BETAC), which dissolved the regional governments and formally established the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA).

By this time, attempts to contact Earth by sublight communications from systems close to Sol in physical space (most notably Alpha Centauri, Wolf 359 and Sirius) had also curiously failed, resulting in growing concerns about the fate of the home system.

In 2365 the GTVA was suddenly rocked by the unexpected outbreak of civil war. Although the new alliance had restored political peace and economic security to all Terran and Vasudan worlds, some Terrans and Vasudans bristled at the integration of their two species into one union. The Vasudan rebels, known as the Hammer of the Light, had largely been defeated after the Great War, but underlying tensions in the Terran systems reached boiling point. Admiral Bosch of the GTVA military staged a coup in Polaris and announced the founding of the Neo-Terran Front, a human-first organisation which called for the dissolution of BETAC and the imposition of a hardline, fascistic form of governance (including summary execution for officers who failed to achieve military objectives). The NTF failed to recognised the BETAC’s rules on war crimes, particularly not recognising the execution of Vasudan military officers or civilians as a crime at all. Shockingly, the rebellion spread and both Regulus and Sirius declared for the NTF within weeks.

The GTVA and the NTF clashed for control of their three home systems, but the NTF had caused a substantial minority of the GTVA fleet to defect. The GTVA was on the back foot in the opening months of the war as the NTF fortified their three home systems and then went on the offensive in Epsilon Pegasi, Deneb and Alpha Centauri. The GTVA barely held them back, but was then able to launch a successful counter-offensive. Eighteen months into the war, with the GTVA political council on the brink of suing for peace, the GTVA military unleashed its most secret project: the GTVA Colossus, a ship considerably larger and more powerful even than the Lucifer. The Colossus tore a swathe through the NTF fleet, shrugging off even an attempted kamikaze ram from an Orion-class destroyer with only minimal damage.

A map depicting the civil war with the Neo-Terran Front in 2365-66. Please click for a larger version.

During this conflict, it was determined that the NTF had seized technology related to the Ancients and had been using it for unknown purposes. One of the NTF experiments activated an Ancient device of tremendous power in the Gamma Draconis system, a system believed to have been deserted after initial surveys turned up nothing of interest. GTVA investigations revealed that the device was a subspace portal, capable of stabilising jump nodes too unstable for regular use. The Gamma Draconis portal, known as the Knossos, appeared to lead to Shivan space, as Shivan forces began pouring through Gamma Draconis into the Capella system. The GTVA fleet at Capella annihilated the Shivan force and then drove them back to the Knossos portal. The GTVA seized control of the portal and debated on destroying it to halt the possibility of any further Shivan invasion. However, the portal hinted at a way of reopening the jump nodes to Earth. This prospect was too tantalising to resist and it was decided to fortify the Knossos whilst securing the space on the far side. A precautionary evacuation of the 250 million inhabitants of Capella began, whilst the GTVA fleet redeployed to meet the possible challenges of fighting both the Shivans and NTF simultaneously. As it turned out, the latter was unnecessary; not only did the Colossus make short work of the NTF fleets, Admiral Bosch and his flagship, the Iceni, abandoned their worlds and fled through the Knossos, taking the GTVA fleets defending it by surprise.

The far side of the Knossos portal was revealed to be a dense nebula. With no stars visible through the thick clouds, it was impossible to determine the nebula’s location. However, the nebula was determined to be the site of a vast Shivan resource-gathering operation. The GTVA engaged Shivan forces throughout the nebula, destroying all of them with impressive ease thanks to their new weapons and technology, but were unable to locate the Iceni. They did locate the new Shivan flagship, the Sathanas, a warship rivalling the Colossus in size and exceeding it in firepower. With the Sathanas bearing down on the subspace the portal, the order was given to destroy the Knossos.

The attempt to destroy the portal appeared successful, but the Sathanas was able to jump into Gamma Draconis anyway: the portal had held the node open for long enough for it to become fully stabilised, even without the portal’s help. The GTVA scrambled its best bomber squadrons to knock out the Sathanas’ main weapons array. The Colossus was then able to destroy the Sathanas with its main guns, although only by almost overheating them into oblivion.

A GTVA taskforce returned to the nebula and discovered the Iceni, having somehow communicated with the Shivans. Admiral Bosch and his command crew were taken off the vessel by the Shivans, who then attempted to butcher the crew but were stopped by the GTVA taskforce. The Iceni was scuttled, but the experimental ETAK device Bosch used to communicate with the Shivans was recovered intact.

Further exploration of the nebula revealed the presence of a second Knossos portal, but attempts to secure it were defeated when a second Sathanas-class warship arrived, forcing the GTVA to once again evacuate the nebula. Before they left, a single scout party using captured Shivan fighters was sent through the second portal. They found themselves in a binary star system with a sky configuration that was not recognised by GTVA astronomers. A third Knossos portal was detected a vast distance away and no less than nine Sathanas-class warships were detected converging on the nebula portal, presenting a level of threat that even the Colossus could not deal with. Eventually the threat level became insurmountable when it was revealed that the full strength of the Shivan fleet topped out at eighty Sathanas-class vessels.

The GTVA concentrated almost its entire military force in Capella. The evacuation of Capella had now been proceeding for months, with the majority of its 250 million people pulled back (an exercise which had easily become the single most logistically challenging task in the history of both the Vasudan and human races). Aware they could not hope to defeat the Sathanas fleet, they instead focused on getting the last few civilian ships out of the system and using powerful meson bombs to destroy the jump nodes leading out of Capella to Vega and Epsilon Pegasi. The Epsilon Pegasi node was successfully collapsed.

The GTVA fleet began withdrawing to Vega, but the expected battle with the Sathanas fleet did not take place: instead, seventy-nine of the Sathanas-class ships surrounded the Capella star and began manipulating it with energy emissions of unknown origin. The remaining Sathanas broke off to engage and destroy the Colossus, which disobeyed orders to hold back the Shivans long enough for several civilian ships to escape.

After three days, just as the last Capellan refugees fled to Vega, the Shivan fleet triggered an energy pulse which destroyed the Capella star, making it go supernova. The resulting explosion destroyed the entire system and everything in it, and also collapsed the Vega node without the need for a meson bomb.

The destruction of Capella and its jump nodes effectively ended the Shivan threat from that quarter. The GTVA had survived what appeared to be an outright apocalypse, but the motivations for the Shivans to destroy Capella were unknown. It was theorised that the nebula system may have also been a star destroyed before its time by the Shivans, allowing the Shivans to harvest the gases and resources left behind. The truth of the matter remained unknown.

What was known was that the Shivan threat was far greater than could have been previously imagined. The GTVA began rearming and rebuilding, and also researching, for the data gleaned from the Knossos was enough for them to construct their own such devices and re-establish contact with the mysteriously silent Sol system. The threat of the Shivans remains overwhelming.

A map showing the state of play after the second war with the Shivans and the Capella supernova. Please click for a larger version.

Subspace Nodes

To circumvent the speed of light limitation, all known spacefaring races used the subspace node network. This consists of tunnels or wormholes through subspace which link disparate systems together. Scientists are divided over whether nodes are naturally-occurring artifacts or are of artificial origin, or a mix. There is some evidence that it was the Ancients who created the current subspace node network, by using Knossos-class portals to stabilise natural but unstable nodes and then open them up to travel. The fact that the nodes tend to link together the brightest stars as seen from this sector of space or those most likely to harbour lifebearing planets does suggest an artificial origin.

The node network is not dependent on physical proximity in realspace. For example, Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to Sol at 4.4 light-years, but it is not the closest in subspace: Deneb (1,412 light-years distant), Beta Aquilae (44.7 light-years) and Delta Serpentis (228.1 light-years) are all a single subspace jump from Sol, whilst Alpha Centauri are is two jumps away (via Deneb). Wolf 359 is only 7.8 light-years distant from Sol but it is five jumps distant, via Delta Serpentis (228.1 light-years), Ross 128 (10.94 light-years), Laramis (unknown) and Luyten 726-8 (8.73 light-years) and so forth.

It is possible to collapse jump nodes with a large enough explosion. The shockwaves triggers the collapse of the node tunnel into a state only detectable at the quantum level; reopening the jump node can only be done with exotic matter and energy as generated via a Knossos-class subspace portal. Robust jump engines can also traverse nodes that other races cannot use: for example, the Shivans were able to use several unstable jump nodes to circumvent Vasudan and GTA lines of defence during the Great War. By the time of the second conflict, Vasudan and GTA technology had improved and the Shivans were unable to use this tactic as effectively.

The jump nodes from Sol to its connecting systems (Deneb, Beta Aquilae and Delta Serpentis) were severed during the Lucifer’s destruction at the conclusion of the Great War. The jump nodes linking Capella to Epsilon Pegasi and Vega (and presumably Gamma Draconis) were collapsed when the Shivans turned the Capellan star supernova at the conclusion of the Second Great War.

 

Note on the Maps

The links marked in blue are confirmed to exist via the game’s own accompanying maps or are canonically proven to exist by in-game events (most notably the Altair-Deneb jump node, which is not on the official maps but features in no less than three missions during the original game). Lines in orange are not shown on the maps but are referred to in dialogue.

 

Sources

The FreeSpace Wiki was an invaluable reference point in assembling this guide, particularly the high-res logos created by MjnMixael.

 

Thank you for reading The Atlas of Ice and Fire. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content before it goes live on my blogs.

A Map of Kara-Tur

Following on from my maps of Faerûn, Maztica and Zakhara, here is a new map of the continent of Kara-Tur in the Forgotten Realms fantasy setting.

A map of the continent of Kara-Tur. Please click for a (much) larger version.

Kara-Tur is part of the same landmass as Faerûn and Zakhara, but is considered a continent in its own right, separated from those two landmasses by the towering Yehimal mountain range. It is located due east of Faerûn, across the obviously-misnamed Endless Waste, and east and north-east of Zakhara, across the Segara Sea. Overland travel and trade between Faerûn and Kara-Tur is lengthy but frequent; trade with Zakhara is complicated by distance and geography.

Kara-Tur measures some 5,500 miles from the Land of the Snow Spirits – believed to be the local name for the Endless Ice Sea – in the north to the Southern Ocean. It is around 3,500 miles wide at its widest extent in the south. These dimensions comfortably make Kara-Tur the largest of Toril’s continents, especially when the extensive Wa and Kozakura island chains (among others) are added to the landmass. Kara-Tur is bordered by the Great Ice Sea, the Endless Waste and the Yehimal to the west and by the Yellow Sea, Celestial Sea and Eastern Sea in the east.

A map showing the three principle trade routes between Faerûn and Kara-Tur. Please click for a larger version.

Trade Links with Faerûn

Faerûn and Kara-Tur enjoy regular travel and trade, and three great overland trade routes link the two continents.

The northern-most route is known as the Golden Way in Faerûn and the Spice Road in Kara-Tur. It extends from the port of Telflamm on Faerûn’s Inner Sea all the way to the Shou city of Chao Yang, from which further highways extend to Kuo Te’ Lung, the capital city of Shou Lung. It is roughly 3,400 miles from Telflamm to Chao Yang by road, with a further 1,600 miles required to reach the Shou capital. This route is obviously the longest of the three, but also the most convenient for nations of Faerûn’s Heartlands. This route was shut down by the Tuigan war of 1359-60 DR, but since the end of the war the Tuigan have reopened the trade route in return for (so far) relatively modest tribute for crossing their lands.

The central road is known as the Silk Route and extends from Dhaztanar, the port capital of Semphar on Brightstar Lake, to the Shou city of Yenching. This route is considerably shorter than the northern at just under 2,000 miles (with another 1,300 miles required to reach the Shou capital) and minimises the time spent in the Hordelands, with only a relatively modest distance to be covered between Howling Gap and the Alashan Pass into Khazari. However, this route tends to be the most expensive. Both Semphar and Khazari tax trade goods passing through their territories to the point that the northern route may appear preferable, despite being longer. There is also the issue of getting to Dhaztanar, which is already so far east – to the east of Mulhorand and even Murghôm – that it doesn’t even appear on many maps of Faerûn. To put this in context, the distance from Waterdeep to Dhaztanar is significantly greater than the distance from Dhaztanar to the Shou capital.

The southern-most route, and the least-known, is the winding pass between the Katakoro Plateau of Kara-Tur and the kingdom of Ulgarth in the Utter East of Faerûn. This route begins at the port of Suormpar on the Golden Water and extends north and east through the towering Katakoro Mountains (a north-western arm of the Yehimal) onto the plateau. The road then winds eastwards along the Upper Hungste to the Shou port of Mishan. This route is a relatively modest 1,600 miles in length and, since Mishan on the wide and fast-flowing Hungste, one of the great rivers of Kara-Tur, provides much speedier access to the Shou interior. However, the same problem applies here on much greater scale: Ulgarth is in the far south-eastern corner of Faerûn and the time spent travelling to Ulgarth could be better spent just traversing one of the other routes. Ulgarth does have the benefit of being located on the external ocean (the Great Sea, via the Golden Water), which means for traders travelling from Estagund, Halruaa, Samarach, Nimbral, Lantan or even Calimshan, there are arguments for travelling by sea to Suormpar and then overland. A counter-argument is that the pass through the Katakoro Mountains can be unreliable, closed by bad weather or avalanches, and the stretch of road along the Hungste west of Mishan is in unclaimed territory, with a dramatically increased risk of bandit attack.

Another option is by sea, although this is both lengthy and costly. Experiments to open a northern sea route to Kara-Tur via the Endless Ice Sea have ended so far in failure. Although routes around Faerûn’s northern coast do open in the summer, they tend to be fleeting and a ship will do well to get from the Trackless Sea to the Great Ice Sea before the routes close. There are no viable ports on the Great Ice Sea, and Kara-Tur’s northern coast extends for a vast distance to the east, more than can easily be covered by a single voyage.

The southern route is more doable, but is somewhat hazardous, requiring as does a skilled navigator to pass through the maze of islands to the west of Zakhara (most of them uncharted, with corsairs and pirates a common problem), then turning east through the well-named Crowded Sea, then across the only-partially charted Segara Sea and then around Kara-Tur’s vast, inhospitable southern coast before finally making landfall in T’u Lung. Faerûnian traders generally prefer the intermediary trade, of visiting only Zakhara and then buying Kara-Tur goods or selling their own wares there, which depending on demand and the goods in question can be more cost-effective.

A more direct route has been proposed, by circumnavigating the globe and travelling west to reach Kara-Tur from the east. It was during a very attempt to do this by Captain Cordell and the Golden Legion of Amn in 1361 that led to the discovery of the western continent of Maztica. Faerûnian explorers and traders have gotten caught up in the exploration of Maztica instead, but the original plan remains valid, especially since a sea route from the Trackless Sea into the Eastern Sea via the Straits of Lopango is known to exist. However, travelling to Kara-Tur by this method would entail a sea voyage of more than 20,000 miles across vast stretches of open, featureless ocean, which so far has daunted even the bravest sea captain. There are also logistical issues, with no safe port known to exist between south-eastern Maztica and Kara-Tur for resupply.

For the time being, adventurers and traders alike stick to one of the most trusted routes.

Political entities of Kara-Tur. Please click for a larger version.

Major Polities of Kara-Tur

If Faerûn is the land of kingdoms and city-states, Kara-Tur is the land of empires. Colossal nation-states stretch across Kara-Tur, several of them so vast that they have provinces and even districts that could swallow the largest Faerûn nations whole. Shou Lung’s Chukei Province, by itself, is far larger than Faerûn’s entire Western Heartlands, whilst noble Cormyr is still smaller than Shou Lung’s smallest province.

 

Shou Lung

The Shou Lung Empire lays claim to being the largest, most populous and most powerful nation on Faerûn. The first two claims are indisputable. More than 2,500 miles fall between the empire’s northern-most and southern-most borders, and some 2,200 miles between the east and rest. The entire continent of Zakhara could fit into the empire with plenty of room left over.

In terms of population, the sheer number of people living inside Shou Lung is staggering. It is said that Shou Lung’s human population may exceed 100 million, which is more than the combined numbers of humans and non-humans living on the entire continent of Faerûn (currently estimated at just under 80 million). A colossal amount of Shou Lung’s land has been turned over to feeding this vast population, with immense rice valleys stretching for hundreds of miles along the major river-valleys, and fields cut out of the side of mountains through engineering and magical feats unlike anything seen in the west. Gigantic highways criss-cross the empire, which is defended by an army said to number more than a million strong, although it is also scattered across a vast swathe of territory, having to defend the southern border with T’u Lung and the Warring States, the Dragonwall against the Endless Waste, the western border with the lawless Katakoro Plateau and the eastern coast against naval adventurers from Wa and Kozakura.

Shou Lung is divided into fourteen provinces: Chukei, Mai Yuan, Ching Tung, Sheng Ti, Wa K’an, Ti Erte, Hungste, Kao Shan, Wang Kuo, Hai Yuan, Yu’ I, Arakin, Chu Yuan and Tien Lun. Its capital city is Kuo Te’ Lung and its largest port is Karatin, both on the Hungste River. Its current ruler (as of 1371 DR) is Kai Tsao Shou Chin, Lord of the Jade Throne.

 

T’u Lung

T’u Lung is Shou Lung’s more fractious neighbour to the south. It was originally part of Shou Lung, but broke away 300 years ago when the empire was divided between two rival emperors. Shou Lung has tried several times to invade and reclaim T’u Lung, but failed to do so; devoting the manpower required to fully subdue the breakaway kingdom would endanger the empire’s other frontiers. T’u Lung has also faced a bitter and bloody internal civil war, which only recently ended.

Despite these struggles, T’u Lung may well be the second-largest and second-most populous nation on Toril, although it is more divided and fractious than Shou Lung. It also has more border challenges than Shou Lung, having to hold its frontiers against Petan, the Warring States, the Kuong Kingdom, the hill-tribes of the Purang and the jungle kingdom of Laothan to the south-east.

It consists of six provinces as follows: Joi Chang, Ausa, West Wai, East Wai, Bashan Do and vast Fengnao. Its capital city is Wai (formerly Chia Wan Ch’uan) and its largest port is Ausa. Its current ruler is Wai Yong, tenth Emperor of the Lui Dynasty.

 

Khazari

Khazari is an intermediary kingdom on the Silk Route, located east of Semphar and west of Shou Lung, high up in the Katakoro Mountains. It is sometimes counted as part of the Hordelands, rather than Kara-Tur. Khazari is a land of trade and religious piety, but is divided by corruption and internal politics.

Khazari’s capital city is Skarou, with the town of Alashan guarding the Silk Route west to Semphar. The fortress-town of Manass watches over the Hordelands to the north. The nation’s ruler is Prince Ogandi, a canny ruler who took advantage of a threatened Tuigan invasion in 1359 to consolidate power and authority under his banner.

 

Ra-Khati

Ra-Khati is a secretive and almost unknown country located south and west of Khazari, deep in the heart of the Katakoro Shan. Unlike Khazari, which lays in a vast bowl of open land between the mountain peaks, Ra-Khati winds between the mountains and lakes. Towns and villages are built around the rivers, streams and lakes of the country.

Ra-Khati’s capital city is Saikhoi. Its ruler is the Dalai Lama (high priest) Tsenya Garbo. The kingdom was invaded and conquered by Ambuchar Devayam, the Necromancer Emperor of Solon, in 1360; the nation was liberated in 1362 when Devayam was slain in Khazari and the rule of the Dalai Lama restored.

 

Tabot

Tabot is a large kingdom located on the eastern flanks of the Yehimal, the tallest peaks on all of Toril. The mountains tower a staggering 35,000 feet or more above sea level and few who have tried to climb them have ever returned.

Tabot consists of two immense valleys separated by the Peerless Mountains but joined by the Lokar Pass. The kingdom is decentralised, with authority shared between the great monastery-fortresses and local rulers.

Tabot’s cultural and trading capital is U’Chan Gompa (formerly Koko Nur).

 

Petan

Petan is a small country located south-west of T’u Lung, along the lower Fenghsintzu River (T’u Lung’s greatest river network) and the Rendah, north of the Intan Mountains.

Relatively little is known of Petan, save it seems to be relatively peaceable but fierce in its independence. Its capital city is Penting.

 

The Warring States

The Warring States are a small number of petty-kingdoms, bandit principalities and tribelands located east of Petan and south of T’u Lung, in the jungles north of the Malatran Plateau. Little is known of the States beyond their unrelenting hostility.

 

Kuong

The vast but secretive Kuong Kingdom is located in the jungles of south-eastern Kara-Tur, south of T’u Lung and Purang, east of the Warring States and south-west of Laothan. The Himasla Mountains form the southern border of the kingdom and the vast Malatran Plateau forms the western.

Kuong is a strongly unified country whose people obey their rulers unquestioningly. The nation has a strong army and a strong economy, thanks to a well-developed system of internal markets and trade with surrounding nations. Kuong’s remoteness and its apparent primitivism hides its true strength. The T’u like to think of the Kuong as a primitive and barbarian people, although their generals are less relaxed about the network of strong Kuong fortresses located along their mutual river border.

Kuong is ruled by the Priest-King Vishnan VII from the city of Ranguri, located on the Kunong River, deep in the jungle. The kingdom’s largest port is Marabaya on the Eastern Sea.

 

Purang

The Purang Hills form a complex highland landscape extending almost from Bukai Lake to the Laothan and Kuong jungles, around the headwaters of the Henai. The tribes of the hills are a mixture of friendly and the decidedly militant.

The Purang do not recognise a single capital, although Kumok is their largest settlement and the White Monkey Tribe who control it are the friendliest and most open to external trade. The unrelentingly hostile Twisted Palm tribe, which controls the southern hills near the jungle, is best avoided.

 

Laothan

Laothan is a large kingdom stretching along the south-eastern coast of Kara-Tur, south and east of T’u Lung, east of Purang and north-east of the Kuong Kingdom. The Laothan nation is actually an alliance of tribes known as the Seng; the Thok are the largest and currently most dominant tribe of the Seng. The Seng people settled down some centuries ago and are currently transitioning to farming and trade as their main sources of income rather than migratory wanderings.

Laothan’s capital is Cheinang. Its current ruler is Thok Lian.

 

Malatra

Malatra is not a political entity, but a geographic one. The term “Malatra” is used in Shou and T’u Lung to refer to all the jungle lands to the south, although this is inaccurate. Malatra proper is the name of a vast plateau in southern Kara-Tur. Almost a thousand miles across, the plateau towers a thousand feet or more above the surrounding lands. Access to Malatra is extremely difficult, with some believing it is protected by magical and religious forces as well as simple geographic inaccessibility.

Those who have managed to enter Malatra report a land dominated by the so-called “Living Jungle” and divided into regions by savannahs, rivers, volcanoes and mountains. Remote and mysterious, Malatra daunts even the most dedicated explorers.

 

The Tribes of Ama Basin

Ama Basin is located north of Shou Lung, beyond the Koryaz Mountains. The basin is colossal, stretching for two thousand miles from east to west and almost eight hundred from north to south. The central part of the basin is dominated by a marshy swamp, easily the largest on Toril, with extensive forests surrounding it.

The forests are home to powerful tribal groupings, at least three of which are strong enough to be called nations: the Pazruki in the west, the Issacortae in the central region and the Wu-haltai in the east. These three tribal nations are secretive and keep to themselves, but are somewhat open to external trade; the Wu-haltai have permitted the building of the great coast road linking Shou Lung to Koyro.

 

Koryo

Koryo is located on the peninsula of the same name. The peninsula is slow to reach by land, as the only existing road goes right around the far northern coast of the Yellow Sea and requires negotiating passage across Wu-haltai lands and various tribes who control the northern part of the peninsula. Most travellers visit the country by ship instead.

As the north-eastern-most nation on the main landmass (an impressive seven and a half thousand miles due east of Waterdeep), Koryo is remote and relatively little-known. It is an alliance of three formerly independent kingdoms: the island nation of Saishu, the Koguryo Peninsula and Silla, the heartland of the kingdom. The three nations were forcibly united by the King of Silla, but subsequent rulers have tried to integrate the three kingdoms more peaceably.

Koryo is a heavily defended nation due to the twin threats of barbarian invaders from the north of the peninsula and the constant threat of invasion from Kozakura. Koryo has thrown back multiple invasions from Kozakura but has also launched assaults itself, once invading the northern island of Shinkoku before being driven back into the sea. The enmity between the two kingdoms is such that no Kozakuran citizen is permitted to set foot in Koryo and Kozakuran currency is not accepted. Koryo does enjoy strong relations with Wa and distant but cordial trading relations with Shou Lung.

Koryo’s capital city is Xi Hulang. It is currently ruled by King Wanang Sun.

 

Wa

Off the southern tip of Koyro lies a huge archipelago of sizeable islands. The archipelago is divided between two powerful empires, Wa in the west and Kozakura in the east.

Wa consists of the islands of Tsukishima, Shidekima, Paikai and Machukara. Wa also claims the Outer Isles located to its south-west, not for territory but to protect outsiders from them. Hidden amongst these islands is the Isle of Gargantuas, home to beasts of titanic size, each capable of comfortably destroying entire cities by itself.

Wa is a peaceful nation under the rule of law. Wa has enjoyed a longer period of peace than any other nation in Kara-Tur and has pursued a path of mercantile trade in recent centuries, with its ships trading from Koryo to Zakhara. Aside from occasional border naval clashes with Kozakura, Wa has not engaged in warfare for centuries and its policies are around continuing the current status quo. How long this is practical, especially as there is some evidence of growing internal dissent by the peasantry, is unclear.

Wa is ruled from the city of Uwaji by Shogun Matasuuri Nagahide. On paper, the Shogun is merely the military governor of the nation and rules at the pleasure of the Emperor; in reality, the Shogun (the most powerful of the daimyo or warlords) holds the true power in Wa and the Emperor rules merely as a figurehead.

 

Kozakura

Like Wa, Kozakura is a sprawling island empire. Unlike Wa, Kozakura is a land of constant, bitter struggle which has been in a state of constant political intrigue, occasionally spilling into open civil war, for decades. Kozakura has unified several times for attempted invasions of Koryo, the failures of which have sparked further internal dissent.

Kozakura sprawls across the islands of Shinkoku, Tenmai, Mikedono and Hinomoto. Shinkoku is the largest island and the site of the imperial capital.

Kozakura is ruled from the city of Dojyu by Emperor Gonijo, who took the throne at a young age. As is his tradition this did not happen upon his father’s death, but upon his “retirement.” Retired Emperor Gokammu still lives and provides advice and assistant to his former heir. As in Wa, the Emperor’s power and influence is less than it was, although the Kozakuran Emperor is perhaps not quite as powerless as his western counterpart. The Kozakuran Shogun, currently Hojo Kawakubo, commands the empire’s armies and wields considerable authority, but he also has to work harder to maintain the loyalty of his daimyos.

 

Note

As with my other maps, this one started with the base map from the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas (1999). However, in this case there was an error in the base map, as the Malatran Plateau had been placed in the wrong place based on misinformation. As a result, Malatra as depicted in the original map was far, far too small compared to the original maps (from the Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition “Living Jungle” campaign) and the text descriptions.

As a result, I deviated to follow the solution proposed by mapmaker Markustay a decade ago, of moving Malatra to the south-west and expanding its size to compensate, which worked very well.

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A Map of Zakhara

Following on from my maps of the Forgotten Realms continents of Faerûn and Maztica, here is a map of the continent of Zakhara.

A map of the continent of Zakhara. Please click for a larger version.

Zakhara, also known as the Land of Fate, is part of the same supercontinent or landmass as Faerûn and Kara-Tur. It is located south and south-east of Faerûn across the Great Sea, and south-west of Kara-Turn across the Segara Sea. Of the other major continental landmasses, it is the easiest to travel to, as it is located a relatively mild 1,000 miles south of Var the Golden across the north-eastern most gulf of the Great Sea, and well-established trade routes link ports in Dambrath, Luiren, Estagund, Var, Durpar and Ulgarth to northern Zakhara.

The mainland of Zakhara extends for approximately 1,800 miles from north to south and around the same from east to west at the continent’s widest point. These dimensions make Zakhara comfortably the smallest of Toril’s known continents. There are, however, extensive island chains located to the west and south of Zakhara which are generally held to be within the Zakharan sphere of influence, and including these were increase the size of Zakhara considerably (especially the islands of the Crowded Sea, which resemble a partially-submerged continuation of the mainland).

 

Politics in Zakhara

Technically, Zakhara is unified as a single grand nation under the rule of the Grand Caliph of Golden Huzuz, the City of Delights. However, this is less true in reality, where the cities of Zakhara pay lip service (if even that) to the Grand Caliph but otherwise go their own way. Local maps of Zakhara thus show the continent as a single nation with Huzuz as its capital, but realistically most cities in Zakhara are independent city-states.

 

Geographic Regions of Zakhara

Zakhara consists of several key geographic regions, as follows.

• The Yikarian Empire in the north, also known as the Land of the Yak-Men. The Yikarian Empire sprawls across the World Pillar Mountains and the surrounding regions, extending north to the borders of Konigheim (the extreme south-easternmost nation of Faerûn) and west to the Great Sea at the port of Lipo. The Empire cuts off all mainland travel from Zakhara to Faerûn, although it is centred in the great city of Nathong, high in the mountains. The Yikarians are a hostile race who believe all other species are fit only to be enslaved. The Yikarians of Lipo are somewhat more enlightened and are more open to trade.
• The Cities of the North, also called the Free Cities, are located along the north-western coast of Zakhara and stretch for some 880 miles from Mina to Hafayah. These cities are built around mercantile trade with one another along the coast and with Faerûn across the Great Sea. The largest and most powerful of their number is Qudra, one of the Three Great Cities of Zakhara, but all are relatively rich and prosperous.
• The Corsair Domains, a cluster of islands located off the north-western coast. The Corsair Domains are, as the name suggests, a haven for pirates, brigands and escaped slaves. The corsairs profess loyalty to the Grand Caliph and for this reason direct most of their piracy north to the coasts of Dambrath, Luiren, Estagun and Var (although generally not, after several pointed lessons by the native mage-lords, Halruaa). However, the corsair princes do have an unrelenting hatred of the mamluks of Qudra, among the richest slave-owners in Zakhara, and have been known to all on Qudrese shipping with abandon on occasion.
• The Haunted Lands are located within and dominate the continent interior of Zakhara. They stretch from the World Pillar Mountains south and west to Suq Bay and the Sea of Caravans, and from the Furrowed Mountains in the north-west to the ruined kingdoms of Nog and Kadar in the south-east. The Haunted Lands form the larger of Zakhara’s two major deserts. As the name suggests, they are filled with the ruins from ancient civilisations. The desert itself is divided between different landforms, such as the Weeping Desert and the baking hot wastelands known as the Burning Lands and the Great Anvil, as well as the Sea of Salt and the isolated valley known as the Genie’s Garden.
• The High Desert is located south-west of the Sea of Caravans and Suq Bay, and is the smaller and less hostile of Zakhara’s two major deserts. Several roads crisscross the High Desert and oases and small towns are more commonplace. At the south-western fringe of the desert lies the city of Akota, most isolated of Zakhara’s cities, which monopolises trade with the large island archipelago to the west (which some hold is also called Akota).
• The Cities of the Pearl are a group of city-states located along the edges of the High Desert, stretching from Tajar in the north to Ajayib in the south. These cities were fixated mainly on mercantile trade, especially in luxury goods and rarities such as precious metals and pearls.
• The Cities of the Heart are the part of Zakhara which lies at its geographic centre, most notably the relatively fertile and clement lands around Suq Bay and the Sea of Caravans, the two internal waterways which almost cut the continent in half. Zakhara’s two largest cities are located in this region, Hiyal at the northern end of Suq Bay and Huzuz at the far south, near where it opens into the Golden Gulf. Several other notable cities are to be found in this region, including Halwa and Wasat.
• Huzuz, often called Golden Huzuz or the City of Delights, is the largest city in Zakhara and considered the continent’s cultural, religious and sometimes political capital. It sprawls for many miles along the Al-Sarif River, from near its mouth to some distance inland. Huzuz proclaims itself the grandest city in the world, with its dizzying array of golden temples, the Grand Caliph’s daunting palace and its vast markets, all surrounding by merchants and residents’ districts unfolding further than the eye can sea. The city’s claim to be the largest on Toril is debatable – Calimport in Faerûn and Karatin in Kara-Tur are both notable challengers – but it is certainly one of the most impressive.
• The League of the Pantheon lies to the south-east of Huzuz (to which it is closely allied) and consists of several cities unified in the strict belief of the Zakharan pantheon and no other gods. The cities are noted for their conservatism.
• The Ruined Kingdoms are located south and east of the Haunted Lands, along Zakhara’s much wetter eastern coast. The two kingdoms were Kadar in the south-west and Nog in the north-east. Many of the towns and settlements in this region used to be part of these ancient kingdoms ere their fall and have come late to the cultural beliefs of the rest of Zakhara. The most notable city in this region is Kadarasto, believed to be the ancient capital of Kadar but now a much more modest trading settlement on the Nogaro. The northern part of this region is uncomfortably close to the Yikarian Empire, so is generally avoided. Further north, the overland route to Tabot and the other south-western kingdoms of Kara-Tur is blocked by the vast Sempadan Jungle, which is infested with hostile creatures. The entire region is ill-omened, leading to its relatively low population despite it being more hospitable than the desert interior. The Ruined Kingdoms extend to the nearby islands of Sahu and Afyal as well.
• The Crowded Sea is well-named, for its refers to both the waterways and the many hundreds of islands south of mainland Zakhara, stretching from the Isles of the Crab in the west to the Wild Isle of Bariya some 1,700 miles to the east and for around a thousand miles from the Golden Gulf in the north to the fringes of the cool Southern Ocean. Notable islands include Harab (the Isle of War), the Steaming Isles, the Djinni’s Claws, the Nada al-Hazan, the Al-Zulm and Al-Qirmiza chains and the distant Islands of the Utter South. Some of the islands are heavily settled and trade with the mainland, some are wild and untouched by civilisation and some are home to ancient ruins of unknown origin.

Behind the Scenes

Zakhara is the setting of the Al-Qadim campaign setting, developed by Jeff Grubb and Andria Hayday for the Dungeons and Dragons game. It was part of the big wave of campaign settings developed for the 2nd Edition of D&D, being the fourth released (after Spelljammer, Ravenloft and Dark Sun). Unlike those settings, Al-Qadim was designed to be a short-run product line, but the early releases were much more successful than expected, leading it to be being expanded before a sharp drop-off in sales led to it being cancelled.

Part of Al-Qadim‘s success may have been down to its canonical location being part of the same planet as the Forgotten Realms product line, although the Al-Qadim line carried its own logo and distinct visual art style and identity. The idea of a “fantasy Arabia” fit in with a line of products TSR had developed for non-European settings, which had also resulted in “fantasy Asia” (with Kara-Tur and the Oriental Adventures sub-line of products), “fantasy Mesoamerica” (Maztica) and “fantasy Mongolia” (the Horde line of products). Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood had envisaged his world as not being so distinctly comparable to real-world cultures, so was somewhat cool on this approach (especially the “fantasy Egypt and Babylon” nations of Mulhorand and Unther). It’s notable that Zakhara is the only one of these lands to be marketed separately from the rest of the Realms, with an emphasis on adding Zakhara to an already-existing DM’s campaign world.

Al-Qadim did have one benefit on the core Forgotten Realms product line, as it made the earlier, slightly more cartoonish “fantasy Arabia” vibe of Calimshan rather redundant, so when it was fleshed out in later products (particularly Steven Schend’s superb Empires of the Shining Sea boxed set) it moved away from that influence and more towards a kind-of fantasy Ottoman Empire vibe, which was much more appropriate and interesting.

Al-Qadim, by the way, was supposed to be an Arab translation of “The Ancient,” but it was later discovered that, depending on context, it was more literally translated as “The Old” or even “The Stale.”

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A Map of Maztica

After my well-received map of Faerûn, I received some requests to map some of the other continents of Toril in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Although a map of Kara-Tur is likely some way off – it would require almost as much work as Faerûn – and there isn’t enough information on Katashaka or Ossë to make mapping them viable,  I have decided to add maps of Maztica and Zakhara. Zakhara will follow at some point, but the Maztica map is completed.

A map of Maztica. Please click for a larger version.

Maztica, referred to by its natives as “the True World” and by the colonialist Faerûnians who “discovered” it as “the New World”, lies to the west of Faerûn across the Trackless Sea. It was only officially “discovered” ten years ago, in 1361 DR, by Captain Cordell of the Golden Company of Amn, who landed a fleet on the east coast. However, it is believed that the elves of nearby Evermeet had much greater knowledge of the continent extending back millennia, and the Northmen of the Trackless Sea may have explored some of its north-eastern fringes some time ago without realising it was part of a much greater landmass.

The explored region of Maztica lies towards the southern end of the continent and runs from roughly due west of Amn to due west of Chult and Halruaa. This region extends for about 1,800 miles from north to south is about 800 miles wide. Magical divinations have revealed that the entire landmass extends for 4,500 miles from north to south and is around 2,000 miles wide at its widest extent in the north, and incorporates several offshore islands.

 

Nomenclature

One of the most fiercely-debated topics in Faerûnian cartographic circles – to the point where blows have been exchanged and curses sought – is to what extent “Maztica” should be said to incorporate the entire landmass or if it should only be said to include the southern explored region. This point is debate most fiercely between the merchant lords of Amn, who “discovered” the continent and gave it its name (actually adapting the local name), and the Dukes of Baldur’s Gate, who hold that Maztica is in actuality the fabled  and over-accented continent of Anchôromé, discovered by great Balduran himself, and the entire landmass should be known by that name. A compromise, that “Maztica” applies to the southern region and Anchôromé to the north, has achieved some popularity in recent years.

However, this compromise has been rejected by some learned mages of note, who instead contend that Anchôromé is more properly the name given to a vast archipelago of hundreds of islands located off the north-eastern coast of Maztica and extending to within 300 miles of the island kingdom of Tuern, far to the north-east of Evermeet, and Balduran’s explorations were actually in this region and he never set foot on the continent beyond. The matter remains fiercely debated.

 

Faerûnian Colonies in the True World

Several nations and powers of Faerûn have established holdings on the continent of Maztica but a full-scale colonisation effort has been prevented due to the events following Captain Cordell’s arrival. Cordell’s small army, with its heavy armour, stronger weapons and offensive magic, proved superior to the natives of Payit and Pezelac, the regions where they landed (and which are now loosely grouped as “New Amn,” a grandiose name that suggests more authority than the Amnians actually have), but was less effective against the professional, well-trained army of Kultaka to the west and to the extremely hostile depredations of the Nexalese Empire to the south-west. After a series of brutal battles, a series of events was set in motion that saw the restoration of the exiled Maztican god Qotal, the utter destruction of Nexal by volcanic eruption and the formation of a loose alliance between the Amnian forces and several native powers.

In the resulting chaos, the Maztican pantheon, represented by the god Qotal, permitted the establishment of Faerûnian colonies in Maztica without contest in a limited manner, as recompense for the Faerûnian help (particularly of those followers of Helm among the Amnian mercenaries) in destroying Nexal and restoring balance to Maztica. Any large-scale invasion of Maztica by Faerûnian powers would be extremely ill-advised, as it would also require both a magical and religious incursion into areas controlled by a different pantheon, and only achievable by endangering the Balance of the planet (maintained by Ao).

The current colonies in Maztica are therefore limited, consisting solely of Helmsport (which is essentially a district of the native port of Ulatos given over to the Amnians), New Waterdeep on the Gulf of Kultaka, Trythosford (a sub-colony of New Waterdeep) to the far north and Fort Flame (a colony of Baldur’s Gate) even further north, on the Bay of Balduran. Another outpost established by Fort Flame to the north was destroyed some years ago. Worshippers of Gond in Lantan have also built the Great Lighthouse on the island of St. Ippen, but have not yet established holdings on the mainland.

 

Geographic Regions of Maztica

Explored Maztica consists of several key geographic regions.

• The Pasocada Basin (consisting of badlands, mesas, buttes and river valleys) in the north-west, dominated by Mihaca, the fabled City of Gold.
• The Borderlands, dominated by the Faerûnian colonies of New Waterdeep and Trythosford.
• Huacli, a nation of city-states conquered by Nexal but which recently regained its freedom.
• Nexal, formerly the greatest empire in the True World until its destruction ten years ago.
• Kultaka, a fierce nation of (mostly) honourable warriors who defend its independence with ferocity, but are happy to trade with friendly outlanders.
• Pezelac and Payit, more temperate lands which are united (somewhat uneasily) with Faerûnian colonists as the nation of New Amn (a name which suggests a much firmer outlander control of the region that perhaps is the case).
• Far Payit, consisting of a massive peninsula, dominated by the Narabatun and Ocostun jungles and the Palankal mountain range that forms its spine.
• Kolan, a nation on the west coast which blended several Maztican cultures, including the Nexalese of the north and the Green Folk of the south. Kolan paid tribute to Nexal, but has recently regained full autonomy.
• The House of Tezca, a vast desert extending far to the south.
• The Chapultelel Jungle, which extends across the entire southern end of the landmass and is the home of the Green Folk, a private people.
• Lopango, the Land of Fire, which consists of a large mountain range (with some active volcanoes) rising up beyond Chapultelel and dominating a large body of land beyond (which rivals the rest of explored Maztica in size). Attempts to explore this region have met with fierce resistance by the natives. Beyond Lopango lies the unexplored continent of Katashaka.

 

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