I'll be working on YouTube tonight @6pm PST: https://www.youtube.com/c/AnnaMeyer

I'll try and make some caves, it is a first for me so don't expect too much!

Hepmonaland is coming and here is a first look at my version of it, focusing on the lakes and rivers. The best published map of the continent we have are from TSR11374 - The Scarlet Brotherhood, a sourcebook I really appreciate but the map leaves a lot to be desired. Remember that this is a work in progress and my map is not finished yet!

My main problems with this map are not the styling, it is a good looking map, it is the geography that puzzles me. The rivers are sometimes missing and at other times they slip into two on their way to the ocean.  Lets start when the Flanaess map ends at Tchlapac Lake. It has two rivers flowing into it but no run-off which is unusual in most places, but highly unlikely in a tropical rainforest climate. If the lake had been closer to the ocean I would have assumed that it was connected to it through tunnels, in this case I  added a river flowing north west into the Pear Sea. This decision I made when mapping the northern Hepmonaland around 15 years ago, just filling in the rest and realized that it needs a bit of widening.

I've made highlands "blend in" with the surrounding lands much more using foothills and gradual tapering of the landscape and also working with different general elevation differences in the landscape. The TSR map lacks the dimension and depicts a flat looking landscape with some hills and mountains protruding here and there. In reality landscapes are much more undulating and gradually shifting with high plateaus, mesas and plains that are sloped in various direction. All of this without really qualify as hills or mountains.

The Ikani and Ibaz rivers have been given lots of tributaries and neighbouring smaller river systems. Jungles also don't stop growing 76 miles from the coast. I know it must be tempting for a traditional illustrator or artist to accentuate the coast like this to make them look pretty, but in my project we are out for a bit more accuracy, so the equator jungles extend to the coast for the most part. Especially on the eastern coast of Hepmonaland due to the more humid climate further south.

The Iyapo area wit its Adaro forest presented a challange. I see the southern, and especially the south western Hepmonaland as dry and hot desert with  band of savannah south of the jungles near the equator. To try and fit a huge forest in the desert presented me with an interesting challenge to try and bring  water to sustain a forest to this dry land. Thankfully the TSR map has no rivers at all in the SW Hepmonaland, so lets assume the western coast is of the more high and cliffy kind redirecting the flow from the western Kelo Hills mainly south. The rivers drain into a large shallow depression on a plateau creating a huge wetland that will be mainly overgrown with forest. Due to the tropical and humid climate in the region where  some of the rivers feeding the Adaro it will receive at least some water all year round. A small runoff meanders down the mesa to the north west, filling up only only occasionally when the rains are extra abundant in the Kelo Hills.

The TSR map has another conundrum,  Lake Keli. The Keli lacks a runoff, which I added  flowing to the SW into the ocean near Byanbo. Just like the Adaro, Lake Keli in the hot climate probably evaporates way more than it dilutes into the ocean. So the river valley I have added will mainly be dry. Water evaporation creates a regional climate wet enough to enable the Tabo forest to grow and create very favorable conditions for agriculture around the lake.

Byanbo and the Ino Hills are said to have volcanoes in them so I made them a bit more impressive since Hepmonaland highlands are not described as either tall, great or in any other way significant. I'm taking this as a sign of interest on the writers and not a lack of geographical significance.

Here is a typical example that from a geographical view, the name being the most interesting bit of information. The TSR map is just a blank and what I've done so far is only the start, this island requires some more work to try and create a landscape with black rock pillars that can sing!

Time to give a first work in progress sneak peak of the biggest map update since I started mapping the world of Greyhawk over twenty years ago: Hepmonaland!

Yes the southern neighbor of the Flanaess will come this holiday season expanding my mapped area almost 50 percent. It will be the same style and resolution as the existing map, and hopefully even better quality.

It a straight to Photoshop terrain map and I'm very happy with the results so far,  at least as good as the existing map with lots of character to the landscape. Tutorials on how to create maps like this will come next year as well as textural and shading recourses to  Cartographer patreon members.

This is not real 3D so only top down views, but it will provide a useful and beautiful reference map for future use. The green rivers are just a signaling color I use to see what I'm using during map creation. Terrain work is around  80% done and I hope to have the terrain done in a week or so.

This is a project I have been able to work full time on in secret for over a month now thanks to your support. With more support I can spend more time on this and I want your investment to be rewarded.

I'm working on getting the detailed terrain features right, river valley in the right places, a few volcanoes and hidden valleys etc.  Left to do is to go over the coastlines and water textures and the final overall tweak of saturation, sharpness and grain.

An overhaul of the rivers of all the rivers of the Flanaess are also done. The Franz, Horned Society, Furyondy have received special attention with added small rivers to complete the drainage. The Nesser have been adjusted to better promote its role as the biggest waterway in the Flanaess.

Lots of small rivers got lost when I reduced the resolution from 600ppi to the now used 200ppi, and now those lost small rivers are restored again.

Water depths will be looked at across the whole map and islands will be added in the north, west, east and south to match my Oerth planetary model. Most of the islands are outside the area of the Flanaess map but will be added to the expanded Atlas.

A more complete look at the terrain updates will come soon for all patreons, this is a short little sneak peak for you guys.

Thank you again for making this possible 🙂
 

Work on the Map and Atlas 2021 updates are under way, and here is a work in progress screen shot of the Isle of Dread. I'll keep working on the terrain for another couple of weeks and hope to be able to get some more area covered. Ocean depths are almost done and terrain is progressing well, and I have a ton of settlement and symbol updates ready for November and December.

I'm so glad you like the my new take on heraldry, I think they are really cool and heraldry have become more and more a passion of mine and a topic that needs more attention. I made new versions without the edge and rivets which I think looks better, what do you guys think?

My Shield lands stuff will be simmering in the background until next year, but a few cool things will be coming in that area as well. More locations and heraldry at least, but main focus is on the updated main map and atlas. 

When it comes to heraldry I'm thinking it might be better to skip the heraldry appendix this time and concentrate on the map and index parts of the Atlas. Might be better to save the effort for a dedicated Greyhawk heraldry compendium next year, what do you think? 

Tonight! Friday Night! Join Allyssa Faden, Jay and me for the Fantasy Mapping Show - Ep. 5: Settlements! 

Come with your questions ready! Fri, 10/15, 8:00 PM EDT 

https://twitch.tv/lordgosumba

Improved heraldry have been on my To Do list in like forever, to try and create versions of the heraldry as they would look in the world. Now I'm having the graphics mojo to pull that off so I decided to have a go, and here are the first results, Greyhawk and Tehn.

The old heraldry are probably better in the small size needed on maps, but for illustrative purposes and immersion I think these are cool. What do you think?

Here are my Shield Lands Campaign slides from my Virtual Greyhawk Con presentation. It nearly finished set of point of interest maps for the Southern Shield Lands.

The buildings have no height yet but apart from that they are almost all in a finished state. I'll be back with finished versions with more backstory and heraldry in a couple of weeks.  

When I started my Oerth planet model project it was to try and place the Flanaess position on the globe for my transition to use GIS. Then the more I got into mapping Oerth the more interested I got  and starting to see possibilities and overlooked connections with the familiar stories of our favorite game setting. The geographic dimension of most fantasy setting seems to be rudimentary at best and Greyhawk follows that tradition of taking geography lightly and as a "mood setting backdrop" rather than a key aspect in shaping the stories. Science is telling us that the planet and its geographic aspects plays a central part in shaping all life, I think that should be the same for fantasy worlds as well and this project have given me a good opportunity to  do some "Oerthly fantasy science"!

I've modeled the planet as I see it during the time of the Greyhawk campaign in the late 500's CY, as well as an version of Oerth in an ice age as well as during a hot climate. When and if you want to make use of ice ages and warmer periods in your campaign history will vary, but if you do there are some very interesting possibilities present themselves.

Almost all fantasy setting comes with mysterious ancient cultures present in relics, sites in remote places and monuments hidden away in now inhospitable realms. Why these civilisations choose to build in the far off hostile regions  the stories rarely tells, and here I think a geo-historic approach can be very helpful in both inspiring and explaining  stories like who built the cairns in the Cairn Hills for example. So lets take a deeper look at what Oerthly geography has to offer!

Civilizations need favorable and stable conditions to persists over long time to develop and thrive. In the map above I have marked out areas that are the most favorable over time for human like habitation, having a non arctic and non desert climate, and that are not prone to flooding in times of higher ocean levels. Interestingly the southern Flanaess, northern Hepmonaland and parts of the Amedio are well represented. This makes this region a prime candidate for the earliest civilizations, so maybe there are something into the idea of a human origin here evolving into Olman, Touv and Flan cultures.

With the data of were the best long term areas for a human like civilization are, lets plot out good locations for city building in these areas.  Access to waterways are a key fact in this, and below is a map where I have done this for Oerth.

A number of familiar locations show up, like Greyhawk, Chathold, Prymp, Rel Deven, Irongate, Pontylver and Lo Reltarma. It might not be a coincidence that the eleven cities of  Enstad, Courwood and Tringlee all are in this very stable and favorable location, the long lived elves could very well have used heir historic knowledge. Today there are many other places in the Flanaess that are better locations for a major settlement, the strength of these locations are  that they remain usable even in the case of a drastically changed climate. Lets look into how a hotter and colder climate will affect settlement patterns across Oerth beginning back in early human history and try look at Greyhawk history from a geographical perspective.

Cold periods in history gives primitive humans and other civilizations new opportunities to expand across the planet in areas otherwise inaccessible, ocean levels are much lower creating land bridges, and the deserts are both smaller and less hot. Early hominids can begin spreading west and diversifying, this early ice ages is the first time of migrations, land migrations due to both lack of technology and large parts of the ocean are frozen over.

Then the Oerth climate begun to heat up...

A new world emerged where the oceans opened up and the land was often turned into scorching hot deserts. The western humans turned to the sea and migrated away from the heat towards the newly opened up north. A seafaring culture was created around what is now the western Dramidj, and back then is was connected to the tropics across oceans that have previously been deserts and steppes. This is the beginning of the Suel, the first great sea farers of Oerth. The Ur Flan where happy ruling the best lands on the planet with scant interest in exploring other parts of the world.

The Olman world was thrown into the sea, literary, and large parts of what was left was turned into desert. This delt such a blow to Olman development that they haven't really recovered from it since. The Olmans of the southern Hepmonaland was isolated giving rise to a new off-shot culture, the Touv. The Touv used favorable winds and ocean currents to reach both the great southern continent and Mentzeri in the middle of the Solnor.

The people that lived along the northern coasts of what would become the Baklunish lands enjoyed a favorable climate but the expanding gulf of Ghayar separated them turning them into the precursors of todays Baklunish and Oerids, the Bakluni ancestors on the wester side and the Oerids on the eastern.

Life like this went on for a long time but big changes where coming, winter was coming. Oerth was dragged into a new ice age with a cooling climate. This meant problems for some and new opportunities for others.  the first to be hit by the oncoming cold was the Suel in the far north. They were forced to relocate south and came into conflict with the Balkuni, and to a lesser extent the Oerid that held lands further east. This meant hard fought battles for survival and the Suel was the less experienced in land warfare and was often driven to flee. The Suel fled in two directions, one smaller group of eastern Suel settlers along the Corian polar coast decided to try their luck and fled eastwards to the Thillonrian Peninsula and ended up occupying a group of larger islands in the northern Solnor east of mainland Flanaess that where exposed due to the sinking ocean levels. This group would later colonize the Thillonrian  when the climate warmed up again.

The main part of the surviving Suel ended up on a plateau south of the Suel that was turning from being a desert into fertile lands with a set of large lakes and decided to stay. They would form the pinnacle of Suel civilization over the next 5000 years, but their memories of the wars with the Baklunish would remain in their tales...

The Oerids and the Baklunish divided up the  tundra, steppes and huge forest of the Baklunish basin. The Oerids had their back towards the glacier covered Yatil, Crystalmist and Sulhaut ranges develop a fierce stance towards intruders so the Bakluni opted to spread west and south instead.

In the Flanaess the Flan now came into their cultural zenith developing large settlements and a multitude of large and powerful realms whos names have survived all the way into modern times. Conflict broke out with the demi humans and the Olmans in the south and a darker warlike side took hold.

Then winter began to ease its grip and the Flanaess we recognize is starting to emerge. The Balkuni had picked up strength and numbers in the west and south, and when the lands they where living in again turned to deserts, they moved north to reclaim their ancestral homelands. The Oerids were surprised by the renewed vigor of the Bakluni,  and also tempted by the very promising opportunities in the east and north that the warming climate created.  Instead of defending the lands turning into desert they stated migrating in ever larger numbers north and east through the newly opened Thornward gap.

The Suel saw their arch enemy move in north of the Sulhauts, their plateau was fast turning into the desert it used to be and plans for a revenge started circulating, and the rest we know..

This is far from complete story, I have left out the humanoids and several other actors. It shows an interesting way you can use geography and climate to inspire, support and help out in creating a more interesting and deep fantasy world.

Let's take a closer look at the Flanaess and how we can use this.

Below is the Flanaess in cold times with good sports for settlements  in the cold and persistent times.

Then a look at hot Flanaess

and then combine all of the info on the current map and we get some interesting results...

Now we can see likely ancients site and the period they hail from. I can see interesting backstory possibilities  for the lair of Dramidj, the Egg of Coot, ruins in the Barrens, the Land of Black ice and the coast of the Tiger Barbarians where Myrlund resides. I'm sure there are more interesting connections to get from this, time to get creative!

This is going to be one of the topics for my seminar on Virtual Greyhawk Con on Friday.

Thank you again for making this possible!! 🙂

I'll have a go at my Flanaess terrain map again, this time it will focus on updating the rivers.
I will start 6pm PDT and you can tune in at: https://www.youtube.com/c/AnnaMeyer

Previously we looked at the "normal" Oerth and then a Cold Oerth gripped by an ice age, now its time to look at the opposite Oerth scorched by a scorched climate a bit more than ten degrees above normal. This model is a bit more speculative than the normal or cold, science on ice ages are a bit more developed, but due to our real world changing climate knowledge of a hotter climate is increasing fast.  So lets take a look at our World of Greyhawk in a more fiery age.

Large parts of Oerth are in this scenario uninhabitable by all except the hardiest of heat loving creatures.  Four large  and a number of smaller areas are turned into extremely hot deserts that will quickly kill most creatures that lack protection from the heat and sun. The biggest of these desert are as usual in the Western Oerik and it has made the interior of Oerik a hot hell home to elemental creatures, Red Dragons and others who not only survive but thrive in this inferno.

The situation is not all bad, the increased global temperature have melted almost all the glacial ice, that Oerth has a lot of even in normal times, and way more of it are on land rather than on water. So when all that ice melts it will raise the sea level by hundreds of turning most of low lying land into shallow ocean. This means that some areas that used to be desert now enjoy a much more pleasant coastal climate even in the hot tropics.  Oerik is broken up into a western and an eastern part with a number of large island in  between opening up for seafarers in a way that makes global shipping possible almost everywhere from the poles to the tropics.

Flanaess

Our beloved part of the world hold out well in this scenario, large parts of the central parts are now a shallow ocean and the Cairn Hills are an island in it. The Howling Hills are close to the coast covered in lush forests just like the rest of the lands from the Dramidj Coast  in the west all the way to the northern Thillonrian who now sits firmly in the temperate belt. The northern Great Kingdom all the way up to Ratik is now Mediterranean and the southern part not under water range from savannah to tropical on the coast of Sunndi. The Wast Swamp are now a flat dusty salt plain in a small but hot desert formed in the Sunndi depression.

Western Sheldomar Valle are now a dry hot et of hills overlooking a large ocean inlet stretching all the way up to the borders of Bissel. The Crystalmist Mountains are high enough to stretch into the sub arctic and are now home to a large evergreen forests. The Baklunish lands range from very pleasant in the north to a scorching hot desert  in the Dry Steppes making normal life south of Kester almost impossible.

The Amedio sit right on the hottest latitudes and except for the cooler coastal lands is now a desert. Jump over the Hellfurnaces and the Sea of Dust is even hotter desert, probably one of the hottest on Oerth. The Suel will have a tough time in this scenario, but so will the southern Bakluni as well as large part of Hepmonalanders. Mostly desert is what the hardy Olmans and Touvs have to face, but thanks to its coastlines there are still savannahs and even rainforests along both the west and east coasts.

Fireland

This is a scenario that should please most Firelanders turning it into something like a volcanic and more mountainous Ireland.  Getting here from the mainland should be easier as well since you can use the north polar coast that are now home to the largest Boreal forests of the planet. The relatively flat north polar area is almost devoid of glacial ice and now accessible for most of the year opening up northern areas for settlement and travel.  Huge tracts of lands north of Western Oerik can now be home to whole civilizations, since it rivals the Flanaess in size and now has a cold but temperate climate.

The great southern continent have shrunk a bit due to the higher sea level but sports some of the most inviting climates on the  planet. A tropical ocean between the two halves of Oerik has taken shape with a myriad of tropical islands along its many thousands of miles. One can imagine a ruined city on a hill in the middle of the desert that was not too long a go a coastal metropolis catering to the trade north and south between Western and Eastern Oerik when it was a warm sea full of life. On our normal Oerth it is just a wast hot mainly flat desert, but with a bit of geographical history you can get inspirations to very interesting stories.

Take some time to study the differences between this scenarios, see if they could fit into your campaigns timeline somewhere  in the past, or future, and I hope they can inspire you to come up with interesting things to add to your games.

The next installment in this series will be a look at where the most stable conditions on Oerth are to be found, so if you want to set up a civilization where are the best spots.

Thank you again for your support!!