World maps for Athas

I don’t think it’s a bad fix at all – I was just interested because I think the other proposal for that kind of area was the Drake Dominions on the far western side of the continent. Of course, there could be two such areas – one could be oriented towards the paraelements, or one could be ruled by elemental lords and the other priests, or one could have some kind of elemental civil war going on – the options are really endless aren’t they? The setup you have leaves a lot of interesting possibilities for wars between the bugdead and the elementalists.
Here’s an attempt at a section of Green Age athas as a hex map

Here’s another attempt: https://files.catbox.moe/5txskd.png (this will load slowly – you’ll notice the program tries to reflect the labels a little, so it’s really necessary to have an unmarked map to get the best results)

The source image is plenty large (36600 by 12400 currently lol) but I still have a lot of work to do on it, like adding the new revised ulyan/dead lands, fixing colors, ect

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If you’re improving the world map in our neck of the woods, I’d be interested to see what you come up with…

oh no just incorporating your new take on the dead lands into my map, I was using the older variant from higher up in this thread. I like how you also put a former lake in that far western extent of the obsidian plain lol

I stuck Ythri/Zethri up where ‘Reaver’s Reach’ is on that chunk of the Hinterlands/Tablelands above the Misty Sea and Ulyan, was going with the notion that Ythri was destroyed in ages past by the Tanysh as they pushed south and raided cities like Lizardfolk Celik, the ruins were resettled and renamed ‘Zethri’ which became the center of Tanysh culture in the far south. Working off the info from Wisdom of Sorrow I’m having it so Kadiran Firehand (the statue in Yaramuke in ‘Black Flames’) was the first King of the Tanysh, who conquered Malai cities like Yaramuke, Nibenay, and Raam, and pushed south, but the Tanysh Empire collapsed very swiftly into many independent kingdoms, city states, and tribes.
If taking the info that Giustenal is over 12,000 years old at face value, the rise and fall of a unified Tanysh and the return of Remans to their mother continent had to have happened in the immediate 2,000 years after the end of the Blue Age. Going by the timeline in Lost Cities of the Trembling Plains humans went from living in caves to founding Tanys in only 88 years.

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An attempt to expand on Brian Sanchez’s Dunswich:

The Northern Canyonlands

North of Saragar, the Burning Plains give way to more traditional scrubland, which continues, largely featureless, northward. Along the eastern coast of the silt sea, the land gradually juts upward to heights rivaling the jagged cliffs, at nearly two miles- on the plains, however, this incline is gradual. Along the west, the Jagged Cliffs rise nearly 4 miles above the Crimson Savannah, eventually merging into the insurmountable Ironcrags. The further north one travels, the cooler the temperature becomes, and the scrubland gives way to actual grasses, and expanses of heath and small bogs. This northern part of the continent is in fact a massive highland located along a rise of the continental shelf, rising miles above the old sapphire sea and crimson Savannah. While not high enough to experience snowfall, runoff from the Ironcrags fosters a cooler, dry climate- the shelf was once covered in lush, cold forests, but desiccation, defiling, and felling has reduced the woods to the foothills of the Ironcrags. The Canyonlands owe their relative lushness to the insurmountable Ironcrags,: as high-altitude moisture and cold air off the Sea of Winds hits the peaks, it results in massive lightning storms and torrential rainfall that water both western and eastern sides of the mountains. Three major rivers, the Artor, Deland, and Tannen, flow through the region at a strong pace, albeit reduced from the Green Age. The Tannen River cascades into a 2-mile deep crater filled with mist, full of verdant land and forests, before flowing into the Sea of Silt, pooling into Tannen Lake, which is surrounded by thick mudflats and marshlands. To the north, the Deland River splits from the Tannen, pooling into upper Lake Deland, and dramatically cascading two miles down into the silt of silt, pooling into lower Lake Deland, which is also surrounded by thick mutflats and marshes where the water meets the silt. The third river, the Artor, flows north from the ironcrags, pooling into Lake Artor. The continental rise of the region is split into four plateaus covered by dry moor and heath, with the massive Tannen Canyon dividing them from each other.

The Artor Moor

The scrub plains north of Saragar eventually give way to moorland, sustained by the cooler climate and higher elevation. While lush compared to the southern scrublands, the acidic soil makes it unsuitable for agriculture. The Moors are no less dangerous than other Athasian verdant climates- numerous types of predatory or parasitic algae, lichens, mosses, and oozes thrive in the acidic, relatively cool and damp environment, as well as many of Athas’ few surviving amphibians. The moor itself is sparsely populated by humans and demihumans. The southernmost settlement is Elgy, a border fort guarding the southern border of the town of Gipswich. The fort is named as such for the freshwater eels (actually cousins of Cistern Fiends) that infest Lake Artor. In addition to being a delicacy, they also function as personal water purifiers if allowed to live in water pots and basins, and are one of the region’s most valuable exports. The region around Lake Artor and Gipswich are known as the Fens due to being well-watered by runoff from the Ironcrags, creating the region’s main belt of arable land. This belt stretches north as far as Blieburc. Cool rain forests rise along the foothills of the Ironcrags to the east. The largest town in the southern fens is Gipswich, which, like other Dunswich settlements, is a strange translation of Saragar-esque Green Age systems into a modern bronze-age context.

An elected council of the Wich, or Trading Center, Bailiffs (the equivalent of Lawkeeper) representing the town clans, govern day to day affairs, and sending representatives to serve on the Reeve (Lawmaker) Council in Dunswich. Most buildings in Gipswic, lacking stone or even reliable mudbrick, build earthen and wood structures, with peat and reeds sometimes used as an alternative. Gipswich is located on the shore of Lake Artor and exports fish, lumber, and other goods. Numerous dwindling iron, gold, copper, and tin mines dot the Ironcrag foothills. The road north passes through the village of Cnobsheresburc, a lumber town, and Iceni, a fort that protects copper and tin mines along the southern rim of Tannen Canyon. The road travels north before meeting the narrow western end of Tannen Canyon. Crossing the span is a wonder of engineering, the Great Gondola. Built across remnants of a sophisticated ancient Green Age transportation grid, the Gondola is made of extremely resilient rain-forest vines and wood, which do require maintenance and replacement every few decades. Teams of Mellikots on either side draw an enclosed wooden cabin across the span along a cable- while the process is stunning and nerve-wracking, it is mostly safe, as the Mellikots are well trained and the materials of quality. And thankfully, the mists and clouds conceal any wreckage down far below. The gondolas pass by the magnificent sight of the Tannen River cascading down over 10,000 feet in a massive waterfall to the valley below.

The Raegain Moor

While a bit cooler than the Artor Moor, the Raegain is generally similar. Billows of cool air rising from Tannen Canyon fall down along the southern rim, granting enough precipitation to make the moors arable. The Raegain Fens mirror the Tannen Fens down south, providing a belt of arable land along the banks of upper Lake Deland and the Deland River. The trade road runs north of New Dunswich to the village of Blieburc, which relies on fishing and offer travel down the sheer cliff alongside the 10,000 foot cascading waterfall, down to the Deland Marshlands below. Shrouded in silt haze and mist, these dangerous mudflats and marshes are oddly silent, still carrying the taint of the ancient Blight that ravaged Dunswich. Travelling east along the arable northern edge of Tannen Canyon, the trade road passes through the village of Soham, to the town of Beodericswic. The town, similarly to Gipswic, is run by a council of clan-Sheriffs, and exports chalk mines from the cliffsides, as well as truly precious commodity- hops. Two trails cuts through the white cliffside of northern Tannen Canyon, with numerous outposts and storehouses built into caves and carved structures. These support numerous wooden and vine elevators used to haul large goods or creatures, slowly, up the cliffside. Far north, at a ruined fortress called Tun Hoh, the treasures of ancient Dunwich monarchs are said to be hidden, and guarded by fierce, shadowy undead.

New Dunswich

For millennia, the lands around old Dunswich were afflicted by the Blight, perhaps the work of the Cleansing Armies, or a final revenge of the Elves against Albeorn’s home city. Any small animal life instantly shriveled and died, and intelligent beings slowly grew sick and wasted away from some magical illness, but plant life was unaffected. Eventually even the lush northern forests withered away as the planet desertified, and intelligent life only survived clinging to the foothills of the ironcrags. But water still fell in abundance from the peaks, and through means perhaps magical, perhaps mundane, over the millennia, the rivers and rains washed away the Blight over the cliffs and into the silt and mud below. For centuries, as humans and others resettled the moors, society was dominated by warring feudal clans until their unification under a warlord who reorganized the clans under a pseudo-democratic system loosely based on the Green-Age system of Saragar. Some have said the great monarch actually came from the forbidden southern city. They established a new capital along the Deland River, naming it ‘New Dunswich’ in honor of the ancient Green Age port metropolis.

New Dunswich should be a thriving city; isolated from the deserts of the south by hundreds of miles of plains, located high above the worst effects of Athas’ defilement. It is a rare sight on Athas, a town of wood. The rich lumber of the eastern rain forests, the sort of ancient trees that thrived during the blue age, lasts for centuries, allowing new Dunwich to look more like a cheerful green age city than a mud-brick den of desperation baking in the sun. New Dunswich appears as a classical medieval town, like those bright villages of the Marnita Valley, with colorful roofs and solid construction, but there is a rot afflicting the city. The buildings seem to sag in on themselves, the townsfolk are a paranoid and secretive lot, things move in the corner of one’s eye and geometry feels off. Shadows stretch longer than they should and the life giving rains from the Ironcrags are unnaturally long and cold. This malaise seems to affect the entire land, and indeed it does, brought by an ancient curse linked to a dread son of Dunswich, Albeorn, now known as Andropinis, the Sorcerer-King of Balic. While trapped in the Black, Albeorn explored its darkest depths, and what lurked there terrified even him: squiggling things in the void between the stars, warped geometries, a Far Realm beyond even the ken of the undead and shadowy horrors of the plane. Albeorn escaped his imprisonment via a circuitous route of mindscapes and demiplanes, and something followed him back. While he arrived back in Balic, it, perhaps piggybacking on his memories, arrived in Dunswich, his ancient home. New Dunswich is a settlement of around 10,000, surrounded by high earthwork-and wood walls, and a port on the upper lake Deland. Its primary industries are beer production, sugar refinement from the eastern forests, lumber, and metallurgy, specifically smelting copper and tin into bronze.

Tannen Canyon

During the Green Age, the bottom of Tannen Canyon was filled by the Sea, but as the sea turned to silt, the inlet tried up. Over the millennia the flow of the Tannen River beat out the Silt, turning it into rich mud, and eventually life began to blossom, first scrub and grasses, then trees. While much warmer than the above moors, the valley is still quite pleasant, cooled by constant mist streaming up from the waterfalls and the shade provided by the narrow cliff walls. In addition to the great Tannen Waterfall, many smaller falls from aquifers under the moors spill out, turning the Tannen into a roaring beast at the Valley bottom, fed by numerous tributaries. The Tannen Canyon bottom has been cleansed of the lingering Blight by the constant waterflow, and as a result is some of the richest farmland in the region, and hosts several small villages: Elmham, known for its waterwheels and mills; Derehame, known for its beermaking and woodcraft; and Rendlesham, found on the edge of the great Lake Tannen and its mudflats. Rendlesham often provides services for travelers exploring the Tannen Marshlands. The base and cliffsides are heavily mined for copper and tin, the lifeblood of Dunswich, as bronze plowshares are required to farm in the fenlands.

Lowland Vale

A cool, misty valley located to the northwest of Dunswich, the Lowland Vale is a sparsely populated, densely forested valley encircled by the Ironcrags. A few small villages grow the precious plant known as Sugar and harvest rainforest plants for medicines to export to Dunswich. Most notably, a hidden mountain pass crosses the Ironcrags, into the depths of the Chuul Jungles.

Old Dunswich

Isolated on a broken plateau in the middle of Tannen Canyon, amid dry scrubland and moor, are the stone ruins of the great Green Age city of Dunswich. Founded by the Geahur people who also founded Saragar. the city was known as a great port, but largely isolated from affairs to the south, mostly trading with its mother city and the ports of Bartigar. east of Saragat, and Erasat on the Gray Isles. Dunswich frequently competed with the Ghost Elves of the west for control of the northern seas, and their rivalry colored the worldview of a young man born in the city during the Preserver Jihad, Albeorn. Albeorn eventually left for the south and never returned, and the Preserver Jihad seemed a distant squabble to the people of Dunswich. Even as Saragar cut itself off, the people of Dunsiwch seemed safe from the chaos to the distant south. Eventually the Cleansing Wars came north, as Elven counterattacks disrupted Dunswich trade and the city eventually died to a mysterious Blight that killed all animals but left the boreal forests healthy, if silent. Eventually the seas turned to silt and the forests receded, giving way to moors. and proved too acidic and dry to support crops. Survivors fled west to the fens and foothills of the Ironcrags, where their descendants clung to life for millennia onward.

Dunswich Geshur
The humans of Dunswich, like the inhabitants of Saragar and the inhabitants of the Gray Isles, are descended from the Geshur people of the Green Age, but tend to be shorter and broader than their cousins to the south, due to living on a high-elevation plateau. They tend to be ‘barrel-chested’ with higher lung capacity, and function well in the mountains that so cripple lowland Athasians. Conversely, they do badly in lowland desert. Dunswich residents speak a variant of the language spoken by those in Saragar, but after millennia the two peoples can only recognize certain shared words between their tongues. Dunswich culture is strongly influenced by the political structure of Green Age Saragar. Local villages are run by an elected mayor known as Sheriff, usually the clan leader, while larger settlements are run by a council of Bailiffs, local Clan leaders elected internally within the Clan. New Dunswich itself it run by a council of high Clan Representatives known as Reeves. While supposedly democratic, these elected roles are often dominated by the rich or landowners, or Clan favoritism. Residents of Dunswich favor very colorful dress, often unisex skirts/dresses or cloaks, and occasionally trousers and simple shoes when working. Unisex broad-brim hats and caps or fez are favored. Some Dunswich humans practice body modification and tattooing, including scarring and cranial deformation. Due to the region’s abundance of copper and tin, copper, bronze, or silver or gold for those of status, torcs are quite popular.
(Totally not blatently just the Kingdom of East Anglia with some Andean and Tibetan thrown in)

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In terms of the development of the Tableland’s history – did any note, or incorporate, the fact that in Black Flames it talks about an Emperor of Yaramuke? I don’t think it’s ever clarified whether he preceded Sielba or what was going on there.

EDIT: I see Kadiran Firehand was addressed above. That’s one thing I love about DS-- there are also these weird one off references that give the sense that the world is bigger than what’s contained in the modules and supplements.

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If you’d like me to, willing to share at that point, I’d be interested to try to run them through my program and see what it looks like.

Where is this map located on the Athasian Cartographer’s guild?

It’s the ‘Northern Canyonlands’, grid E2, where Brian Sanchez stuck Dunswich, Andropinis’ hometown.

“Here is the majestic city of Yaramuke, carved from barren wilderness by the
hand of Emperor Kadiran Firehand a thousand generations ago. As the mural
shows, our city has prospered since its founding and since the coming of Empress
Sielba. Her palace is blessed by not only the physical representation of Emperor
Firehand, but also by the Eye of the Earth which is held in the tower of the Temple
of Earth’s Wonders. It is said that when the light of these blessings no longer shines
upon the door of the palace, Sielba’s rule will come to an end.” Per Black Flames, equal chances the whole thing is legit or just some construct by Sielba ala Badna and Abalech-Re.

My take is that Firehand wasn’t actually the founder of Yaramuke, but the earliest recorded Tanysh King who conquered the original Melai city, and Sielba was, among many things, a self-described historian who used a mix of actual history and mythologization to secure her rule as empress.
The information on the Tanysh and their connection to Draj (it’s a much, much later city but build on the banks of the inlet or lake that Tanys used to be an island in, it’s now the Plain of Singing Skulls) is reminiscent of Aztlán’s status as the mythical Nahua homeland, down to the swampy/marsh environment.

Though the information among the various netbooks is often contradictory (especially Dead Lands and Trembling Plains with the 3E corebook), the various origins of the city-states seems to be:

Waverly, Tyr, Giustenal, Bodach, Eldaarich, Eb (possibly Ur-Draxa), Balic: Reman, built by expats returning from the Reman continent to settle their mother 'Pristine" continent, had to have occurred within 2,000 years after the end of the Blue Age if Giustenal is 12,000 years old.

Tanys, Yorum, Ysmen, Carsys: Tanysh, build in what at the time was their ‘Heartland Steppes’

Yaramuke, Raam, Nibenay: built by the Melai, an ‘artistic people’ and one of the human subgroups

Celik was originally built by Lizardfolk, then taken over by Reman mercenaries hired to keep the Tanysh at bay, then resettled by either Remans or Tanysh after its psionic disaster

Urik, Gulg, and Draj all appear to be post-Cleansing Wars

Eldaarich is a bit contradictory between Wisdom of Sorrow and Prison-State, the latter says Daskinor founded the city on the site where he killed the last goblins in the world, but the former says it was already a Reman coastal outpost long before. No reason it couldn’t be both, I suppose.

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Good stuff @darkinterloper

Where did you get the human tribe/subrace names from? The Malai, Tanysh, Reman?

I also see some city names where I got no clue where they are located - Tanys, Yorum, Ysmen, Carsys.

Per Wisdom of Sorrow (you can find it in the BWOA public resources files in the Lost Cities of the Trembling Plains sections), and expanded on in some of Braxa’s notes, there were 4 primary cultural groups of humans during the Green Age:
-The Tanysh, who lived on the island of Tanys in the lake/inlet that would eventually become the Maze of Draj, they were a highly militaristic society that quickly rediscovered bronze and island and used chariot technology to conquer much of the Pristine Continent (the continent on which the Tablelands are located), absorbing other humans under their rule and persecuting the other Rebirth races. They apparently changed the ‘World’s Age’ Calendar system to ‘King’s Age."
Their empire quickly collapsed into many tribes and kingdoms, but the martial legacy they left behind seems to carry over even into the Brown Age. Their homelands were the region north of Draj, and south of Hogalay, back then known as the ‘Heartland Steppe.’ Major cities included ‘Ysmen,’ ‘Yorum’ (where Myron, Hamanu’s predecessor, was from) and ‘Carsys’ (where Egendo, Borys’ predecessor, was from).All these cities are long gone, collapsed into the modern area known as the Tembo Turrets.

(I don’t know why in the heck Waverly is that far north, on nearly every map its down south of the Pristine Tower)
-The Remans, who were part of a multi-racial confederation of former Rhulisti Families, who sailed to another continent (apparently the first Elves included former Rhulisti bio-ship captains, who took their knowledge with them), composed of Humans, Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, and Pterrans. Their continent was small but quickly became the population and cultural capital of the Green Age, and they ferried many other races and cultures to other continents.
Eventually Reman expats came back to the Tablelands as mercenaries and settlers, first settling the islands of the Sunrise Sea (probably from the east, so island hopping onto Draxa/Ebe and beyond) then founding ports and outposts like Giustenal. Eventually Remans pushed inland, resettling the old halfling city of Tyr’agi (as modern Tyr) and breaking the power the Tanysh peoples held over the continent. Going by the various snippets in netbooks, the Reman language was the foundation for Athas’ version of the Common tongue, and their political structure such as the lawkeeper system, psiocracies, ect influenced the geopolitical landscape of the entire Green Age world.
-The Melai were apparently the original founders of the cities of Yaramuke, Raam, Kalidnay, and Nibenay, meaning they inhabited the lands of the northern Tablelands. They were apparently ‘artistic’ and were conquered by the Tanysh, functioning as tributaries but retaining their own culture. Eventually, when Remans pushed into the continent, they overthrew the Tanysh and adopted Reman systems.
-The Golt are mentioning as living in the ‘Golt Forests’ that covered the large peninsula where Guistenal and the Pristine Tower are located. They might be the ancestors of the Gulgans.
-The Geshur were a ‘peaceful’ people who settled around the Sea of Marnita, founding Saragar.

Beyond that there are three other major mentioned groups from the ‘Equatorial Continent,’ Athas’ third inhabitable continent. All were related to the Tanysh, from settlers brought over by Reman ships:
-The Kel Tan, who became Keltis’ army and eventually the Kurnans. They were apparently a maritime culture with a strong dislike of the lizardfolk for raiding shipping, but if Keltis is any example, and given the supposed nautical focus of Green Age Elves, might have gotten along better with Elves than most humans. Their symbol was a Wasp, the Clave system and other examples of Kurnan culture might have been a thing or later developments.
-The ‘Mountain Men’ who were the bulk of Daskinor’s armies. Not a sedentary agricultural society, they were evidently nomadic or herders, revered the element of air above all others, believing that their souls would ascend into the sky. They hated the Goblins and were easily convinced by Daskinor that the Goblins, a people who lived in the roots of mountains and revered earth, were heretical. Going by Lost Cities, the Mountain Men and Daskinor were some of the nastiest humans in the Cleansing Armies, what with the whole ‘flaying entire cities alive’ thing. The flaying was apparently ritual, as it denied the Goblins their supposed cremation burial rituals as part of the ‘Ash Cult.’
-What I’m referring to as the ‘Windborn’, the proto-Draj. Not much on them, besides that they, like the Tanysh, were probably a nomadic chariot-using culture, whether or not the pseudo-Aztec culture was their own or something entirely invented by Tec is anyone’s guess.

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While searching for information that might help with flavor text for SotDL, I came across Ur-Braxa’s original Wisdom of Sorrow page, and the included maps, which have been upscaled to mixed effect. The most interesting thing to me is the coloring and detail, which implies that Reman, the ‘small but temperate continent’ is the northwesternmost, which would make Anattan the ‘Equatorial continent.;’ By extent, per Wisdom of Sorrow, The Kel Tan and Mountain Men, ancestors of the Kurnish and Eldaarish, respectively, came from Anattan originally.

Original Source: Wisdom of Sorrow

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Hey Jhonny!

Good to see you again!

I need to talk to you about updates to the dead lands and obsidian. I’ll PM you.

I always love maps. Just one question - why has the Island of Shault moved a few hundred miles to the north east of where it should be?

It is my personal decision and is because such a green land protected by a powerful druid would be destroyed by the Dragon because is not under his control. In my opinion fits further better beyond the region controled by Borys.

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thumbs up That makes sense. Without the context I was just confused. Let’s hope Eldaarich’s silt skimmer fleet doesn’t go too close - that druid can do some serious damage!

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She has her giants!! :wink:

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Interstingly Carsys actually has a location in Trembling Plains, its located just west of Azeth’s rest, next to the modern “Filthspoon’s Dustpit” (its former siltified bay)

Love your map, it was the base for my own Green Age attempt :smiley: My only personal edits were making the northern part of Faye’loryn’s forest the Scorched Forest and the southern forest on Anattan the “Meridional Forest” I’ve seen mentioned in talk about the eastern continent (ie the one that partly appears on the map for Valley of Dust and Fire"), and maybe moving around some of Sysane’s cities (like sharn being at the mouth of the northern river)

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