Bratslaw & Kiyev, north-northeast of Gaissin

Looking to do two sections today.  The background is more of the same, as we wind our way over the great plateau that makes up the heart of Ukraine:

As I said, the further we come south, and away from the large city of Kiyev, the less infrastructure we find.  This affects the likelihood of cities, but it also tends to create a homogenous sort of landscape; a hill or two, scattered around, but just the same sort of plain as we'd get were we mapping Kansas or Saskatchewan.

Gawdawful, isn't it?  Imagine being players hexcrawling through this part of the world ... forest after forest, one little dirtwater village after another ... some of them big and sleepy, without much going on except the collection of agricultural products, others with some manufacturing ... but really, just a maze of roads and greyness.  There's a reason that many Russian nobles of the 18th and 19th century abandoned these lands to subordinates, so they could hang out in St. Petersburg.  When the Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Pechenegs, Cumans or Mongols swept through this country, they found it easy to ride through, in search of better lands to conquer.

My motivation to keep going comes from a somewhat mystical feeling that I'm here, plunging through the endless fields of this place, having "travelled" here from Hungary, and other places I've seen.  I know that soon I'm going to be fighting with the coastline of the Black Sea, which is encouraging me forward.  But it's also just all so cool, making more and more of this map come together.  It's easy to sit back and stare at the work that's been done, remembering my being here and at the same time, stunned at the immensity of what it means to put something huge together, one small brick at a time.