Kerch Strait

Both peninsulas completed, now, the south shore sketched out.  Looks mighty fine, I think... the terrain around Taman was simply fascinating.  The coasts aren't strictly accurate, but then, this isn't the real world, is it?

Sea of Azov

Took me until today to realise I had posted this map on my Tao of D&D, and not here.  Obviously, I'm distracted.

Anyway, in the interest of keeping this blog up to date, here it is repeated.

Itossia-Zaporozhia, around Itoskhan

Ah, coastline.  There's the north shore of the Sea of Azov, not entirely but for about 80 miles.  This also completes the enclave of Itossia and most of Zaporozhia... and were I heading out east from here, the land would become increasingly less developed or occupied.

Alas, I'm moving southeast, but only for another line of three hexes.  That's as far east as I'll go as I roll in a circle, starting off southwest from there.  There's a bit more steppeland, then the wilder parts of Anatolia will be a mixture of high mountains, forests and macchia.

Itossia-Kherson-Zaporozhia

There.  This benign landscape skips over three map plates, which means duplication and re-duplication, to make all three match up.  The image is put together from all three; I believe they fit well.

Having finally gotten this out of the way, I'm free to develop much of the north and south coastlines of the Sea of Azov, which comes next.  Infrastructure drops precipitously through this, except for the immediate parts surrounding Cherzeti (modern Kerch).  I'm not far from Anatolia now, which I'm looking forward to (at least, until I get exhausted with mapping it.

Incidentally, Itossia is, I believe, my first non-human region.  It is an enclave of a larger enclave called Cumana, occupied by half-orcs whose origin begins with Pechenegs and Cumans who arrived here in the early millennium.  It is the point where my game world begins to deviate from the real, as these tribes are "orc" in my history, breeding with the human ancestors of the Zaporozhians and succeeding it repelling the Russian humans to the north.  Thus, Russia itself was more severely crushed under the Mongols (larger orcs, similar to Tolkien's uruk-hai, but called "haruchai") in my game.  Most of our Russia in the 17th century was never conquered by Russia, because those lands weren't empty... they're occupied by thousands upon thousands of non-human tribes, who control lands both before and beyond the Urals.  Russia is therefore but a small Grand Duchy, that of Moscovy, as it was prior to Ivan the Terrible.

Anyway, that seemed relevant here.

Krivassa along the Dneiper

Been hung up, but still mapmaking.

The above connects the recent work on the Dneiper's course with that I did in December of 2022, when I started mapping the Dneiper from the bottom left of this map down to the Black Sea.  From here, I continue to move southeast to the Black and across the Sea of Azov, I think completing the Crimea east peninsula, the Kerch, showing the strait between it and the Taman Peninsula of what's called Kubanistan, in modern Russia.

The "swamp" land shown is moderate bogland, easily crossed on foot though damp and spongy, and subject to flooding in the late spring.  It is a topography that hasn't existed since the early 20th century, before World War II, so the Germans did not need to contend with it; of course this isn't what the region looks like now, it's a reservoir.  It makes a natural boundary between lands controlled by the Turks south of Kiyev and the Zaporozhian Sich, or cossacks, enabling the latter to strike along routes through the soft country that they know to be firm enough, in some seasons, for their horses.  This makes it hard to defend the lands of Krivassa against raiders, which makes for a good set-up in any campaign.  Obviously, such a wide, treeless soft-bottomed open ground, braided with hundreds of tiny brooks not shown on the map, can be imported into anyone's personally generated setting.

Kamenskoye-Krivassa-Vassia

Ah, broke free from continuously populated quarters of Ukraine.  Open steppe, goes east by southeast with comparatively little occupation, until growing even less populated to the coast of the Caspian.  As I swing around this side from now on, it gets progressively easier.

Kamenskoye is interesting; an isolated river port, few facilities (type-6), a natural backwater accumulating thieves, river pirates, smugglers, adventurer-merchants bound for the Orient and minions of all sorts.  A good jumping off point, a destination to find someone who knows something about an obscure part of the world... and a long and potentially harrowing journey to reach a poorly maintained and unsafe wharf-front.  Sounds ideal.

Technically, the town is under the suzerainty of the Zaporozhian cossacks.  I mentioned these before.  This fiercely aggressive peoples are based in the "Zaporozhian Sich," which are lands following the east bank of the Dneiper.  Their number includes Bohdan Khmelnitsky, whom some will remember is waging a private war against Poland in the time of my game world; as the lands to the south and east of Zaporozhian are, unlike real history, occupied by non-human orcs, haruchai, ogres and trolls, they have larger problems than the Poles... but generally, the sweep of the land is so large that there are ways to be safe, while those on horseback can see a long way.  A party on its own, on horseback, would surely be quickly outnumbered; a party on foot would have much to fear from a small cavalry that might seem to appear from nowhere.

Krivassa-Vassia

The process is steady and patient; the apparent obscurity of another collection of unfamiliar towns and river courses simply impresses on the consciousness how immense the world is, and how many places in it are homes to people who carry no weight in the minds of those who see only grand, sweeping arcs.

Imagine the simple Turkic tax collector who leaves from Constantinople in the mid-17th century, to take a crude cart from an unfamiliar coastal port, along some unknown river to arrive at a desolate steppeland town called "Leksan," only to be told that this represents the height of civilisation for a distance of 30 miles around.  How dismal.

Dneiper Bank-Kamenskoye-Kiyev-Ltava-Vassia

A collection of provinces in central Ukraine along the Dneiper... which created some problems.  I went looking for some record of the original course of the river, since during early Soviet Russia there were several dams built that flooded the valley, displacing thousands of people and drowning villages.  Unfortunately, I could not find such a map.  Apparently, no surveys were done that exist online; even 19th century atlases tend to ignore Russia, apparently as a place where geographers do not go.  Seriously, no map plate at all appears in these.  It goes to show what kind of unearthly place was the czarate before all when sour... and adds to the lesson on what happens when you continually treat a whole people awfully for century after century.

So, made do as best I could, laying the river out as rationally as I could and filling in the basin with slough-lands as I described before.  Some of the cities on the bank of the largest Dneiper reservoir (the 5th largest by area in the world) were moved inward, to fit up against the river.  The effect creates a messy, but somewhat unique landscape.  Unique is always good.

A brief word about Kamenskoye, in the bottom right.  This is the modern Dnepropetrovsk region, or oblast.  Dnipro, formerly Dnepropetrovsk, is a huge city, but it didn't exist until 1776, when it was founded by Catherine the Great as Yekaterinoslav.  None of the settlements in this region are founded prior to 1550... so my population calculations make it a large, uninhabited steppeland, dangerously exposed and thus occupied only by Cossacks.  The settlements are therefore encampments, with few permanent buildings, while little other infrastructure exists at all.  I'll be mapping more of the area soon, but expect it to be largely empty steppe, as the small corner on the map above shows. 

Kiyev-Vassia, southeast of Kiyev

These more obscure parts of the world, where there's not a single familiar name anywhere on the map, though we're drawing out an area much larger than Rhode Island.  We're still in present-day undisputed Ukraine, but in the 17th century the southern part, distinguished by the thick borderline, is the land of Vassia, occupied by the Ottoman Empire.  Thus there is a mix between Turkish names for the larger settlements and Ukrainian for the villages.

Kiyev is the last European region we'll see for awhile; hereafter, the region being mapped is a mixture of Turkic and Mongol influences, particularly as we move through the Zaporozhian hetlands, which are essentially all Cossack.

Dneiper Bank-Kiyev-Ltava-Polissya

There, finished the corner.  Moving southeast now, towards the Black Sea.

The "swamp" areas are more appropriately large sloughs or fens, where the ground is generally too wet to plant (not today, of course; measures have been taken), and where flooding makes dwelling impractical.  This last is particularly true of the large areas adjacent to the Dneiper, the large blue line left of centre.  Incidentally, this land is still too soft for tanks, especially in late winter-spring, which is why the present Russian push is through Kopol and Kherson to the south.  The country isn't great there for heavy mech, but it's better.

Kiyev became the centre it is because the Dneiper provided one good crossing point, which is excellent for east-west trade... particularly by water.  Below Kiyev, the old Dneiper, prior to the building of many dams, was filled with treacherous drops and water courses impractical for large barges, but above Kiyev, the Dneiper is a dream.  Plus, there are numerous other large rivers that flow into it, so that the whole area above Kiyev is excellent for water-trade; this made Kiyev a powerful collection point for everything coming south in the western heart of Russia, a natural centre for wealth and thus culture and religion.  So it remained until the Mongols destroyed everything in the 13th century, and Kiyev's defensive weaknesses became evident.

Kiyev, southwest of Kiyev

 

Took a little time to fold this in together; this spans three map sheets, overlaid together, to achieve this one image.  Seems it's been two years since I was last here, which staggers me.  I didn't think it had been so long; but I did take a long break twice.  Anyway, I am mapping the Dneiper Bank now (swamp and steppe).  I'll post that area tomorrow.

Czernowitz & Kiyev map sheets

I'll create a PDF of these two large map sheets together, plus the Ruthenia map, and put it on Patreon, but for now, here are each of these that I've nearly finished in the last couple of days.

The first, the "Czernowitz" map, has just has a few holes at the top, that'll be filled when I pass this way again.  You can recognise the maps worked on this last week, across the top six rows of hexes.

Here's "Kiyev," though the city of Kiyev is not actually on the map; this map includes much of the one above, but turned 60-degrees to the left:

That only needed the upper corner done, with it's heavily infrastructured area south and west of Kiyev.  I'll post a close-up of this area after I finish mapping Kiyev itself, which hasn't been done yet.

Kiyev-Zytomierz, west of Kiyev

Turns out, I am going to catch the city of Kiyev on this pass around before turning southeast.  This is a very tricky part of the map.  Passing the 30th parallel east, the direction of the map turns 30-degrees in the upper right corner shown; then another 30-degrees with the next three hexes.  Plus, this small corner, being at the top of the map, ends up being copied onto three different map sheets.  I'm working on sheet two right now so I can fill out the blank hexes above, then I'll be on sheet 3 to fill out the blank hexes there... and then I'll be on my way again, probably at a faster pace, because after Kiyev the population drops considerably and stays that way right to the Sea of Azov.  Then I cut through eastern Crimea, maybe or maybe not touch upon Kubanistan (the mainland opposite Crimea) then right across the Black sea to Anatolia.  That's when things begin to get interesting again, with mountains.

Podolia-Zytomierz, from Shepetovka to Zytomierz

Completing the undone parts from the last post, adding the section around Zytomierz and then partially doing further work to the east.  I have time, you understand; I've been let go from my job, so I'll be looking for another sometime soon.  Until then, we must put our efforts somewhere.

Podolia-Rowno-Ternopol, north of Ternopol

Some completed content and some nearly finished, spanning two map sheets (thus the double-labelling in places).

Lwow-Rowno-Ternopol, east of Lwow

This finishes Lwow County.  Steadily the land flattens as we map east; the density of people diminishes, though it'll build up again soon as we near Kiyev.  I'm certain we're going to miss that city by a hair as we map our way by it, just as we turn southeast towards the Black Sea.

The largest city is Krzemieniec (modern Kremenets), which was a fortification against cossacks. The city also suffered battles and violence when Bohdan Khmelnytsky rallied the cossacks in 1648. Driven by grievences and religious oppression of the cossacks and peasants by the Polish nobility, Khmelnytsky allied with the Crimean Tatars, won several key battles, and incited widespread revolts, leading to violent clashes and significant upheaval, especially targeting Polish and Jewish communities seen as representatives of the ruling class. The uprising is ongoing in 1650 (it won't end historically until 1657) so the whole area is in a state of turmoil... if player characters arrived in this, they'd soon be dragged into it.

Lwow-Volhynia, north of Lwow

 This rural, agricultural landscape features villages that are generally modest, centering on small wooden churches and local markets.  Most are Eastern Orthodox Ruthenians and with some Roman Catholics.  Some religious tension existed, even though there was an attempt to bridge Catholic and Orthodox traditions through the "Uniate Church."  There might be sporadic raids from Cossacks or Tatars, but these were few.

Lwow itself is one of the few cities granted Magdeburg rights, which gives it legal and financial independence from the Polish crown. This self-governing status allowed Lwów's council to enact local laws and control its own taxation, making it both a powerful entity and somewhat unique for the time. The city’s charter allowed it to enforce guild regulations tightly, creating a well-organized structure for artisans and tradespeople who adhered to strict standards in everything from brewing to leatherworking. The Armenian community, which had its own legal system within the city, governed itself through the Armenian Court, a local institution permitted by the crown—a rare legal exception within the Commonwealth.

Lwow is also known for its multi-tiered fortifications, which include not only city walls but bastions and fortified gates, such as the famous Krakow Gate, designed to within any battery. These defenses have proven critical as Lwow held out against multiple sieges. The city has been celebrated for its resilience during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, notably repelling a Cossack-Tatar siege in 1648. This successful defense has cemented Lwow's reputation as a bulwark of the Commonwealth's eastern frontier and earned it the personal gratitude of King Jan II Casimir—who has exempted the city paying taxes until the year 1653.  The image below shows the gate as it was, before its dismantling in the 19th century.

Galicia-Lwow, west of Lwow

 

Galicia, between Przeworsk & Przemysl

 

Actually finished this weeks ago, but with one thing or another, it hasn't been posted until now.  This represents nearly the end of Polish Galicia, at last, which has been a large and populous province.  The next one over, Lwow, is not much easier to work on, but I don't mind.  The early process of producing this map is featured in the following three videos on youtube, here, here and here.

Przemysl is one of the oldest cities in Poland, with it's history dating back to at least the 8th century; the name is thought to derive from the slavic personal name, which means someone thoughtful or strategic.  As it happens, the city is in a strategic location, on the border of Galicia, along the major trade route that connects Germany with Kiyev.

Przeworsk is a smaller town, founded in the Middle Ages, with a name that means "to lead" or "to guide."  This, I could determine, may have something to do with it being a leading settlement, but I couldn't find anything more precise than that.  There appears to be no connection with these two cities having the same first four letters in their names, in this specific place, though przem- relates to strategy, while przew- relates to leadership or guidance.  It kind of bugs me that there are no other large cities in Poland that have these first four letters, but it seems utterly a coincidence.

Like Krakow, Przemysl is at the navigable head of the San River, which meets with the Vistula just above the top of this map.  Both rivers together provide a geographical framework for the south of Poland, as they reach from the Baltic Sea to cover a wide area on the northern slopes of the Carpathians.  The Vistula IS Poland, for all intents and purposes, as it makes the country's primary trade network in the game's time period and allows for comparatively fast travel and communication in the western realm.  For that reason, Galicia is one of the more advanced parts of medieval-Renaissance Poland, unlike the more agrarian regions to the east and northeast.

Galicia, around Rzeszow

Oops, cut off the 'G.'

This finishes off the Nyatria sheet for awhile, moving onto the Ruthenia sheet.  Those who have achieved the $10 tier can see the combined Nyatria and Ruthenia sheets together in a pdf on my patreon.

This piece above straddles both sheets, so it was a little longer duplicating a two-hex wide band in the middle from one map to the other.  The overlay is what covered up the 'G' in Galicia.  This is still more of that province, which seems to go on and on; the next piece I'm doing includes a small corner of the province of Zerrwen, which surrounds the big city of Lublin — a sort of northern extension of the Galician rural farmland model, though of course slightly more northern.  We're just skirting the southern tip of it here, the least populated part of the province.

The Rzeszow here is randomly presented as one of those cities that was brutalised by recent events brought about by the Thirty Years War, which takes place between 1618 and 1648; for my present-day players, it's 1654.  The map is timed to 1650.  I know the long time readers know this already, but maybe there's one reader for whom this is the first of my maps that they've seen.

Anyway, Rzeszow should bounce back quickly to become an important commercial centre like Debica, but for the present, much of its civil building lay in ruins.  Thus the type-3 hex it sits in.

Galicia, around Debica

 
Further east now, still heavily populated but beginning to disperse into country towns and villages, rather than commercial and manufacturing centres.  These are still satellite lands of Krakow, as all of Galicia, a large region compared to many of those I've worked on in east-central Europe, this is the powerhouse of the whole Polish state of the era.  Krakow was, for a time, the capital of Poland, in tandem with the other capital in Lithuania, Vilnius, or Wilno.  But the capital was moved to reduce the power of the intellectual class, to isolate the Polish throne from "facts" and "realistic expectations" and so on ... and that went very, very well.

For all of Poland's enemies.

There's much more Galicia to do, until drifting out of this corner of Poland and back into modern Ukraine, around Lwow.  All through the path ahead, I'll be cutting through the region's agricultural heart, right up to where I reach Kiyev.  I imagine that for most readers, a lot of what I'm doing now is a complete mystery to them, a part of Poland they've never looked at in depth.

For example, Nowy Sacz, which was done a few maps ago, is the navigational head of the Dunajec river, just as Krakow is the head of the Vistula.  "Poland" is defined by its rivers, which extend the importance of the Baltic Sea deep, deep into the far reaches of the country, in a great circle from Galicia here to Silesia.  The reason why Poland demanded an open port after WWI is because giving that port to Germany would have been like locking a collar around the entire economic welfare of the whole country.  A German-controlled Danzig would have become spectacularly wealthy on the labour of Poland, and would have funded a war twice the size of the one the Nazis were able to fight.  NO ONE in Europe, in 1919, would have permitted that; they'd have gone to war with Germany again rather than permit that.  So the Germans had to do without it, until they seized it in 1939 ... whereupon it did them no good, because Danzig's trade was throttled anyway by the British Navy keeping the Germans bound to the Baltic and North Atlantic.

It's this trade that made Poland such an appetising prize for the Russians, Austrians and Prussians in the 18th century.  It was the Austrians who gobbled up south and East Galicia in 1772, and then Krakow and Zerrwen in 1795.  True enough, it meant making the Prussians rich, as they controlled Gdansk, but the food production of Galicia and Lwow was prodigious, sufficient to allow Austria to double its population through the 19th century (among other factors). Galicia became known as the "granary of Europe," with its fertile lands producing abundant crops. The region's agricultural prosperity attracted settlers from other parts of the Austrian Empire, particularly from regions facing economic hardships or overpopulation.

Galicia & Wislanie, around Krakow

And so, I build this pile of humanity atop the stack that has been Slovakia, wholly into Poland now.  Feels good to have this density done, as everything after this for a long time is progressively easier to map.  It's all flat, there are less people ... I'll be gaining speed therefore as I go east.

Krakow is a large, important city because it straddles trade in two directions.  To begin with, it's on the headwater of the Vistula river, which flows to the Baltic sea, so that goods throughout south Poland converge here to be transshipped onto barges.  This also makes it a link between the Danube and the Baltic, as it's the shortest distance between the former river and goods coming down from the Baltic, such as furs, timber, fish and, in some degree, Asiatic goods coming all the way from China.  Finally, west to east, it's the fairest way on the north side of the curve created by the Carpathian mountains, linking northern Germany with Kiyev.  In my game, it's a city of 75,000 people, highly educated and at the time, in the midst of a Golden Age.

The region became an area of religious tolerance, replete with scholars and intellectuals like Brozek, Modrzewski and Zacjusz.  It was a time when many Jews settled into the region; Auschwitz-Birkenau is 33 miles east of Krakow, not shown on this map.  The soil was better at the time, though brown and loamy, and because of the decline of the region in the 18th century, had long lacked the fertility it had then.  It is most likely being much restored now.

The next map continues the outward pattern of infrastructure spreading outwards from Krakow.  I'm at the top of the sheet here, but as I have enough room I'm not going to make the adjoining sheet above until I come back this way, many months from now.  Remember when this sheet was empty, not that long ago?

Nyatria & Galicia, around Zsolna

The end of Nyatria and I think all of Slovakia now.  For awhile now, I've been progressing east to west with each group of three posts, but now I've climbed up the previously constructed map to where I'm even with it.  Here, I'll demonstrate; here's the upper left corner of the whole map as it's been rendered so far:

The reader can see that it's even now.  I've fixed the error I made with this post and extended the intended line up to include Busko at the top of the map sheet, "Nyatria-18e", which is named after the general area and that the upper right corner is 18 degrees E of Greenwich (an anachronism, but let's be realistic).

As I've explained before, the distance around the world EW is greater than the distance NS, so I've been mapping outwards six 20-mile hexes from the edge; atop the done map, however, I'll just do three 20-mile hexes.  I'll go north from the map finished here, to do the group of six hexes (3 high, 2 wide), then proceed east along the edge of the map shown.  Thus it'll be dense population to Lwow, then it'll drop off towards near Kiyev.  I haven't looked yet to see if I'll be doing Kiyev on this pass.  I kind of like not knowing.

I suppose for most this all seems sort of repetitive.  Certainly the mix of hexes extending along the finger that the Hungarian Kingdom makes east to west, plainly visible on the double-map here seems like a long scattering of similarly patterned hexes.  Let me say that I know that it's just infeasible that this much information could ever really be made use of for a D&D world; it's tremendously out of reason to run every one of these towns in a lifetime of gaming.

Therefore, we can guess that much of my motivation here isn't D&D.  I am pretty nerdy, after all.  I find myself mapping Poland and I think, "wow, not that long ago I was mapping Bulgaria.  This is so kewl to be this far north and actually mapping Krakow!  Goofy, but it's like travelling across Europe at walking speed, which feeds my inner quest for knowledge at any cost.  Some things I do "for D&D" are purely selfish.  I admit it.

I'll skip a description of this area above.  It's much the same as the last two I wrote for Upper Hungary.  The sight of the completed map, overlaid upon the uncompleted areas, I think, is enough.

At some point, I'm going to have to solve the problem of laying two adjacent maps one over the other.  The "Arpathian Mountains," for example, indicates that pretty clearly.  I've figured out how to do it, but damn, it's a lot of work.

Galicia & Upper Hungary, around the Tatras

The Tatras are really marvelous; they lift up right out of the plain, surrounded by a flat land.  They were formed millions of years ago as a sharp, staggering wrinkle caused by the collision of the African plate with the European ... with their sharp lifted peaks formed by the glacial period.  Go have a look.  Yet as spectacular as they are, they're just 26 miles long and 7 miles wide.  We could fit six of these ranges into the area of Long Island.

They're an untouched wilderness in the period, primarily inhabited by shepherds and hunters.  The forests today have all been cut out, but they'd still be there in the 17th century, all around the lower slopes.  The upper pastures were tended by a group called the Goral people.

The more populated regions to the north are peaceful and deeply hierarchical, with the peasants being largely serfs, often on the edge of starving.  The Polish nobility of the time ravaged their own land and peoples without restraint, supported by the Catholic Church.  It's a hard place to live, but a player party could likely walk through the region with little trouble, so long as they were generous with bribes, should they be questioned.  Two silver pieces per soldier is a good bribe, all given to the leader of course.

Upper Hungary & Galicia, west of Bartfa

There, I've jumped northeast, so that now we're north of Iglo and Spis Castle.  We've touched on Poland with this recent post and way, way back in November of 2022.  This a relative respite in population density; still have to get around Krakow to the northwest of here, where it's going to get dense again, though not quite like Nyatria.  In fact, there's not a single "settlement" in this region just mapped.

The frontier on this side of Hungary was not much better than the border with the Turks; Upper Hungary was a fortified arm between the Turks and Poland, which was also aggressive. This region was frequently plagued by military conflicts, raids and skirmishes between various factions. These conflicts were more than nationalistic, they also involved local militias, mercenaries, and opportunistic bandits. These clashes often resulted in destruction of villages, displacement of populations, and economic hardship and famine for affected communities. It's a good part of the world for players to help disaffected, struggling peoples against a wide range of enemies.

Major centres depend on the trade route that passes through Eperjes and Iglo, that connects Vienna with Kiyev.  Another interesting point is that, because the peoples here had to huddle together against these troubles (and the 30 Years War besides), the region became one of religious tolerance, with Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants and Jews co-existing in relative peace.  The violent factions are made of other causes.

Nyatria, around Nyatria

This is more of the heart of the hard-put Hungarian Kingdom in the 17th century, the source of wealth that sustained the "wall" against the Turks that protected Europe.  For me, thankfully this is the last of intense infrastructure mapping; I adore the way these towns overwhelm the gaze, but it's tons of extra work where mapmaking is concerned.  I yearn for a large, flat, uninhabited landscape ... though when I get there, it'll probably be two hundred lakes that I'll hate.

Nyatria, also Nitra, is an important ecclesiastical centre, but in my game not a trade hub.  Obviously, there's a market there, as the city has more than 10,000 people, but the balance of importance is towards maintenance of the Catholic church and the bureaucracy.  Primarily, all these type-1 hexes are structured towards an intense cottage industry culture, churning out great amounts of foodstuffs, textiles, ceramics and wooden articles of every kind.  And arms and armour, too, for use along the frontier, not for sale.  Military garrisons proliferate throughout the region.

I'm coming up on the corner to turn steadily east, so to make the map round out, I'll be making sections that are just 2/3rds as large as these being lately done.  That will get us up into Poland, whereupon the maps will march out towards Kiyev.

Nyatria, around Zolyom

Depicted is a part of central west Slovakia, south of modern day Banska Bistrica, where about 25 years ago my in-laws went for two years to teach English as a second language.  As we're getting a little further north, the winters here are moderately cold, but the land is beautiful and the highland pastures verdant and rich with livestock.  I still need to identify the line of peaks at the top of the map; part of the Carpathians, but not the Tatras ... those are still further north.

The area is renowned for its rich deposits of gold, silver and copper, so that many hexes here are mining these metals, not just the mine hexes coloured a soft purple at the map's top.  Beszercebanya, or Banska Bistrica, was also known as "Neusohl" at the time, which means "new sand," obviously a mining reference.  "Banska" also relates to mining, while "Bystrica" means clear stream.  Beszercebanya is the Hungarian name for the town, and means "our mine."  No oppression there.

Continuing west from here.

Spis Castle

Just an update on the previous post.  A poke from Nigel, who more than a year ago corrected me about the right name for Zlin in Moravia, drew my attention to a feature that should have been included on my last map:

Spiš Castle has been added to the above, somewhere approximately where it is, atop a low hill not shown on the map.  It is a heritage site, one of the largest castle complexes in Central Europe, believed to have been built in the early 12th century on the site of an earlier fortification. Over the centuries, it underwent numerous expansions, modifications, and renovations. It served as the political, administrative, economic, and cultural center of the region.  There's plenty of information about it.  The castle suffered a devastating fire in the 18th century and thereafter ceased to be occupied.

So why, if the castle existed in the 17th century, at the time of my game world, is it a ruin?  This is going to sound silly, but it's because when I randomly generated the hex, it wound up being a type-7.  The 20-mile hex that it's a part of has an infrastructure (inf.) of 171, which broke down into two type-1s (Iglo and Locse), a type-2 (Zavadka), a type-4 (Svedlar) and three type-7s.  Each type-1 counts for 64 inf., the type-2 for 32 inf., the type-4 for 8 inf. and each type-7 for 1 inf. each.

The two type-1s are automatically assigned to the settlements, about which I've explained, and the other five hexes were assigned randomly.  If the type-2 or the type-4 were assigned to Spis Castle's hex, I'd be changing the town/village name to "Spis" and the castle would be functional and fully staffed.  But the hex generator selected a type-7 for that hex, which would be farmland and a little thorpe of about 15 people.  If Spis had been designated on the encyclopedia map that forms the basis for my game design, it would now be a type-1 or a type-2 for certain.  But it isn't, because the numbers rolled against it ...

I could countermand the random selection and reverse Svedlar's hex ... but once you start doing that with a generative system, it never stops, and the line just creeps all over.  I prefer to say, "This is a D&D world, there's magic, something happened to Spis castle before it had a chance to burn down in the 18th century.  This makes it an interesting ruin for the players to investigate, along with the abandoned village of Spis (which also would have been there before this became a ruin), next to some tiny collection of farmers that live in the shadow of the wrecked castle.

That works great for me, should I ever want to give reason for players to go here, and it works great for the reader, who can build a low level campaign by starting players in the town of Iglo, just 13 miles west of the ruined castle.

Upper Hungary & Nyatria

Here we have a comparative backwater, though there were overarching conflicts taking place all around the area during the Thirty Years War and the Ottoman encroachment.  I was able to find a reference that much of this area was a big forested area in the time period, surrounding the Cerova Highlands, but that was only one sentence.  There is some trade through the area, and some mining of silver and copper, so obviously a campaign could be built around cleaning out some secret goblin-kobald mine west of Dobsina, discovering they were digging a rich vein of silver and then allowing the party to take steps to continue exploiting it.

Still, life here consists of a mix of rural agriculture, minor commercial activity, a staunch religious tradition (a mix of Catholic and Lutheran), with an outlying threat that wouldn't be likely to materialise.

West, then, into the heart of the modern day Banska Bystrica province.

Budapest, Nyatria & the West Border

So many new villages and towns; so many bridges.  So many rivers.  It's easy to tell when the land flattens out, as the rivers begin to braid and small swampy areas appear all round.  The density of the area explains how this region was able to hold back the Ottomans, who were overextended from their political centre.  The map above is our last farewell to the empire for awhile at least, before we meet back with it again in Anatolia.

I'm glad that the population density drops rapidly as I move northeast from here.

The region itself is a mix of numerous ethnicities and cultures, jammed together in the last century as refugees from the widescale European war against the Turk.  Included are Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, Jews, Moravians, Roma, Croatians, Serbians and many others.  The division between Protestant and Catholic sentiments, combined with the potential for plunder, AND the potential for playing off one people against another, made this region a free-for-all during the 30 Years War ... so "ravaged" would be a very light word to use for the whole area shown.

Onto the western edge of Upper Hungary with the next map.

Bakony, Budapest & Nyatria

Some of these can be brutal to lay out; the roads took just too long with this one, as the path of the Danube through the middle of the densely packed area, coupled with my trying to maintain my road-layout premise, really proved a challenge.  The hex containing Komarom and the next hex to the right had 800+ and 700+ infrastructure.  Since a hex gets a "high road" for every 100 pts., both have more of these roads than the hex has sides ... which means they get an "extra" road on either side of the Danube.  Yet one of these had to be used to connect Guta with two different settlements off-map, so the road between Tata and Tardos ended up being a low road.

I don't suppose anyone knows what I'm talking about.

There's still a part of me that wants to connect Sturovo to Svodin (honest, these places are on the map), but then, the primary form of trade through the middle here is on the Danube itself.  The best way to connect with Svodin, as well as all the shown area of Nyatria including Guta, is to ship it down river to Moca, Iza or Zlatna.  So I left the extra road west from Sturovo out.

As I said with the last post, Budapest (the Ottoman Empire) controls the south bank of the Danube, Nyatria (and the Kingdom of Hungary) the north bank.  The actual price of goods is set by Danube traffic, which is why there's no official "trade route" shown, as would be indicated by a road with a black line down the middle.  You can see the route between Pozsony and Koszyce at the top left, running through Hul, Mana and Kalna to Leva at the top.  Obviously, the road west from Esztergom would be used continuously for trade, but on my trade map of the "known world," none of the roads here are "trade routes" specifically.

The city of Budapest controls the trade on the south side of the Danube.  Just off the map to the west is "Yanik Kale," modern Gyor, which is the last far west fortification of the Ottomans.  That'll be mapped with my next effort.  The next section is even more populated, with even more cities and more roads, so I'm not looking forward to it.

Oh, there's an error I didn't notice.  The high road from Nagysap needs to be connected with the cart path from Csakvar, which I laid out yesterday.  That'll be fixed the next time this area is posted.

Bakony, Budapest & Northern Hills

At last, Buda & Pest.

Both were wrecked considerably in attacks from the Ottomans, but also during the 30 Years War, taking place just before the time of my world's game play.  Both cities are under the control of the Ottomans and will remain so for many decades yet, before recovered by the Hapsburgs (or perhaps some player party).

The Danube valley here forms an important trading passage, called the "Danube Bend."  In points, the river flows through a narrow gorge flanked by hills, provided a natural passage connecting the Great Hungarian Plain with the Transdanubian region of Vienna.  All along the banks of these type-1 hexes are fortifications and castles, protecting the west from the east while maintaining control over the considerable river traffic.

The Ottoman's control the south bank of the river west of Esztergom, while the Hapsburg-Hungarian kingdom controls the north.  The three provinces of Budapest, Bakony and Northern Hills are all part of the Ottoman Empire, which I'll be leaving behind soon enough.

Nyatria Map Sheet

For fun, here's the next map sheet north of the Croatian sheet, which I've just moved on from.  I've duplicated that material appearing on the Croatian sheet along the bottom, and printed this with the 20-mile map in the background, so the reader can see the infrastructure numbers that have been generated for those hexes.  Some regions on this may haven't been so calculated, and that'll have to come before my moving off this sheet.

The thin orange line that slants up and then to the right is the outward boundary of while I'll be mapping before putting this sheet to bed.  As can be seen, I'll be doing that heavily populated aisle along the Danube valley, then up through the main of western Slovakia and across the Tatra Mts., which are mid-map around Zakopane.  Then it's clearly into southern Poland and Galicia, just grabbing Krakow before I start off in an easterly direction.  Silesia, and Zlin, gets missed this time around.  One of my readers who is interested in Zlin is probably disappointed.

West Border, around Szombathely

 

This brings us into a new part of 17th century Hungary, the "West Border" or sometimes the "Western Borderland."  This was the best passage through Hungary to Vienna, and was thus a battleground for about two centuries.  Szombathely is a pretty big city of more than 17,000, and is essentially a big overbuilt fortress.  Austria is just across the border on the left; "Styria" and the town of Jennersdorf are in modern Austria.

Something else to think of was that the region, plagued by raids and burned crops, suffered from an endemic famine, though trade, agriculture and artisanship continued to persist as well as it was able.  Disease, too, was a constant threat.  If there's anything that will make players quickly depart a region or go around, it's telling them that disease in the area is rampant.

The reader may notice the area atop the map labeled "Guns."  In German, this is more properly "Güns," the German name for modern Köszeg.  As far as I can determine the name has nothing whatsoever to do with the modern term "guns" ... it seems to be a linguistic coincidence.  I admit, it sounds odd in a D&D context.  I won't be mapping that region until I swing all around my presently made map and pass here again.

This nearly finishes the map sheet; I have to do the next one over to fill the empty white hexes at the top.  When I plug those in, I'll publish the whole map sheet to my Patreon.

Bakony, around Veszprem

And this finishes Lake Balaton.  The landscape all around is farmland with commercial centres designed to collect food and alternately process it or take it on to somewhere that does.  I think I failed to say before that the region is under the control of the Ottomans, so the general direction of food transport is south and east, not north towards Budapest or Vienna ... and yes, those cities dearly miss the good old days of the 15th century when this land was theirs.  It hasn't been since 1526, however.

Consider, that means 5 or 6 generations between the lost Battle of Mohacs and the time of my game world.  There isn't a person left alive who remembers when this was Hungarian territory ... though people do tend to maintain a great deal of nostalgia for past times, even when those happened a long, long time ago.  To put it into perspective, imagine that the United States had been under the control of the Mexicans since the year 1900 ... 124 years.  That's the space of time between Mohacs and my game world.  Would the residents of the Atlantic Seaboard, the Midwest and the Pacific Coast today, having been Mexican citizens all these years, still pine for the old America of late 19th century imperialism, second-rate presidents and a disastrous post civil-war reconstruction (which must have failed if the Mexicans invaded successfully) ...?

I think probably yes.  Though they'd have no idea what exactly they were missing.

Bakony, around Belgrad

A wider frame for this post, though I've just added the small area in the middle.  This includes adding another quarter of Lake Balaton, so that lake is taking shape.  Another smaller lake east of Belgrad, Lake Velence (in English, "Lake Venice") is listed as the third largest lake in Hungary; I assume they're counting Neusiedler See, which Hungary just barely shares with Austria, and though quite big isn't as large as Balaton.

Budapest is inside that little notch that's blank on the upper right, on the Danube that's shown here.  That river has been getting progressively smaller as I map upstream ... there'll be a little more of that river in the near future.

Belgrad is the modern Szekesfehervar, which I think means "Szekes in Feher county."  Feel free to correct me, what do I know?  A little research revealed that a protected natural area nearby is called in English — if it can be believed — the "Watermelon-infested Nature Reserve," but even the Hungarian wikipedia doesn't explain why.  Just kicking this out there to prove the world's a strange place.

The above is three sheets laid over one another.  The cut-off lines exist because the lower left sheet hasn't been duplicated on the upper sheet yet.  I'm going to leave that until I finish all I'm going to do with the Croatia sheet.

I'll finish Lake Balaton with the next post.

Squeezed against the Edge

 

I should have just tacked this on to the end of the last post, which I put up about two hours ago, but I didn't think of it.  The image above shows the rest of the map sheet I'm working on.  Note there are just six hexes between the mapped area and the edge; this translates to being two 20-mile hexes wide.

I've been posting sections that are 9 hexes high and 6 sections wide, which translates to three by two 20-mile hexes.  What I'll have to do with the above is make an area 6 by 6 hexes, and then copy the top two hexes of that onto the next map sheet in order to keep going.  This is easier than doing a 9 by 6 area ... so well do the three 6 by 6 sections first, then continue as I have done before.

This can't possibly matter to anyone but me and a few serious map nerds, but heck, it explains why I'm doing what I'm doing with the next three posts.

Finishing a sheet is always an annoyance, what with the duplication of the edges that has to be done so the maps can be lined up.  I've done so much of this, however, that it's not a big deal.  It just slows me a little.  However, towards the end it feels like I'm being squeezed against the edge of the map.  I obviously prefer to have a big empty map to fill up, then getting towards the end of one.

Lower Styria, Croatia & Carniola, around Pettau

 

There, haven't mapped anything in a few days.

Except for the last corner of Croatia, the rest of this is still part of the Hapsburg (or Habsburg) Kingdom.  Carniola and Lower Styria are both a part of modern Slovenia.  Marburg is just there as a placeholder; the modern name is Maribor.  The other side of the border at the top left is the beginning of Austria.

However, this is as far west as I'll be mapping for a long, long time.  Now it's northeast to Poland and then east.

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Croatia & Bakony, around Varasd

Provides a little more of Lake Balaton at the top, with a slightly less developed agricultural plain than the last map.  The Croatia shown here is a mere rump of the modern state, controlled by Hungary at this time and having surrendered territory to both the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans.  Nonetheless, it is part of the bulwark "protecting" Europe from Vienna and the heart of Germany.  I put the word in quotes because any serious effort to overrun Croatia isn't going to meet sufficient resistance to keep something as large as the Ottoman Empire from succeeding.

In the period, the region did experience passing military campaigns, raids and occasional occupations of some its towns.  The time period had considerable influence on the future resilience, stubbornness and strong religious ties of Croatians overall.

I've got one more step west to make, an infrastructure-dense area consisting of Lower Styria and an small corner of Carniola.  It finishes off Croatia also, and will be the furthest west that I've mapped using this map formula.

Bakony, Croatia & Slavonia, around Kaposvar

 
Western Hungary, with a large flat plain and good farmland throughout, a fairly middling population and next to no heavy development.  Even Kaposvar, with a population above 5,000, doesn't rate a type-1 hex.  Mozsgo, in Alfold, was generated last time I was mapping Hungary.

The large body of water at the top is Lake Balaton.  Some may be familiar with in on maps of Europe, but it's going to look quite different here.  Wikipedia discusses how the lake wasn't developed until the 19th century, when the swamps around the lake were filled in.  As such, I'll be using the guideline shown in the attached diagram, reading the old shoreline from GoogleEarth to get details.  The part shown on the map above is the middle bottom on this diagram, slightly to the left of centre.

The expanded lake should look positively massive in this scale, forming quite an obstacle.  My original research on Bakony shows it to be something like the Saskatchewan of Europe, though obviously a lot smaller.  Viewing the next area over, it should look more or less the same as the above, with more of Balaton added.

The lack of topography makes it much easier to get these sections up more quickly.

Banovina, Kordun & Slavonia, around Agram

This represents the heart of later Croatia, and in the game world an important arm of Hapsburg power in Europe.  The sparse region at the bottom left is Lika; I forgot to move the label.  "Karlstadt" (in English, "Charlestown") in Kordun was founded in 1579, quite recent in my game world.  It's a small town, but later in the 18th and 19th century, it would transform into a lynchpin connecting Austrian Croatia with Fiume, the Empire's critical port on the Adriatic.  Later, it'll be known as Karlovac.  Here, it's just a little village of 424 people.

With Banovina done, I'm going to be turning the corner and starting off towards the northeast.  I'm so pleased to be out of the constant creation of mountains and hills.

There's a small layout error at the top with the hex and the border.  I do my best, but these things proliferate.

Banovina to Bosnia, east of Agram

 

While my "Banovina" includes Agram, or modern Zagreb in Croatia, I'm skipping over the distinction in order to simplify the area.  Banovina is a part of the Hapsburg Empire of Austria, which most modern sources fails to acknowledge was once distinct and separate from Hungary, as the two kingdoms were always acting in tandem — especially against the Ottoman Empire.  In any case, this corner of Croatia at the top of the map is isolated from the rest of Hungary by geography and a low population ... and is therefore more connected with, and dependent upon, the Hapsburgs of Sziszek and Agram.

The latter is about 3 miles off the western edge of the above, and is due to appear in the next post.  The appearance of type-1 hexes shows the central core of modern Croatia ... and such is going to continue sporadically towards Graz in Austria, which is off to the northwest.  I won't quite get to Austria; further mapping will reach into parts of Slovenia and western Hungary, before changing direction to the northeast and ultimately towards Slovakia and the Ukraine.

Banovina isn't very large ... about 1800 square miles, larger than Rhode Island but not as large as Delaware.  It's one of a grouping of similarly sized  or smaller fiefdoms: Carniola, Lower Carniola, Kordun, Lika, Lower Styria and Freising, the last about 120 miles in area and surrounding Skofje Loka in Slovenia.

Bosnia, Slavonia & Croatia, around Daruvar

 

As I map progressively into the heart of Europe, the size of the regions progressively get smaller ... especially as we near the Holy Roman Empire.  While Slavonia and Bosnia are part of the Ottoman Empire, Croatia is part of the slim kingdom of Hungary, which in the 17th century acts as a bulwark (note the thicker border).  The Ottomans will cross this frontier once more in 1683, but in 1650 their attentions are elsewhere.  Croatia stands because Christian Slavonia is far less controlled than Islamic Bosnia; nonetheless, the area on both sides of the border is fairly peaceful.

The 1683 advance did pass through parts of Slavonia, and Agram to the west, but as the movement was on such a broad front there's no specific marching route we can name.

For the record, the river at the top is the Drava, while the Sava is on the bottom.

Bosnia-Kilis, from Bihac to Petrovac

Still wading through these backcountry parts of Bosnia, and still we're not done with the country.  Bihac isn't even connected to the rest of the country by road; there's a little cart path (not even ruts) that leads down to the Kozjak river (a dry wash on GoogleEarth, due to the dam northwest of Bihac).  The river wouldn't be navigable, but there would be a footpath along it, to provide the only communication to this part of the Ottoman-controlled region.  But then, Lika, Kilis and Slavonia are all also under Ottoman suzerainty.

The sanjak of Kilis comprises an ancient region that dates back to the Stone Age, called Burnum under the Romans and Knin after the 10th century, when it formed a defensive refuge for the kings of Croatia for 500 years.  There's a long description of the region under wikipedia.  I was calling it Tinin, the Hungarian name for the region, but a recent look into it tells me that the Ottomans called it Kilis.  It also says that at some point the name was changed to Kirka, even Krka, but I don't have a date for that change and I suspect someone's confused the region with the island of Krk in the Asiatic, about 20 miles off the map to the west.  Anyway, I've accepted Kilis for it.

Lika is also a former province of Croatia, falling to the Ottomans after the 1493 Battle of Krbava Field.  Wikipedia rates it as a part of Kilis, Krka or Bosnia, but I've chosen to retain it's 7th century roots.  Both Kilis and Like are extraordinarily unpopulated, so when I come to map either of those, they'll be as empty as the hexes around Bihac, with a dense coastal Dalmatia next door.  Won't be for a while, though.  I'm going to skirt one corner of Lika as I map in a northwesterly direction, but this is all I'll do of Kilis until coming all the way around my complete map.

Bosnia, west of Banjaluka

Bosnia, Zenucha to Banjaluka

 

Sarajevo isn't the "heart" of Bosnia.  This is.  While not truly dense, as say northern Serbia, this is yet quite populated.

This is still within the Ottoman Empire.  The reach of that empire is only graspable when one comes close to the ground, when every part of Europe that was under its sway is individually seen and examined.