Hither Thrace and Hither Rumelia, around Drama

I worked on the area along the top of this in February of 2023, though it really doesn't feel like it was that long ago. This new manner of sketching out larger areas is certainly more efficient, though the hills and mountains of this particular section was... trying.  The roads, though there were a lot of them, did tend to follow the valleys and therefore weren't as complex as some areas I've mapped.  It's certainly interesting to be in Greece, which the southern half of this map covers.  Thessalonika is just off the bottom of the map, not to be added (with the coast) until the next pass through this area.  I hate to think that might not be until February 2028.

Which brings up a point, as always: will it ever be finished. The answer to that is no... and I do wish that more people could understand the fact of doing something for the pleasure of it, regardless of it's practicality, completeness or even it's value, really. I worked on D&D for myself and my players, with no expectation that anyone in the world would ever see it, for some 25 years... and never once thought, "Oh gee, what's the point of this, it'll never be a product and no one else other than I will ever see it." Simply wasn't a part of my consciousness.

There are things I make, obviously, that I'd like to be seen, but really, that can't apply to everything in my life. I'm proud of many things that I keep private, that will never be seen here, or anywhere, that I spend time on, that are every bit as precious to me as these maps or any other thing I've written for the internet. It is a simple pleasure to design, study, copy and sketch out these maps. Sharing them here is really an afterthought.

At present, I'm a little excited to think that after about one and a half more passes at this country like the above, and I'll be able to start drawing out the east Adriatic coastline. I can feel my blood rush a little at the thought of it. How wonderful.

Further Rumelia and Hither Thrace, north of Gumulcine

This is a bridge map between two map sheets, which exist because the size of these maps disallows any possibility of working endlessly on one map.  I'll show the two sheets that it's a bridge across below.  This recent tactic of creating large areas of map in one go is great, but when that area covers more than one sheet, it's definitely problematic, so from here on, the size of "large area" I'll be making at a time will have to change, both in dimension and in some cases, marginally in shape.

The above represents the last of the large province of Further Rumelia, the eastern half of southern Bulgaria.  Bulgaria is essentially two large flatlands split by a mountain range that passes through the middle, called the Balkan Mountains; north of this is the southern plain of the Danube, and south of it is "Rumelia." For those interested, Rumelia is an excellent name to build a fictional kingdom around, and was used extensively in the 1930s whenever a film wanted to have a visiting emisary appear from one of those "Eastern European places no one really understood," back when Hollywood was still fascinated with royalty. As the population became educated, this sort of thing stopped being used, though Blake Edwards continued to experiment with it into the 1960s.

I'm just starting on "Hither Thrace," at the bottom of the above, called "Hither" because it's closer to the centre of power in Austria.  Thus, Further Rumelia is further from Vienna, while Hither Rumelia, including the large city of Sofia, is closer to Vienna.  Both Hither Thrace and Lower Macedonia (so called because its that part of ancient Macedonia that's on the Aegean, with the large important port city of Thessalonika) are very heavily populated, below unpopulated mountains (the Rhodope), but that's all for the next map.

Here's the Varna sheet, M.27e (the number being the nearest whole parallel running through the upper left corner):

And here's the one to the west of this, the Rumelia sheet, M.23e:

I'll be filling a goodly large section of that blank space at the bottom with my next map.

Thrace, around Adrianople

This accomplishes most of Thrace... and demonstrates a critical shortcoming of this kind of mapmaking. Much of the world, even at a level of 6.67 miles per hex, is very much like any other. Often we get this mix of type 5, 6 and 7 hexes with the occasional village, scored by a few hills and big towns. The result is "fly-over" country, which the players would probably never care about, which only sit as a unimportant, non-dangerous obstacle between them and their goals.

Part of The Lantern's charm is to take an area like this and give it life... not through the invention of staggering goals and hidden great dungeons, but through those elements that first or second level characters might appreciate: a hidden crowd of goblins, a rampaging wolf, some minor dispute in a village or hamlet that the players stumble upon. The very real, the very ordinary, the unquestionably difficult aspects of a world that in our real life personal experience are never easily managed, even when they don't require swords and risk of life.

But of course, it's not "heriosm," or "superheroism" for that matter, given the recent penchant for "gaming" where death is essentially impossible.  Which I am stupid enough to think diminishes the value of the setting altogether. I mean, why worry about the distance between two places, when essentially the DM can fly you where you want to go, at a finger-snap, ignoring all this dull... everything?

Byzantium, around Constantinople

A technically difficult part of the map, intensively infrastructured, lots of towns and the largest city I've included on any 6-mile map to day, Constantinople. I've started adding "market" points to the numbers on these maps, though this is catch-up work I'll do occasionally. Interest in these has dwindled, so I'm doing them for myself and a few others, not many, so it doesn't really matter. The map above follows the 41st latitude at it's bottom, which is why it's cut off.

I suppose that's all to say. Constantinople was, for about 500 years, the richest city in the world and arguably the center of all trade and travel everywhere.  Even in 1650 it retained much of its romance, but it's financial importance had been bypassed by the mouth of the Rhone, which became the crossroads of Europe and the New World, as well as the destination point for good arriving by sea from Japan, the East Indies and China.  Poor Contantinople... soon to be renamed, ultimately just a sad leftover from its former self.

West Bithynia, around Eregli

 A continuation of the last map to the east, sketching more of the Black Sea coast along modern Turkey, the west coast of the long province of Bithynia. The surrounding region of Constantinople is represented on the far left, against the sea, just before the 30th meridian... where, unfortunately, the map is about to bend to maintain the illusion of the hex-map portrayed circle that is it the northern hemisphere.

This section shows the inland roads form the hinterland, which is often cliff-faces and tangled forest, denying any easy travel along the coast. Even the section between Eregli (centre) and Karasu (left), where there is a road, is so unpopulated, with poor infrastructure, that much of the road is no better than a foot path or a rutted cart track. Easier to take a boat along the coast than to travel it... as that road is mainly for use by peasant shepherds and no better.  Good adventuring country, though.

Posting these larger map areas does require more preparation... though I admit, working on the The Lantern has consumed much of my free time of late. Which will be a steady thing, though I love making these maps when I can find the time.  I can almost see a point where the Black Sea is completely ringed around.

Central Bithynia, around Kastamohu

Following on work done on Jan 17, 2023 (Inebolu) and Jan 20 (Cide), we offer a large area in central northern Anatolia.

Mapping areas like this provides a powerful context for how large Anatolia, and thus modern Turkey, is compared to Europe — and more to the point, how empty parts of it are. 150 miles from east to west and 70 from north to south, this is an adventurer's dream, with large unoccupied forests and open scrub plains ("Mediterranean" vegetation) that, although a part of history for 3,500 years by the count of my game world, remain untapped and uncivilised. Nearly all of it consists of hills or rocky fields, impractical for agriculture, severely plundered with regards to raw material resources and, so far, not cleared as it would be once the industrial revolution gets going. Thus we look at lands that were under the control of the Hittites, Phyrgians, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans, to name the major players, but yet forever the "outer provinces" that would be bureaucrats hoped not to be assigned to.

The next section, further west, may or may not reach the Bosporus; I believe it's going to be close. Two more sections like this should get me out of Turkey and into northern Greece, possibly skirting the northern coast of the Aegean. I'm a little anxious to try the Greek Islands in this scale (though when I get there I'll probably hate it), but I don't think that's going to happen on this pass.  Next time around I suppose, which by this pace, will be two and a half years from now.

I almost forgot, I wanted to include an image of that wild bend of the Kizilirmak River, the really big one on the map. Isn't this something:

East Bithynia, Gerze and Amisos

In Jan '23, I produced a map of Bithynia around Sinop. Here is the region to the southeast of that former map, done yesterday and today, because I'm looking for ways to relax between writing just now.

This was a test, to see if I could work at eighteen 20-mile hexes at the same time. Originally, I was doing them two hexes at a time, and last year I'd moved up to six at a time. With images made earlier this year to attach to the authentic wiki, I was feeling more confident about managing more sweeping areas, to see if it would prove more efficient. It's a little of doing the same sort of detail more repetitively, but this does represent three times as much work as I would have done formerly of about the same area.  Which is desirable.

The above represents what are essentially two routes into the upper lands of Anatolia.  Gerze provides access across the Kastamonu uplands, down into the high plateau west of modern Ankara, which would have been an ancient route that contributed to Sardis and Lydia's enormous wealth 27 centuries ago, while Amisos provides access to the upper Halys valley, the seat of Phrygia, and before that the Hittite Empire, going back 36 to 40 centuries.  Both ports are very old, full of waxing and waning over the centuries, while many wars were fought to control both before the Persians did.  The old fights began after the fall of the Persians and the failed hold of the Seleucids, until the Romans controlled them both again.  Then it was the Byzantines vs. the various tribes that invaded starting in the 10th century, until the Seljuks controlled Amisos after the battle of Manzikert in 1071.  The Othmans controlled Gerze and cut the Byzantines off of trade on the plateau from both ends, ending the latter's income from that alternative route.  The Othmans, later the Ottomans, then strangled Constantinople's trade... which took only two and a half centuries, even after the city was plundered in 1204 by the Venetians.  All fun stuff.

Things like this provide structure to blocks of geography that looks like blobs on most maps, to most poeple. The pleasure I get from seeing the structure generate in close-up scale maps gives me a pleasure it's hard to describe... since people don't, generally, understand or care about maps.