Austria-Nyatria, north of Vienna

Just as last time, I think I'll start by posting the bigger picture, since it gives an impression of how thickly infrastructured this part of the Danube Valley is.

A civilised region this wide becomes its own form of obstacle, as the players must navigate an area 120 miles wide and 180 miles long, where the law exists to identify anything wrong about the party's behaviour, their present failure to observe ordinances the party knows nothing about, or just for the sake of persecuting what are obviously unkempt, unwashed foreigners who are staggering along the Hapsburg's pristine roads.

Here's a closer image of what I've done since the last post.

So very dense. Trust me, I did not particularly enjoy the placement of villages, towns and roads on this map. It almost makes me want to do mountains instead.

I'm still two years behind the part of the above on the left, which I mapped in April 2024. Back then, I was doing sections of six 20-mile hexes at a time, three pairs of two piled atop each other, which typically took me about two days. Now I'm doing eighteen 20-mile hexes at a time, nine pairs in a shape much like that above. Not sure if it's faster. It means less "re-work" along the edges... and in some ways, it does feel like a lot more is finished all at once.

But... coming through central Europe as I am right now, this feels like heavy labour. Two years ago, I was slogging through, feeling close to getting through the corner of Poland, knowing that afterward I'd have Ukraine in front of me, where the population drops and the terrain also: which means less hills, less mountains, less infrastructure... and larger areas done in less time. Only, come the 21st of April, doing Galicia (north of here), I crashed and burned, doing one more section in late May and then nothing until November that year. Between November and December, a period of 33 days, I cut from Galicia all the way to the Kerch peninsula in the Crimea... and then crashed again, until July last year, 2025. Then I worked through July and August... and crashed again, not picking this up until May this year.

So you can see, it's not that the work can't be done quickly. It's that it takes so much out of me, what with the nitpickiness of it, that I'm usually good for about a month. After that, I don't want to touch it again.

After all, the last post, which was four days ago (how long this took), got 14 views. Just that. Not exactly, um, encouraging.

I'm trying to convince myself to stop committing to this process for hours at a time. It would be better if I wore it away in smaller parts over a much greater period, than going hard and then not going at all. Right now, I'll be moving up through Moravia, which is easier than Austria, then into a rough patch with Silesia, then some heaviness in Poland... but after that, cutting across the northern frontier of Ukraine, I know it's going to be easier. I've just got to see the work as scratching not digging. If I can.

Part of it is that I like it. I like how it looks. I like how it comes together in ways I can't predict. It's discovery as much as creation. I don't know how precisely the infrastructure is going to shape together. And I want to keep going to find out. I spent a good part of this morning finishing the roads of the above... and I'll probably get started on the next session before I go to bed tonight... though lawd knows there are better things I could be doing.