Likes

On most social media sites, which includes anything which can be jointly read by a widescale number of people, "likes" serve as a form of validation.  Posts and content with a higher number of likes are given more visibility, because algorithms, for all their evils, prioritise content that receives approbation.  More likes push content to the top of feeds and suggests its importance to other.  The more likes a post receives, the more likely it's going to be seen by a large audience.

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For content creators, like myself, likes serve as a feedback mechanism.  It acts as an encouragement for more product.   For a creator, the opinions of the reader are of great importance.  So please, in addition to giving your support in so many other ways, please consider taking a moment when you see something I've posted on Patreon and press the like button.  It may seem unimportant, but every metric matters.  Every vote counts.  In the long run, it could make a very big difference in the number of people I'm someday able to reach.

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.

Bosnia, around Sarajevo

 

Difficult to do these areas that straddle two different map sheets.  The bottom is part of the Adriatic sheet, while the top overlies the Hungary sheet.  Since I create an overlap, it means copying the content from one as exactly as possible onto the other.

Not much else to say.  The mountain fatigue of rolling east-to-west through Bulgaria and Serbia isn't going to stop.  I know it'll continue on up the old Yugoslavian lands through Croatia ... and while theres a brief respite coming as I cross the extreme west of Hungary and then Nyatria, I suspect I'll pick up mountains again as I pass through the bottom edge of Poland.  Somewhere out there is the big flat land of the Ukraine.  Oh, let the day come.

Bosnia-Serbia, Visegrad, Uzice

 

Normally, I create the posted map from six 20-mile hexes, but this is from eight — filling a gap created by my going all the way around my mapped area in a great circle, passing through Hungary, Ukraine, the Black Sea, the edge of Anatolia and finally Hungary and Serbia.  The above brings me back full circle and completes Serbia completely.

The above was especially difficult as it spans over three separate map sheets.  I did a better job matching these together, so the reader would have to look hard to find a seam.

The river is the Drina, which flows north into the Sava and eventually the Danube.  It isn't an accurate representation.  Doing the map incrementally, and the rivers themselves being extremely difficult to follow and read with GoogleEarth, as everything is a canyon.  Somewhere I lost the correct line of one of these rivers and to make it work, I had to "invent" a river connection.  Not going to say where.  It looks pretty good, and it is a fantasy map.

Part of the blame lies in that I began creating the underlying maps in 2004, before the invention of a lot of map-friendly content on the internet.  As such, I decided not to focus on exact geographical rendering ... which is, unfortunately for me, now possible.  Sometimes I regret not starting over at some earlier time — but hell, I was mapping India by 2011, which meant that most of the area I have mapped in 20-mile hexes was done in the first seven years of my effort.  It felt too late to adjust even then.  So as someone committed, I have to stress things like it being a "fantasy" and not being an "exact" depiction.

It's funny because unless we're from the actual place being depicted, chances are we just don't care.  Here's a video for reference there.

'Course, I know every error I've made, because I really care about details and the real world.  And the errors haunt me.  I've made my bed and it's too short for my feet.  The only thing I can do is hang them over and get the soundest sleep I can.

Hercegovina-Montenegro, north of Niksic

 

The karst shown here is a mixture of bare limestone and dolomite rock and scrub growth.  The region is full of sinkholes formed by the collapse of underground caverns.  There are extensive limestone pavements, cracks and deep, narrow fissures called "grikes."  An abundance of springs exist that form streams, many of which disappear through fissures and travel thence through underground channels.  There are many, many caves.

This is the southern reach of the Dinaric Alps, which spawns isolated limestone formations with precipitous cliffs, groups of peaks and plateau-like areas 7000 ft. above sea level.  These contribute to the overall grandeur and scale of the landscape.  The surrounding forests contained scattered hamlets and tiny villages, with only a few significant settlements grouped around.  It's a spectacular arrangement for low-level adventuring, with plenty of space for the occasional chimera or gorgon ... remembering that the southern portion shown was part of Illyria, on the fringe of the ancient Greek world.  So such beasts would be entirely appropriate.

This puts Montenegro behind me, and this is all I'm doing of Hercegovina for now.  Continuing north, there's Serbia to complete and then the eastern part of Bosnia.

Montenegro-Serbia, around Taslidza

This is west of the previous picture, completing the last corner of Kosovo.  The terrain of northern Montenegro is unusually irregular and can't be easily drawn on a map.  As such, the symbols I'm using aren't really accurate.  I suggest that anyone interested in real geography use their GoogleEarth to investigate the landforms here ... they're very interesting.

For adventure purposes, I love an area like this.  Surrounded by densely populated locales, with the centre a dense wilderland with the bare minimum of cart paths and trails to allow access.  Sections that are 20 miles across without anyone except whatever beasts or goblinish villages I care to include.  And a dungeon or two, obviously.  A party could run for ten years in an area like this, returning again and again to the small country towns of Dabovici, Jubaka and Janca for moderate resupply, except when they have to head out to really civilised places for unusual gear.

Still going one more section west after this, touching the east frontier of Hercegovina.

Serbia-Kosovo, around Novibazar

Some wild country in northwest Kosovo and eastern Serbia, with two tiny settlements and little infrastructure.  These areas are somewhat easier to design, though the proliferation of mountains takes time.  I look forward to the big open plains of the Ukraine, with nary a hill ... though when I return to that, I'll be missing mountains.

All of these territories for the last couple of months, with the exception of "Cattaro" on the last post, which is under control of the Venetians, are part of the Ottoman Empire.  Despite the geographical obstacles before them, the Ottomans did very well in capturing and maintaining these regions for five centuries.  This left an indelible mark on the land, both in culture and in the manner of financial expenditures and religion.  In the game world, these lands are fraught with repression, religious persecution, blood feuds and political corruption.

The hillpeople, who hated the lowlanders, adopted Islam and become Moslems; the lowlanders remained steadfastly Christian ... though because they were isolated from both Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox entities, they formed local orthodox or catholic chapters that remain independent to this day.

As a pattern for designing game adventures, I find this difficult for my players.  Most aren't invested in either religion or nationalism; it can be hard even for adults to engage in struggles based upon this region's abject hatred for that, on a degree that often seems absurd.  Western soldiers in Kosovo in the 1990s had trouble relating to people's motivations that were based on wild, unrestrained hatred and a desire for genocide — both of which are legacies from such a long time under Turkish rule, where the locals had little control over their futures or social change.  The absence of political control fosters petty discontents.  The 17th century Balkans are rife with it.  Player parties are not, and it's therefore with blank eyes that they respond should I introduce some narrative based on this village attacking that without apparent cause.  So I largely don't.  Too much of it and all the parties want to do is leave and so somewhere more sensible, like France or Scandinavia.

Albania-Montenegro, around Skadar

 

There, the Adriatic Sea at last.  I've followed this east to west path since Amisos in Bithynia, in Turkey.  At this point I'm finally ready to swing north.

I know they're just dots on the map above, but these are real places and I find them somewhat interesting.  Take Virpazar, for example, on the left-center, just off Lake Skadar.  A quainter little village couldn't be asked for, just 1.56 km from the lake's algae-ridden shore ... so, in fact, a little port village, though that's not plain on the map above.  The layout is plainly made for a D&D adventure, with it's circular group of houses and the all-important bridge.

There's next to no information on wikipedia, but a tourist link (written in Bosnian) translates as follows by chatGPT:

"Virpazar is a small town on Lake Skadar, with many attractions and tourist activities, and an excellent starting point for numerous hiking tours.  One of the main offerings for tourists is boat trips on Lake Skadar.  In recent years, more and more tourists have been enjoying bird watching. If you didn't know, Lake Skadar is the largest bird habitat in this part of Europe. Lake Skadar is a "bird paradise" with 280 species, including rare ones such as pelicans and cormorants. It's interesting that the seagull, as a marine bird, nests on a freshwater island in Lake Skadar. The rare pelican has become the emblem of the lake.  Don't miss the opportunity to savour dishes and excellent Montenegrin wines that will surely be offered in local restaurants."

There are numerous images of Virpazar attached to GoogleEarth as well.  I like this one:

I want to stress that I've deliberately chosen real places to put on these maps, any one of which can be searched for through Google, Wikipedia or other sites.  If you do choose to run characters somewhere on the maps provided here, be sure and look them up to see what facts there are that might interest your imagination.

Kosovo-Albania, south of the Albanian Alps

 

These feel like they're coming fast; I'm not pressing that hard, but I am enjoying the process.  I could stand a few less mountains.  The Adriatic Sea is now just 10 west of the bottom corner of this add, so the next post will feature a sea coast.

I'm experimenting with a new colour scheme for these snow covered mountains; the colour isn't clear on Blogger, but when I post a pdf of the region on my patreon, it should show the change.  The Sharr and the Albanian Alps are the first I've mapped in 6-mile hexes that are both high enough, and have enough snowfall, to produce an ice-cap.  There's going to be a lot of it if I get to the Austrian-Swiss Alps; pretty sure I'm going to skip past that as I round the corner towards northern Hungary, Bohemia and southern Poland.  Looking forward to mapping the big Lake Balaton in Hungary.

For the time being, it's a march up the length of old Yugoslavia, mapping Bosnia, part of Croatia and Slavonia. 

Though at first glance, each of these maps might seem much the same as the one before, but there are differences I can feel as I choose the placement of mountains, rivers and so on.  The whole reach from central Bulgaria out to Albania has been one hard task of wild, inconsistent country split by multiple, non-homogeous mountain ranges.  It's no wonder that ancient Greece felt trapped against the sea, as these sheer wildness lands took civilisation many centuries to unravel and overcome.

Kosovo-Albania, around Prizren

Made a mistake with my last post, misunderstanding the location of the Sharr Mts.  Where I put the Sharr are the "Black Mts."  The Sharr on are this corner of Albania, the first bit of that land that I've mapped.  That should give a hint of how close I'm getting to the Adriatic.

Added labels, so Serbia, Albania and Kosovo are clear now; Macedonia is cut off to the east.  I won't get back around to southern Macedonia for a long time.  Kosovo is about two thirds done now, with the above showing the heart of that country.  I'm enjoying the process of mapmaking again; it's been too long.

Macedonia-Serbia-Kosovo, Uskub to Pristina

Mountains and wilderness borderland lacking a label for Kosovo (on the left) and Serbia (top right).  The Uskub region at the bottom is part of those settled lands that gave rise to Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great some 2300 years ago.

I have to weigh in on the region labels and mountain names, to make them clearer than they've been up to now.  It's a troublesome detail, as there's never room enough to comfortably squeeze in a big title overtop the considerable background.  I tend to kick it down the road because I know where I am, but obviously I need to attend to the matter going forward, so I will.

From here I'm going to continue going west until I reach the Adriatic Sea, which is about 110-120 miles onward.  It's felt good coming back to making maps, and going forward I'll continue posting them in 40 by 60 mile sections, as each is done.  On to the Adriatic, and then swing northwest towards Vienna.

Macedonia-Serbia, Vranya to Kocane

 

Shows the southern border of Serbia where it meets Macedonia ... in a region replete with mountains and forest.  The route shown throught Kocane to Velbazhd (and Sofia further north, off map), is an ancient trade route between Salonika and central Bulgaria.  Historically, the beige region at the upper right is the ancenstral home of the Bulgarian kingdoms that arose in the 6th century AD, as it was a transportation hub between the Aegean Sea, the Danube valley and roads to the Adriatic ... called Illyria at the time.

The forests look like they'd be easier to render, but the hills and mountains, getting them more or less in the right place, drains away time.  Plus, the area above spans over two map sheets, so that after creating some of the map on the right, I then had to copy and duplicate it on the left so the two sheets would match seamlessly.  The above is made of two files; a little examination reveals labels that start and don't finish, or places where the roads and rivers don't perfectly match up.

We do what we can.

Macedonia-Hither Rumelia, around Cumae

No time, no time ...