Here are maps for various universes, to help those whose readers or files may not be getting graphics.
The Map Room
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With thanks to WOL and Blue Cat Ship, we have some maps. There will be others. I absolutely invite people to try their hand at improving my drawings—many of these I did draw, or at least did the info for, and in a map room, there may be many maps with all sorts of focus. Now I just have to figure out (finally) how to post images! I know Jane can help me!
Really nice. Thanks to everyone who helped.
What is the best way to send you submissions of this type? I went hog-wild today on trying to make a map of the main continent & Mospheira of the Earth of the Atevi, and 60% of it is conjecture (everything east of the Marid and Malguri, essentially), but if I’m able to send or post it (and assuming, of course, you want to see), I’d love to.
(I’m fairly new to WordPress — at least the comment side of the house, so thank you for bearing with my clunkiness, and for my failure to see that other people have just posted stuff, so I’m thinking “one stop shop” is a good idea here, if WP doesn’t mangle the links.)
“Watercolor and ink” (It’s all digital) map, no labels or annotations: http://kataro.co/ao3images/JG_Main-continent-and-Mospheira_painted_huge.png
Labeled, marked vector version: http://kataro.co/ao3images/JG_Main-Continent_And_Mosphiera_canon_vector-color.png
(The mountains are obviously not to scale. Went a little hog-wild there.)
@CJ this is what I’ve been working on: http://jackalgirl.net/foreigner/JG_Main-Continent_And_Mosphiera_canon_vector-color_signed.png – it is completely conjectural, on my part, east of the Marid and Malguri (of course).
I have some more things to work on, such as the southern island and perhaps a separate map of the Edi Archipelago (which are on @nekokami’s excellent maps over at Shedijan Wiki).
Also on the list of things to do is go through the series one more time to take careful notes of placenames and clans I’ve missed, suss out where they are, and get them in there. If this is useful to you, you’re welcome to it.
Updated map (version 3): http://jackalgirl.net/foreigner/JG_Earth-Map-v3-painted_sm.png — (it’s an unlabelled, painted version). I’ve shortened the continent’s east-west extent (in comparison to the Shejidan wiki version) so that Malguri can be on the eastern side of the Bergid range and yet also be closer to the coast, and also by moving Malguri southeast that also lengthens both the train ride from Shejidan as well as the length of the Naijendar river (described as the Kadena River system’s “greatest tributary”). I’ve also incorporated the region of lakes to the north (described in “Deliverer”). I think this might be closer, but am not sure that the continent is supposed to be that squat in proportion.
Updated version: version 4 of my monster version of a canon map (not actually canon as it isn’t published, of course) at http://jackalgirl.net/foreigner/JG_Earth-of-the-Atevi_v4_canon.png
I just got through “Protector” and added some place names in the Padi Valley, as well as a couple of villages in the Marid that were mentioned, as well as adding/modifying the railways in accordance with what I understand is described in the novel. I’ll be reviewing “Peacemaker” sometime this week to find more places (and will continue revising the map as I reread the entire series).
Le sigh. I had a thought that, as one of the oldest parts of the aishidi’tat, that the Padi Valley railway probably wouldn’t be its own line — that it would be part of the Great Loop. Also, “Protector” describes that the Marid-bound leg of the loop “meets” the main railway at Kadagidi Township, rather than “crosses” it. I might be reading into it, but I feel happier with the interpretation that the railway that runs out through Atageini and Kadagidi territory is part of the historic, original trackage. So version 5 is now up: http://www.jackalgirl.net/foreigner/JG_Earth-of-the-Atevi_v5_canon.png — enjoy!
Back with my super-obsession with maps. I’ve updated the (best guess + conjecture) canon map: http://jackalgirl.net/foreigner/JG_Earth-of-the-Atevi_v3_canon.png — this is the vector, labeled v3 of the map (now with Southern Islands!).
This is both based on a conversation with C.J. (THANK YOU!) as well as a rereading of “Deliverer” (which mentions one of the lords high-tailing it to “the southern islands” to hide out, and which also goes into a lot of detail about the river system feeding Maidingi Lake and the Kadena river system of the East, as well as a region of lakes in the northern part of the East). I had originally drawn a map that had a very broad main continent, as per Shejidan Wiki, but then ended up in v3 making it narrower so as to support Malguri being on the eastern side of the Bergid Range /and/ close enough to the coast so that Ilisidi can keep an eye on the building of her port there. (You’ll notice that I moved Malguri southwards).
I keep seeing those rivers (and reading the description of the Kadena in “Deliverer”, which sounds like a massive river system) and wonder whether we’re going to get a riverboat adventure. : )
Anyway, I’ll keep going through the rest of the series and try to add in place names where I can, and this will probably result in changes to the map as well (and I need to clean up the vector trace of the mountains). I’m also planning on generating close-ups of various places (such as the area around Malguri, as described in “Deliverer”).
I have put together a map of the region around Malguri as described in “Deliverer” (book 9): http://jackalgirl.net/foreigner/JG_Deliverer-Map_v1.png
Right now this is a rather plain vector map with labels; I’m going to playing around with this to see if I can do something that’s more painterly/brush-inked (still learning how to use Procreate).
I hope you enjoy! (And if you have any comments or corrections, please let me know!)
Very nice job!
Thank you kindly! : )
I finished a re-read of book 15, “Peacemaker”, and added in a label for the Cismontane Association and a marker and label for Halrun estate. I still need to make some modifications to the railway system, since Peacemaker references both a rail line leaving Shejidan that links up with the rail to the Marid, as well as a /different/ line to the north going to the Padi Valley Association. Trying to square this with the fact that, per “Protector”, the Marid line actually meets the eastern line in Kadagidi Township, so I modified my map to have the eastern leg of the railway leave Shejidan and travel more on a northeastly path, and having that leg also go through Padi Valley (because it makes sense that, as one of the oldest Associations, they’d have been part of the rail system since the start). I will probably run a smaller, older line from the northern line eastward through the Padi Valley to meet up with the main loop in Kadagidi Township. Also, “Protector” mentions “Crescent Island”, presumably off of the east coast of Mospheira, as a source of unregulated industry that’s blowing smoke all over Dur. I need to get that in there, too, once I do a quick review of the canon maps to see if I just missed it earlier.
So a version 7 is in the works. And then on to a reread of book 16.
http://jackalgirl.net/foreigner/JG_Earth-of-the-Atevi_current_canon.png
It looks nice, Jackal-ji!
I think so also, but I do think that the mountains need some shading. It’s really hard to make sense of the Southern Islands, as is.
That’s good advice, Paul-ji, thank you — I will work on that (the painted version has shaded mountains). I’m sure I can bend Illustrator to my will. ; )
For some reason, I have envisioned Crescent Island as being south of Mospheria
And Mospheria as being further from the mainland, over 1 day sail away. The current map looks like GB and continental Europe.
I absolutely see what you mean!
I traced that part of the map from the canon book maps — I think that the issue here is that there is no scale. I should probably put something in there to indicate it. I’m curious as to how fast Toby’s boat can go (sail or no); a quick Google indicates 7.5 knots or so (but then again, we don’t know what the winds are like on the Earth of the Atevi). Still, assuming by “day” we’re talking about 12 hours, that’s about 90 nm. I’ll see about putting some scale bars on there and then see what it does to the rest of the continent, and how well the canon maps track to the time that CJ describes the characters taking to get from place to place (for a given mode of transportation).
As for Crescent Island — there’s a background complaint in “Peacemaker” that the smoke and pollution from the industry there is blowing over Dur and the coastal homes of the Dur, and IIRC (I don’t have the book by me at the moment), CJ describes it as coming “from the west”. I was thinking that it’s quite possible for wind to be predominantly south-to-north through the strait, though, which could possibly carry it all northeasterly. I’d think that it would probably dissipate at that distance, though — unless, of course, the human industry is incredibly filthy. I don’t know about that, though — I’d like to hope that Mospheirans absorbed /something/ from the Atevi where the environment is concerned, but perhaps not all of them did and maybe the main body of humans is unaware of what’s actually coming off of the island. What do you think?
And now I just thought of something else: a nautical mile is, on the Earth of the Humans, 6076 Imperial feet/1852 meters, but more importantly, it is one minute of one degree of latitude.
What is the vertical circumference of the Earth of the Atevi — is one degree of latitude there the same as here on Earth? What about the meter, which on the Earth of the Humans is supposed to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole?* I don’t think that the actual size of the planet is mentioned at any place in the series…but of course, now I’m going to go look.
* Its original definition, which is different today (based on wavelength). Now I want to know: what are Atevi units of measurement, and what are they based on?
I think that makes sense. I don’t remember when it was said but Crescent Island is supposed to have a trying environment with rain and storms. With out Mospheria blocking massive storms that would naturally occur with a single huge ocean with out significant land to break them up. Also i believe the environment was described as tropical as well. The only question I have is Crescent a single island or an island chain?
That’s something else that’s always required me to “suspend disbelief”, though it is Her world to create. I think you seem to have scale somewhat right, but when the squad drove a bus on “unimproved” roads from Najida to the Marid in a couple days, well, everything is awful “close”. I’m not sure the continent can be quite as large as Australia. (Oh no, can’t use its nickname in present company!) Other landmasses out of sailing range, imagining Earth had Australia and nothing else? In other words, an almost entirely water world? The humans would certainly know, having been in orbit. BIG SECRET! And now of course the Atevi know. Gotta assume it IS a water world. But then, what does that mean for weather and climate. And where is the rock?
The thing is, humans function there as they would on Earth, implying a very great deal about the planetary body mass, hence size, and constituency, since were it to have a much more massive metallic core, there would be a much more metal rich surface, and many “heavy” metals about would be poisonous to humans. A real small, metal planetary body, where this is all the silicaceous, light, rock material that has floated to the surface might be possible, but could humans live there?
This continent raises a lot of questions.
These are all excellent points – thank you, everyone. There’s never going to be a standard travel time, just an average one, and the times mentioned in the book could easily be affected by season and weather (i.e., during a season of “doldrums”, as @Walt mentions, an old man with a rowboat could make it, whereas when the wind is whipping up between the landmasses, it might make things much more choppy and slow down the sailboats — even the motorized ones). When I think about it, there’s a way to headcanon any particular situation. So I think I’m just going to stop worrying about it for now. : )
You all are awesome – thank you!
Isn’t that sort of right, though, the GB – European mainland distance and size? Not at the closest toe, but in general?
The motorised ferries on the shorter route across the North Sea take a whole night, half a day; more diagonal routes take longer.
In the book, they were sailing, not motoring, and not being blown along extra fast by a storm.
They took several days to sail on Toby’s yacht from Port Jackson all the way north on Mospheira to the mainland, but I can’t recall how far south that trip went.
Bren’s estate at Kajiminda is well south of Dur, so any trip between Port Jackson and his estate would be a lot farther north-south than east-west.
I remember some Atevi bodyguard grumbling that “an old man in a rowboat” could get to Mospheira (so Bren should still be protected and take precautins, when the situation had gotten volatile); and the big observation and communication installation at Mogari-Nai (IIRC) is keeping an eye on Mospheira and their counterparts.
It might be more like the distance between Australia and New Zealand, or between Africa and Madagascar – I have no visceral sense of those distances, beyond 3 days of being seasick travelling between Sydney and NZ as a child, but those look larger to me than I’d thought the distance to be.
The “old man in a rowboat” remark (calling up associations with those who fled to England in small boats across the North Sea in WW2, as refugees still attempt today), as well as the fear people would do something stupid like that when Hanks was riling up the Atevi; and some remarks about people who went out in small boats from both sides, to meet halfway to exchange information, during Murini’s time in power, all gave me the impression of a North Sea sort of distance.
I thought the manufacturing island the humans are colonising was a fair distance to the south, not as far south as the original South Island of the Marid peoples, but maybe also scoured by the tsunami that depopulated South island, as it was apparently empty of atevi & not part of the Aishi’ditat when the humans found it and decided to start building factories on it.
If thrre had been Atevi there, they couldn’t have done thst, or they’d be in breach of their agreement with the aijiin
Sorry for the typos, no edit-button!
The Atevi planet is a very watery world, that has been said, with just the one continent and some (large) islands.
It may be less geologically active, so less plate tectonic “crumple zones” (like the Himalayas and the mountain range between East and western Atevis) and volcanoes raising new mountain ranges. Worn-down mountains get lower. Add a higher amount of liquid water (maybe a few more asteroids coming in during the earth formation phase), and most of tbe land would be under water.
The very strong storms that build up over all that open water are the reason that sailing far from land / around the world has proven so lethal that it hasn’t been tried for ages. I do wonder why the coast at the least doesn’t get thotoughly battered by these storms more often, with a lot more damage. Mospheira may partially shoeld the mainland, as Ireland and GB shield part of Europe?
On the one hand, the winds around Mospheria could be the doldrums–no wind; on the other hand the Terrans would have access to the technology of 50 kt foiling America’s Cup boats and far, far beyond. So, voyages take as long as the story needs them to take.
It looks like the png file was not a good idea, so I have made a jpg file for you – same place: http://pholynyk.ca/~cherryh/ Sorry it’s a lot bigger, I still haven’t read my GIMP books.
Great maps, by the way.
What I’m going to need to do is run the files through photoshop and get them reduced in density, and save them down as jpgs. Modern digital cameras can take a picture dense enough to expand into a wall-sized mural without loss of information; scanners, ditto.
I took a few minutes to dl the pictures and used ImageMagick to resize the big ones to 800 pixels high and greyscale. Hope this helps – 🙂 – leaves you more time for creativity.
Oh, they’re in the usual place…
The map I made of Cyteen is simply a colored and “updated” map with my best guess of the location of Strassenburg as described in Regenesis. It was a scan of the maps I have in my well-worn copy of Cyteen. I simply used a clone brush to make the mountain ranges, the green of the plains – although I don’t think I captured the colors of Cyteen appropriately.
http://starmadacomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Cyteen.png
Please feel free to grab the maps of the earth of the atevi that I’ve been assembling at http://shejidan.wikia.com. I’d like to improve those by adding the southern continent/island you’ve mentioned, but I’m not sure how large to make it or what shape it is.
(Did you ever figure out where the Nisebi are located?)
Mmm. No. I’d forgotten about them. Thank you, nekokami! 😉 Beautiful site!
I’ll have to figure how to catch that image…I’ll ask Jane to help me; I can’t seem to copy it, so I’ll have to get herself to apply her picture-jutsu to it.
Would you mind if I added that link to the blogroll?
Thought you might enjoy this. 🙂 The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World http://orbis.stanford.edu/
Did anybody make a map of how the Atevi solar system looks ? I belive it was described as having four main planets and a extensive asteroid belt orbiting either a G or K-type star.