Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added

[darebear]

You gave me a lot to think about. I had to print it out to digest it.

1) My plan is to redraw the western Bronze Mountains into just the area you described actually, and moving the glaciated region to the center, north to where I located the Dengar valley.

2) I re-envisioned the Great Salt Marsh as being more of a series of smaller lowland swamps, fed by run-off from many tributaries of the western Bronze Mountains. Nothing atypical about their nature. The swamps gradually give way to the dryer uplands of Candledoom Wood. I need to change the color and icons to delineate between swamps and marshes.

3) A large waterfall is a perfect idea for where the Upper Kashk branches off. I envision a second one where the other unnamed major river flows into the lower Kashk.

4) The small tributary running east of Lake Kashk (which Caithness named Lake Dundain) is surrounded by marshes and wetlands. This tributary could be fed by seasonal runoff from the mountains, running through the northern Great Desert like you described. Similar to the wadis in the southern Djinn Lands, the ravines flood seasonally. I can model these ravines which run through the northern desert by using the same method as I did the southern wadis. Alternatively, perhaps this area is fed by a permanently open magical portal to the Elemental Plane of Water, or to an oceanic world.

5) The entry for the Barony of Wallace on page 118 indicates it has water due to mountain runoff. It would make sense to add some seasonal rivers/ravines which flow through the northern rocky desert which then flow southeastward through to Wallace. Perhaps they end-up in various lakes, and or continues east until they meet up with tributaries from the Smoke River. Thoughts?

6) Funny enough I was envisioning the northern desert region just like you described, rocky and dry, not and endless dune sea. I need to add the necessary icons and contour lines to indicate these rocky areas.

7) I did envision the western coast north of the Djinn lands to be a series of cliff faces just as you described, making settlement of the coast difficult. I have since decided not to model the locations of the various orc and human tribal areas, at least for now. I feel that those areas are better left to individual GMs to determine. There are at least 12 large orc tribes and probably numerous smaller ones. Human tribal numbers are not described.

8) Your ideas for 13 and 14 are something to consider. #14 provides a plausible explanation for the lack of forested areas. This might infer a higher level of orc tribal organization than is presented in the core rules. I was never a fan of mindless orc savagery.

9) For the human tribes I envisioned a horse-warrior culture dominates the region, being an amalgamation of various human steppe cultures. Quite possibly some of the Orc tribes started to emulate this culture as well.

10) The old AD&D DM World Builder Guide gave good information about predators and their needs. A large beast, such as a dragon needs around 500 square miles of area for hunting in good areas, and 1500 square miles in poor areas. I would consider the whole area rich in game. Since each hex is 500 square miles there is more than enough room for predators of unusual size. For the Djinn Lands, I think that is best left as a DM playground, since my vision might be drastically different than what others desire.

11) I consider Lake Kashk to be a very deep lake like you described. In the depths of the lake reside "Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know".

12) The acidic swamps are a smaller area know and I am happy with their size. I see no reason for a large death-zone at all, other than for specific adventures, possibly to travel to the center of said zone for some sort of "fetch-quest".

I am trying to figure out a way to have information pop up when you click on a terrain feature while viewing the file on a browser. I have it working right now, but I am limited in the amount of text I can show at the moment. There might be a work around though. My goal is to have a fully interactive atlas, which, if you click on a "named location" it will give you a small pop-up window with a description of the area.

From north to south of the map, it is roughly 44 degrees of total latitude. For simplicity, I assumed that Yrth the same as Earth, with 69 miles per point of latitude. If we assume that the bottom is roughly 20 degrees north, than the upper part is 64 degrees; this puts the Nomad Lands and Sahud in the same climate zone as central Sweden. The cities of Megalos and Carrak are basically the same as London and Tredroy is basically Istanbul in climate. Southern Cardiel and al-Haz are in the same zone as Syria and Baghdad. Of course this can be tweaked by moving Ytarria further south if you desire. Even a 5 point latitude move south makes a big difference for northern Ytarria.