User blog:Aaron Larsen/Squaring the Circle: Assumptions Behind My Wildemount Map

When I set out to make a comprehensive-as-possible map of Exandria, I ran into 2 problems immediately:

a. Regarding the continent of Wildemount, the overall map of Exandria and Devon Rue's official map of the Dwendalian Empire just didn't seem to mesh in terms of proportions.

b. There was just not enough information regarding the Continents of Marquet and Issylra to be sure of my placement of key cities and other sites within the larger landmasses (though I could make some good guesses...)

I decided to deal with the latter problem for the present by simply cutting off those portions of the map (for now) and just making a detailed one of "Northeastern Exandria." The former problem was a bit stickier. You see, no matter how I tried to configure it, the overall Exandria map just seemed to assume a MUCH larger landmass to the east (and especially the northeast) of the empire.

I promptly developed two plausible theories about why this should be so:

1. The overall Exandria map is distorted, much like our contemporary "Mercator Projection" maps are on the northern landmasses.

2. The empire map grossly under-estimates just how much untamed wilderness is out there past the boundaries of the empire, because the empire-centric cartographers who made it just haven't explored those regions that much.

Note that in most of the "Northeast Exandria" Maps I've previously uploaded, I went with theory # 2 and created a map of Wildemount based on the proportions of the overall Exandria map on the Wikia's page on Exandria. On the latest version # 6, however, which I just posted today, I changed my mind and revised it to be more in line with the Devon Rue map. I can think of plenty of plausible reasons for choosing each of the two theories, but in the end it just seemed like the smartest idea was to go with the one that looks more like the one that the party themselves are using (and the CritRole gang are selling on their website...) Feel free to let me know if any of you out there have opinions on this issue.

One more thing: I specifically designed this map to be a practical reference aid for fans of the show who want to print out their own maps at home just to keep track of where the party/s are in the world. With this in mind, if you cut-and-paste the map to a basic image editor (Windows Paint will do; it's what I made this on in the first place... oh, but make sure to click on "full-size" first so that the relevant details will be readable...) and cut the image just to the right of the keys under Tal' Dorei and just under the keys under Wildemount and paste those two images into a word processor (arranging Tal'Dorei portrait-style and Wildemount landscape-style) you'll find that you have a very usable and printable 2-page map set of these two continents to guide you on your journey (of following their journey/s)...

I will be continuing to update the map/s as I learn of any mistakes or things I left out... or simply new information and, again, feel free to give me your feedback on how this could be improved...