[Werthead]

Just so:



This is the new world map, updated from Stonewielder and The Crippled God, as well as Hetan's map from SE that was posted in the DoD World Map thread.

The shapes of the continents should - roughly - now be accurate, along with their general placement. I'm still using the old template background that had the world with the same equatorial diameter of Earth, which accounts for the ton of landmasses in a very small area effect. Pleasing, as it gives the Malazan world a massive Pacific+ sized ocean, but it also creates some issues. Most notable is that on Hetan's map the Cabal Archipelago seems to bridge Genabackis eastwards to Seven Cities, whilst here it doesn't do anything of the sort (when mapped onto a sphere, however, it should work a lot better). Fitting in Lether south of Western Seven Cities (its canon location, according to SE) also pushes Seven Cities uncomfortably far north for a desert subcontinent but what the hell?

I used a fan map of Korel/Stratem from the previous thread as the version on Hetan's map didn't appear to track. However, I realised after finishing the map that the version on Hetan's map actually works if you assume it's just the mainland (i.e. the shattered islands of Northern Korel simply aren't show), so I should go back at some point and adjust Stratem so it more matches that map. However, the two interpretations are close enough together at the moment for it not to matter.

I went with the Jacuruku-is-west-of-Korel interpretation as that's apparent word of God from SE. References to Jacuruku being to the east are apparently errors in the books. Actually, this works better than I first thought, as it puts Bael, Stratem and Jacuruku close enough to one another and to Quon Tali for the various journeys in RETURN OF THE CRIMSON GUARD to make sense.

We probably need to wait for the Assail novel (in late 2012 or early 2013, hopefully) to clarify the Assail situation. Bael being the southern bit of Assail linked to the rest of it by a small isthmus tracks with what we were todl in RotCG, but based on Hetan's map it looks like Bael is the main continent and Assail is the subcontinent, which is the reverse of the books. Presumably Assail is the whole continent and Bael is one of the bumps on the southern coast, so that needs relabelling.

Something I like: the shattered north coast of Korel, the numerous lakes of northern Jacuruku and finally the dent in the east coast of Lether nicely match the flight-path of the disintegrating Crippled God, showing where various bits of him fell to the ground.

But, broadly speaking, this should be the most accurate map yet

This post has been edited by Werthead: 09 March 2011 - 06:56 PM

[Sinisdar Toste]

Jacuruku - the jumping continent

since Tor is doing a nicely paced re-read, i think it would be worth my while to follow along and take down every relevant quote regarding the korel-jacuruku arrangment and see if we can finally put this thing to bed.

i still think d'rek's reasoning works, but i suppose it could work the other way too, if you assume that there are errors along the way. working out which quotes are erroneous and which are not will be the main issue

as for the map as a whole, it looks great wert, kudos

[Mock]

Awesome! I often refer to the various iterations of this map while I'm reading. Thanks for this...
also, the climate of the continents has often seemed jarring, but I have sort of resigned myself to believing that the climate is less earth-like than I thought, and perhaps it is simply closer to the sun or has a different orbital/rotational pattern than earth. Overall it seems like a warmer world than this one, with some of the cold areas artificially made. Anyway, nice work...

[Jussi]

Great map, Wert! Could it be possible to add Bloodmare Ocean to the East side of Korel?

[Gothos]

Uh, Hetan's Map?

[D'iversify]

Mock, on 09 March 2011 - 08:28 PM, said:

Awesome! I often refer to the various iterations of this map while I'm reading. Thanks for this...
also, the climate of the continents has often seemed jarring, but I have sort of resigned myself to believing that the climate is less earth-like than I thought, and perhaps it is simply closer to the sun or has a different orbital/rotational pattern than earth. Overall it seems like a warmer world than this one, with some of the cold areas artificially made. Anyway, nice work...

I think it's essentially Cretaceous climate (little or no ice at poles, warmer all over the world)+Jaghut Ice.

The Seven Cities desert is as much due to agriculture as climate. The one I find a little odd given these proportions is the south of the Lether continent, especially Bolkando, which sounds a little too hot (subtropical, crocodiles, etc) given its positioning on this map.

[D'rek]

Well here's latitudes compared to an earthly map:

 compared.jpg (276.89K)
Number of downloads: 18

Bolkando isn't that far south of Australia, which has deserts and crocodiles so it's not too unbelievable. Northern 7C is a bit less comparable, but I guess with favourable ocean currents its not impossible (Gulf Stream on crack anyone?)

This post has been edited by D'rek: 10 March 2011 - 04:00 PM

[Werthead]

Gothos, on 10 March 2011 - 01:14 PM, said:

Uh, Hetan's Map?

Linked to the DoD thread in the first post

[Gothos]

Werthead, on 10 March 2011 - 09:18 PM, said:

Gothos, on 10 March 2011 - 01:14 PM, said:

Uh, Hetan's Map?

Linked to the DoD thread in the first post

Right, though I was wondering if I missed a more detailed one

[D'rek]

Wert, can you copy your full Lether-continent map into this thread from the DoD one? I would like to comment upon it in full spoilertasticness!

[D'iversify]

D, on 10 March 2011 - 03:58 PM, said:

Bolkando isn't that far south of Australia, which has deserts and crocodiles so it's not too unbelievable. Northern 7C is a bit less comparable, but I guess with favourable ocean currents its not impossible (Gulf Stream on crack anyone?)

Yeah, I suppose that's fair regarding Bolkando. Northern 7C is a bit cooler from what I remember, and, as I said, if you assume a late Cretacean climate*, it's not implausible. Though I'd still perhaps shift it slightly south.

*http://en.wikipedia....taceous#Climate: "After the end of the Berriasian, however, temperatures increased again, and these conditions were almost constant until the end of the period.^[7] This trend was due to intense volcanic activity which produced large quantities of carbon dioxide. The production of large quantities of magma, variously attributed to mantle plumes or to extensional tectonics,^[10] further pushed sea levels up, so that large areas of the continental crust were covered with shallow seas. The Tethys Sea connecting the tropical oceans east to west also helped in warming the global climate. Warm-adapted plant fossils are known from localities as far north as Alaska and Greenland, while dinosaur fossils have been found within 15 degrees of the Cretaceous south pole"

This post has been edited by D'iversify: 11 March 2011 - 09:38 AM

[Werthead]

My map on the left, Hetan/Mal's version on the right.

[D'rek]

Thanks. So now that we've got that here, I'm wondering if we could talk about the routes of the armies in TCG to help flesh out the continent map some more. From what I can recall, the bonehunters travel generally straight east across the wastelands and glass desert, except for a bit of north-ward travel after fighting the Nah'ruk and they veer north-east during the Glass Desert march as well.

The Perish and Bolkando travel north-east from Bolkando until they rendezvous with the bonehunters, then they take the southern trade routes around the glass desert. Presumably that means going south/south-east a bit then straight east. Then they of course travel north-east to The Spire. I think maybe your Lether map, Wert, could actually use even more horizontal stretching to fit more Wastelands and Glass Desert in.

The other event that comes to mind is Brys' re-supply. At some point south of the Glass Desert the Letheri and Bolkando were "3 days" from the "sea". Could be the Pelasiar, or we could make another sea west of the Pelasiar.

[Sciz]

Great job again! I'm a map fanatic and always look forward to seeing updated versions of your maps. I wish SE would just release the official world map though.

[Shizbit]

Thanks for all of the efforts into the maps!
As well as the discussions that follow. : )

[D'rek]

Interesting quote I saw today:

Quote

In caves buried beneath mountains on the shore of the inland sea, caves in
which grew flowers of sapphire, intricate as roses, from which kingdom,
mountains and sea derived their common name. Bluerose

From BH, thoughts of Ahlrada Ahn. Page 833 in my UK mmpb version. Obviously, it's possible that SE didn't hold to that one little line from tBH, but is there any quotes that may imply/state the Bluerose sea isn't inland?


In other news, I'm continuing to work on my own world map in the style of the existing ones (and using them where possible). Here's my 7C map so far for those interested (it looks a bit crappy, because I only reduced the resolution with paint for this one):
 7C small.jpg (341.96K)
Number of downloads: 11

This post has been edited by D'rek: 20 March 2011 - 04:06 AM

[Werthead]

Looks great! But why not use the continent outline from Hetan's map? That comes from the one that Erikson supplied and would appear to be canon (or more canon than just randomly drawing your own coastline).



An inland sea is sometimes called that even if it isn't totally landlocked and is open to the exterior ocean. I've seen both the Black and Meditarranean seas called landlocked though they're not really.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 20 March 2011 - 02:08 PM

[D'rek]

Werthead, on 20 March 2011 - 02:07 PM, said:

Looks great! But why not use the continent outline from Hetan's map? That comes from the one that Erikson supplied and would appear to be canon (or more canon than just randomly drawing your own coastline).

Because you're already doing that, so why would I want to just copycat? I decided that I'll use that map as a guideline for the unknown but I'm going to follow the written word of the books as closely as possible first and foremost, and draw inspiration from the implications of those, too (ie Shal-Morzinn has the custom of burning their bodies with oil when they die... maybe because they live in a swampy/rocky region of large lakes where it is hard to bury people?), etc.

Plus I've been taking the whole canon-ness of the SE/Hetan map with a grain of salt ever since I noticed the enormous copy+pastes on it (Lether ice wastes = south 7C flipped and shrunk, Genostel = north Assail, etc etc)

Werthead, on 20 March 2011 - 02:07 PM, said:

An inland sea is sometimes called that even if it isn't totally landlocked and is open to the exterior ocean. I've seen both the Black and Meditarranean seas called landlocked though they're not really.

Ah, I've never heard of that before, but it makes sense for them with their very narrow opening to the ocean/other seas compared to their overall size. Should Bluerose also therefore have a very narrow connecton to the ocean (by bringing in the ice wastes and north-middle of the continent closer together)? Of course with ice and glaciars it's easy for the existance and size of the sea's opening to change over time anyways.

[T'renn]

You know, I thought that Genabackis was more southern, given the fact that the fleet in stonewielder was theorised to go North east to occupied Malazan territories, due east to Darujhistan or south east for a new front on southern Genabackis. Besides it would be more logical given which part of Genabackis the Malazans originally invaded.

[Werthead]

Imperial High Mage Tayschrenn, on 20 March 2011 - 05:05 PM, said:

You know, I thought that Genabackis was more southern, given the fact that the fleet in stonewielder was theorised to go North east to occupied Malazan territories, due east to Darujhistan or south east for a new front on southern Genabackis. Besides it would be more logical given which part of Genabackis the Malazans originally invaded.

That's an interesting possibility. It would indicate that Genabackis is either way more southern than what has previously been considered or it's a hell of a lot bigger in scale.