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