Alphatia - 8 miles per hex

After several months work (and having to isolate of Christmas and New Year), the map of Alphatia is finally complete.  Admittedly, this is almost entirely based off Bruce's work (and Thorf's superb realization of that), but it has been intricate and challenging to complete.

(Link to full file)

The key intricacies of this work is to attempt to align the files with the underlying world map from the Masters set, especially when you compare that to the overall map at 72 miles from the Dawn of the Emperors set (the comparison maps are all locked at Specularum as their "point of origin"):

As can be seen by the time you move across to Esterhold, the Dawn map is out by a couple of hexes, or approximately 150 miles. Not small beans.

When it comes to creating the contiguous maps, there are a number of factors in play:

1. For the continents, attempting to line up the available sources (largely the 72 mile maps from DotE and the PWAs to the Masters map).  This involves a bit of cut and paste along with rotation, but fairly simple, especially as Thorf has detailed the rotations in detail previously.  The underlying rotation is left to be consistent with the Known World sources.
2. The area in the middle of the above map is a significant issue.  In principle the idea is to align the various islands as close to their position in the base map as possible, whilst attempting to keep their relative positions as near as possible to the published maps.  This has led to a few decisions:
1. Alphatia - linked fairly tightly to the bottom left (Greenspur/Haven) on the Masters map.  There is significant difference in the northern part, but as this does not interfere with any other notable land mass, no other considerations were taken.
2. Ochalea/Alatians/Pearl Islands - the individual island groups were left alone, but the actual relative positioning between them was juggled a little, so they conformed to the Masters map.
3. Isle of Dawn - This was probably the hardest to work out.  Fixing at the closest point to the Known World (Ostland), it was apparent that at full size, it was too large to fit.  The final choice was to re-scale to 92.5% of the original size (as per the 24 mile per hex map in DotE).  This then actually fits pretty well
4. Bellissaria - not terribly clear, but Bellissaria is actually slightly larger (taller) in the DotE map compared to the Masters map (approximately one 72 mile hex).  Thinking ahead, my main concern is to preserve the strait between Bellissaria and Minea.  Therefore Bellisaria is moved slightly closer to mainland Alphatia than on the DotE map.