The Heldannic Inconsistencies

I first came across the inconsistencies in the maps of the Heldann Freeholds back in the early 90's when trying to link the X1 map of the Known World to the map in X11.

Now that I've reached that point again, I thought it appropriate to revisit this.

As the basis of this project is to build up from the 8 mile per hex maps, using the Gazetteer and Trail Maps as the "base layer", and building up from there using other sources, this is the approach used here.

In the below outline, the dark blue and red indicate the coast and borders from TM2.  Unfortunately we can only go just south of Freiburg with this map, so overlaid on this are the 24 (mid blue and brown) and 48 (light blue and pink) mile per hex maps from WoTI.



These maps are lined up on the small bay on the Vestland/Heldann border and in the southern portion these are a reasonably good fit.  However north of where the 8 mile map finishes, the two other maps diverge, with the position of the Naga (Elber) River quite a way north in the 48 mile version and the peninsular missing as well.  As the 24 mile version stops before the northern border, we need to look elsewhere, as the 48 mile map is too inconsistent to use for this.

Once the 48 mile map is discarded, I have taken the 24 mile map from X11.  Back when I first looked at this, without the aid of modern computing, I noted that this was out by a shift down of about half a hex.  But looking at this again, it is a touch more complex:
Again aligning the map from X11 (in green) to the same spot, there is a mismatch of approximately half a hex, but then, somewhere just north of this fixing point there is an adjustment, such that if the shift is removed, then coast and the line of the Naga River move back into line.

As a final part of this, I always intended to extend these maps outwards using the GAZF and other fan sources, so I've also overlaid JTR's map from GAZF7 (below in pink
Again this seems to take on the half hex shift upwards, from X11.

Given the issues, I've outlined here, I'm likely to take a combination of the coastlines of TM2 and the WoTI 24 mile map as final, although adding in an additional row of hexes to bring this in line with the GAZF map is an option, especially as the borders are embedded in the rest of the GAZF structure.

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