Atlas of Mystara

The Atlas of Mystara aims to present a comprehensive set of maps for Mystara, in two flavours: “replica maps”, which faithfully recreate the printed maps as-is; and “updated maps”, which are based on the Atlas’s consistent model of Mystara, and include additions from other sources which include all published products as well as select fan-created works.

This column presents the updated map of Skothar, current as of May 2018. For changes since publication, visit this article at the Atlas site.

Skothar, 72 miles per hex

by Thorfinn Tait

[Image: Map of Skothar by Thorfinn Tait]

http://pandius.com/skothar-72.png

Caption: Continental map of Skothar, 72 miles per hex

This is an early draft, and at 72 miles per hex it’s also rather small scale. Which is to say, almost everything is still open for change.

I’ve redone areas that appeared on 24 mile per hex maps to more closely match those maps. For example, Nuar in the Pearl Islands is completely different from how it appeared on previous 72 mile per hex maps; it’s far more accurate. However, Alphatia is not yet updated, nor is the Isle of Dawn, which I’m leaving to do on the Brun map.

I derived the terrain in previously unmapped regions from five main sources:

The Master Rules Set world map
The Jurassic Earth map
The Hollow World Campaign Set world map
My climate map for Mystara, which is an expanded version of Bruce Heard’s climate map of Brun
Previous fan-made maps, such as Thibault Sarlat’s and Francesco Defferrari’s
The mountains come primarily from the base Master Set world map. I then referenced the Jurassic Earth map to get information on the ridges, which have been marked with dark brown mountain ridge hexes.
The continental shelves come from the same map, as no official maps ever gave ocean depths for any of these regions.

The Hollow World Campaign Set map shows all the terrain in very broad strokes. I adapted this to get the forests, hills, tundra/snow fields, and plains. I referred to my climate map for guidance while doing this.

[Image: Skothar Climate map by Thorfinn Tait]

http://pandius.com/skothar-72-climate.png

Caption: Climate map of Skothar, 72 miles per hex

Finally, I tried to reference the fan-made maps as much as I could, but this was made rather difficult by the rather drastic difference in Skothar’s shape. As a result, I haven’t incorporated nearly as much detail as I would have liked, and instead went for similar overall patterns and inspiration rather than copying specific detail.

Future Updates
As I said, this is still just an early draft. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the map: what did I get right, what did I get wrong, etc. I’m happy to change terrain details to accommodate existing or new fan projects; nothing east of 30ºE is set in stone, as most of it is just arbitrary decisions.

So please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections!

Back to work… This is just the first of three (four?!), after all…

Thanks to:

Visit the new Atlas site here:

http://mystara.thorfmaps.com/

Appendix: Images