Sketching out the Terrain 2,000 to 4,000

Dwimmermount Mapping

This one was longer coming due to some family shit I had to deal with and it was the most difficult one so far. When you get down to the lower levels where most of the population lives in an existing setting … you’re not only creating the terrain that would exist but you’ve got to tailor things to where the settlements already are.

Plus that damned river but we’ll get to that problem in time. If you pay attention you’ll see where I’m working with it. Also you’ll notice that this time its three layers that I’ve built. Since we’re getting down into the commonly travelled regions I felt that a little more granularity was important so its 3,000, 2,500, and 2,000 that are detailed.

I’m back to looking at the Winterpeaks/Dwimmermount section first. So that tight banding around the mountains is long gone. We’re getting into a more dramatic version of the Colorado plains. The rise in elevation is more quick but the effect tends towards the same but with the addition of thick forests on the flanks of the mountains. That’s a really interesting change for the standard High Plains. In the south we’re starting to move in on the Makrono River, curse its existence, and Adamas in hex 24.15. It does make for a hell of a piece of terrain though. Steep mountain peaks descending down to plains.

Then I’m moving north to center on the White Mountains. Here we’ve got even more sprawl. Forested areas to the east as the land quickly descends down towards the Lanis River and plains to the west that will much more resemble the High Plains than the ones flanking Dwimmermount that I referenced above. There is going to be a lovely valley that will run south towards towards the Murklands that I’m debating adding a decent sized river in for, I’m not sure yet. So plains to the west descending towards that valley and then back up into the Demon Claw ranges.

Speaking of the Demon Claw Mountains I’m going to move to them next. So here I can see how the Demon Claws have sprawled out. There’s going to be a hilly section, likely with a lot of buttes to the NW of the range. But to the west of the range it’s going to be much more arid respecting the rocky desert and sandy dunes that are in the setting map. There must be a much larger desert to the west of the Demon Claws for that to be present. Those dry winds will start to moisten as they pass through the Claws and the western edges of those passes will start to change into scrublands and finally into forests as those winds get captured by more wet air coming from the south to the north. I’m not 100% happy with how this range works but I think I’m going to have to go with it. It’s an interesting feature and really that’s more important than rearranging the entire thing to make it climate viable. To the east it resembles the descending plains from the Winterpeaks. A little more dry but not enough to make a big different. Also to maintain the look of those valleys I kept the mountain ranges tight as they descended with some sprawl from the last range as it broke up into the hills to the SW.

Now I’m going to change up the rotation and move down to the Ghost Peaks in the south. Here you can see the range broken up into two segments with a thin N/S pass in the west. To the SE of the mountains you can see where Yethlyreom and the Makrono River passes through in hex 19.18. Then to the NE you can see the valley between the Winterpeaks and the Ghost Peaks that feeds travel into Adamas. One of the nice touches of building terrain with this method is that you can see where the trade will naturally pass.

Continuing south is the Oro Mountains appearing for the first time at the 3K height range. This is interesting little place. Fort Oro is in 0931 and this range will help feed the Vagar river to the south. Also I’m going to use it to support the Murklands Marsh just to the north of it as a bracket to help explain why it hasn’t run off or become a lake.

Next up is the Shield Wall Mountains which have spread out quite a bit from the 4K range last article. I wanted to have it right up against the Makrono River in its NW edges, leaving a pass to access the central Starfell in the NE and setting up for that lake at the south. The Starfell will be raised in the middle, off sea level, but that works with my theory on how that area came to be. Also I wanted it to not screw up the entire Starfell just with the downslopes from the Shield Wall and the Thunderhome Mountains turning it into a valley.

Speaking of the Thunderhome Mountains that’s where I end up next in the rotation. I’m past the point of the the broken peaks and the spreading outwards has started. It’s speading a bit to the north and into the Starfell but mostly to the SW. The connection to the Barrier Mountains to the south was obvious and easy to pull off. Plus that makes the Whispering Woods between the two of them a nice easily structured valley. That valley is likely the cleanest part of this entire area.

The Barrier Mountains make their first appearance in the 3K range. They’re unusual in that they don’t have a clear spine like most of the other mountain ranges. This one is much more like the gradual hills and slope of the 2K range and then near the top large buttes spiking up into 2.5K and 3K. It’s different from all the other mountain ranges and I like the idea of how strange that would look while still working in the region. The 2K range of slope closes off the map edge and has a nice spread to the west.

Also making it’s first appearance is the Hearthstone Mountains. Now this range is a collection of four separate ranges. I’ll detail them from eastern to western.

The first is the largest of the four ranges. I went with a decent spine and some sprawl to the peaks so that it would cover a decent chunk of ground into that open area to the east.

On the second range I went with a similar type but I kept them tighter so they hint a spine but leave plenty of passes between them. I spread it to the north in the 2K range to help support the Makrono Marsh to the NW of it.

The third range is a little funky and has a second split to the SW that is actually a second mountain range. I thought that would be more interesting than unifying them. They’re close enough though to treat as a single range for the purposes of this description. Now between ranges two and three is the Lanis River. When I’ve ran this setting before I used the Lanis River as draining out of the Makrono Marsh to the south with the flows added in from the Heathstone Mountains and acted as an economic engine for the southern area. Upon re-reading the source material I noticed this …

Meet? Meet! Well shit. That means the Lanis runs from the south into the Makono Marsh meeting the Makrono River which would have to run north! That would have been embarrassing. Apologies to my other games in this setting. I’ll have to redo that which is awkward but not impossible to fix. Taking a look that it I think that it actually makes plotting it easier. Getting that thing to run south … I was never happy with it. I guess I know why now. Yeah. I’ll go with that.

Lastly I’ve got that little section of mountain that runs W to E south of number three. I’ve got a nice little pass between it and the Shield Wall slopes to the south. This range isn’t mentioned in the text and only in a hex map that I found in the depths of the internet. I went over the collection of maps that I found for the setting in my article The Maps ... Which of The Maps?. I debated whether to put it in or not and ultimately I decided that I liked it there so in it goes. It’s a pretty basic series of three peaks. It does break that forest up nicely and makes some good valleys for settlements and some rivers.

Completing our circuit I end in the NE corner of the map with first appearance of the Westwall Mountains. I like these mountains because they’re mentioned on the map but not in the text. Nadda. The Greenhold Forest to its east, yes. Castle Greenholt in 4004, yes. The Westwall Mountains, no. So creative license it is.

I’ve been itching to use a certain type of mountain for the entire map and I haven’t been able to use it until now. A Tower Karst. The short version is that you get Tower Karsts within a Karst Landscape. Okay, I know. It’s inside baseball. A quick explanation …

A Karst Landscape is when you have soluble rocks such as limestone as a base. That base easily, as far as geology goes, melts away into flat depressions and sinkholes with caves being very common. Within a Karst Landscape you can get Tower Karsts that are the remainder of a large amount of soluble stone melting away and they look goddamned cool. Tell me this isn’t evocative?

So that’s what I’m turning the Westwall into. A big fucking series of Tower Karst mountains that cover the corner of the map and drain off into the NE pocket where the Greenholt forest is. I’ll use some of those run routes to create a lake and the rest can run into the Grey Sea, that’s hexes 43.01 through 44.01, that is just in the corner of the map.

Whew. That’s been a lot of work. I think I redid this series of ranges twice and parts of it three times before I was happy enough with the results to publish them.

The next article in this series will cover the 2K and down terrain. That will fill in the valleys and structure the marshes and swamps. Then will come the work of the rivers with all the tributaries and distributaries. Finally, I’ll be able to drop the points of interest on the map and fill in some of the blank areas where I think there should be more civilization and neat shit.

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