D&D General Piecing together the official maps of the Mortal World of Nerath

[Yaarel]

But isn't the Shadowfell also distorted (but parallel) geographically?

Re Shadow and Mortal. My impression is, the deathly versions are in the same places at the same distances as the living versions.

I measured the scale bars exactly of all three maps and re-sized them accordingly, so they should all give the same answer as to planet size.

I'm personally still not 100% committed to the Arctic Circle-Tropic of Cancer option (or the 20-70N option), though they both have strengths. I still feel that the 80N-Equator is also a reasonable solution.

0 to 80 degrees latitude would make the planet unbearably small.

20 to 60 degrees, exactly, looks right according to the geography - and even then the planet surface would be half the size of Earth.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Another factor: Since distances may be distorted in the Feywild (and Shadowfell?)...if the shapes of the continents can be "ripped" from those globe illustrations, they could be crunched through a "rubber-sheeting" program to reshape them as close as possible to match up with the visible Mortal World continents and boardgame continents, while still retaining their salient details.

The "rubber-sheeting" would sort of mimic the in-game space distortions vis-a-vis the Mortal continents, while retaining, as much as feasible, their "parallel" shapes.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

0 to 80 degrees latitude would make the planet unbearably small.

This is an emotive reasoning which, in my view, doesn't have to have any bearing on D&D fantasy planetology.

 

[Yaarel]

This is an emotive reasoning which, in my view, doesn't have to have any bearing on D&D fantasy planetology.

But lats 20 to 60 make more sense for other reasons anyway. It matches Earth better, thus allows plausible estimates for what exists beyind the map.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

20 to 60 degrees, exactly, looks right according to the geography - and even then the planet surface would be half the size of Earth.

Why 20-60N instead of 20-70?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Half the size of Earth seems right to me.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

In the planes map the southern hemisphere of its Mortal World sphere seems like the nortnern part of the rectangular map.

It might be a very small planet.

Here's a rough thumbnail of that option.

picture upload site

 

[Yaarel]

Why 20-60N instead of 20-70?

20-60 lats has the following benefits:

Nentir Vale itself is more like Quebec or Scotland, less like Inuit.

Generally, the northern edge looks more like Hudson Bay and less like Russian north coast.

The jungle becomes roughly N Japan, close enough anyway.

The deserts are like Mexico and Arizona.

The lush areas like N India and China.

20-60 looks right, and the half-size is easier to guestimate by comparing to Earth and halving.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Here's a totally different approach.

The two parallel localities shown on the 4e cosmology globes (Gloomwrought, in the Shadowfell; and Avaellor, in the Feywild) are used as the correlation points for the Mortal World.

The two parallel globes are rotated so as to make a best fits for the continental shapes which surround those two locales. And shrunken to the same size as the Mortal World.

The Shadowfell and Feywild are larger than the Mortal World, and so there is some distance distortion; and there are unpredictable local and regional distortions as well. However, every place in the Mortal World is parallel to some place in the two parallel worlds; and so the continental shapes approximately match in all three worlds, in a rubbery way.

This map attempts to approximately correlate all of the continental shapes. The dashed lines show where each image overlaps with the other images.



From this basis, a nearly complete world map could be created for all three worlds, using only Official sources. But to do it right would require someone with cartography software that can project the hemispheric images onto a globe, do rotations, do rubber-sheeting, and then re-project all three worlds onto a legible (e.g. equirectangular), north-oriented projection.

 

[Yaarel]

In the planes map.

Shadowfell and Mortal have two points of contact: Gloomwrought and Letherna.

To match up, Shadowfell necessarily distorts similar to the way Feywild does.

The rubbersheet methodology should provide useful results.

Along this line of inquiry, what if the planes-map Mortal World actually is a hemisphere and is centered at the north pole. That means its outer rim is the equator. If so, the equator passes thru the central island in the sea.

Comparing to the large Mortal map: Nerath and Karkoth would be the northern hemisphere, and Iron Circle and Vailin the southern hemisphere. Moreover, Zannad Jungles, all of the central island, and Nera would actually be parts of the equatorial rainforest belt.

If the equator runs thru the center of the map, the north hemisphere looks colder and the south one warmer, but maybe the north is winter, and the south is summer and later in the year the temperatures would reverse.



But all of this would mean the planet is extremely small!

The Mortal map is roughly 1300 miles north to south. If the equator runs thru the center, it is probably say 60° to -60°, or about 120 degrees. In other words, 10 degrees is about 11 miles, ... or about one sixth the size of earth.

We would clearly not be looking at a "normal" planet. It would be smaller than the reallife moon.