Can you solve this mystery? (My players stay out!)

[jdrakeh]

I no longer possess the brain power to solve such things, however I have two points I would like to bring up. . .

Those two points are moot. He's not playing D&D (re-read the first post)

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I translated "Hollow Earth Expedition" into "I am playing a campaign of DnD using the old Hollow World campaign setting". I was not even aware that was the title of a different game.

My bad.

DS

 

[Woas]

The map, although looks like Italy and the area around it, is not because the coast line to the west does not flow into France, but some type of bay.
At first I thought maybe it could have been a pre-Biblical/ancient "Flood" map, as one theory is that the Mediterraneans was a lot higher then it is now a days and some geological event occurred that linked the Mediterraneans to the Black Sea, thus lowering the as massive amounts of water left the Mediterannian for the Black Sea. Thus, the lower areas of the French Rivera might be under water and change the coast line.
But the map also shows Sicily connected to Naples which shouldn't happen if thats were the case...

 

[Deset Gled]

It's late at night, some of the symbols are hard to read, and I had to guess at the punctuation, but here's what I come up with:

Spoiler

One twelfth, a day. One ninth, a world undersea. The first twelve indivisible. Here lies the pathway to...

Solving the riddle would be the next step.

 

[Heckler]

The map, although looks like Italy and the area around it, is not because the coast line to the west does not flow into France, but some type of bay.
At first I thought maybe it could have been a pre-Biblical/ancient "Flood" map, as one theory is that the Mediterraneans was a lot higher then it is now a days and some geological event occurred that linked the Mediterraneans to the Black Sea, thus lowering the as massive amounts of water left the Mediterannian for the Black Sea. Thus, the lower areas of the French Rivera might be under water and change the coast line.
But the map also shows Sicily connected to Naples which shouldn't happen if thats were the case...

This is an "ancient map," so the discrepancies could be the result of poor cartography...

Or being that this is Hollow Earth, it could be a map of a similar but different world "inside" the earth...

 

[jdrakeh]

This is an "ancient map," so the discrepancies could be the result of poor cartography...

Or it could be an accurate representation of what the world looked like at the time of the map's creation. I'm somewhat amazed that this possibility has escaped everybody thus far. After all, we're dealing in lost civilizations and pulp adventure, here.

[Edit: There seems to be another potentially faulty assumption being made by some posters here -- namely, that I can see their posts ]

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

... and where is the rest of the Mediterranean Ocean?

Sorry to be a pedant, but the Mediterranean is a sea.

 

[Dioltach]

My immediate thought is that, for many ancient civilisations, the Mediterranean was the whole world (which they thought to be flat). The writing round the edge, cutting off the map, reinforces the idea that the map is not so much a representation of a specific area as it is of the whole world. The X, being at the centre of the map, therefore symbolises the middle of the world. And since we now know that the Earth is a globe, we're looking at the centre of that globe.

 

[SPoD]

It's late at night, some of the symbols are hard to read, and I had to guess at the punctuation, but here's what I come up with:

Spoiler

One twelfth, a day. One ninth, a world undersea. The first twelve indivisible. Here lies the pathway to...

Solving the riddle would be the next step.

Well, assuming that there are no additional clues or information given, I would then start to think of things that are traditionally in 12's or 9's.

12 is a lot more common: 12 months, 12 hours of the day (twice), 12 symbols of the zodiac, 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 sons of Odin, 12 Olympians, 12 in a dozen, 12 dozens in a gross, 12 men on a jury...etc.

For 9, I come up with 9 levels of Hell in the Divine Comedy, 9 planets in the solar system (since I doubt this cares that Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet)...and really, that's about it.

There could also be mathematical connotations; both 12 and 9 are divisible by 3, and 360 (the degrees in a circle) is divisble by both. There's also the possibility that the "The first twelve indivisible" is an indication that Base-12 math is involved. There's probably a lot more possibilities there, but I suck at advanced math.

So while I don't know exactly what it means, my gut tells me that the riddle tells how and when the pathway to the X is open. It might only open one day a year or one hour a day or what have you. Alternately, if the X represents merely the starting point and not the destination, the 12 and 9 may tell you how far to go from that point (i.e. 1/12th of the map over, 1/9th down or something).

 

[Derren]

I would simply cast Comprehend Language, or if available, a higher divination spell on it and read it normally.