Do dwarves care about where the sun sets?

[Naathez]

I've recently started - thanks to the excellent related threads on here - to try my hand at cartography. I might even build up the courage to put up my map on here, though it certainly cannot hold its own when compared to the excellent pieces I've seen poste4d... anyway, never mind that.

Thinking about cartography led me to thinking that different races, probably, have different cartographic conventions: not ALL races will probably put NORTH on the top side of a map, for example.

But then I had ANOTHER thought.

Imagine dwarves - which in my setting VERY seldom venture out of their subterranean kingdom.
Also imagine the fact the dwarves' kingdom does NOT have wide expanses of open caves - it's mostly tunnels (where there were large caves, there are cities.).
And finally imagine the fact that dwarves IMC tend to have their very own way of doing everything - and to try to make it very difficult for other races to pierce their secrets (an expansion on Tolkien's concept that dwarves preferred not to let other races learn their language if they could help it).

All of this said - what do you think a dwarven map of their kingdom would look like?

Speak your truth, ENWorld!

 

[Hand of Evil]

I guess it depends on the dwarf but I think they would follow ore veins, faults and look like many mine maps. Cities, could be found a natural opening but also in salt domes or other soft material.

 

[adwyn]

Prior to computer modeling most mines were mapped in 3d with a wire framework that supported a network of tubes and strings representing the tunnels and shafts. I always imagined dwarves would use a similar system.

 

[Naathez]

hmm.. 3d maps, that's interesting. Very flavorful actually - but not very portable. (barring magic, of course... but let's not get into that now, and remain in the realm of "mundane" maps).

I can imagine a gigantic 3d map of a dwarven city's surroundings in the Council Hall of said city... and adwyn, that's a particularly cool idea, thanks!

But what about a dwarven "travel map", somehow scribed on a (likely fungi-derived) scroll? how could it work and be true to the different worldview dwarves have when compared to humans?

 

[Hand of Evil]

hmm.. 3d maps, that's interesting. Very flavorful actually - but not very portable. (barring magic, of course... but let's not get into that now, and remain in the realm of "mundane" maps).

I can imagine a gigantic 3d map of a dwarven city's surroundings in the Council Hall of said city... and adwyn, that's a particularly cool idea, thanks!

But what about a dwarven "travel map", somehow scribed on a (likely fungi-derived) scroll? how could it work and be true to the different worldview dwarves have when compared to humans?

I think dwarves like sea creatures and think in 3d more than humans do. Something is not just in that direction but down in that direction, humans go around objects, a dwarf would go around, under or over it, whichever was the easiest route. For mapping the realm, it would look like a subway map, colors or symbols (think they would be big on runes) representing depth of the path.

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

Given that they only have tunnels to go through - not whole landscapes, then the map only needs to impart information about how those tunnels connect - it has less need to convey distance.

So it would be much more 'symbolic' that accurate. Tunnel 1 connects to tunnel 2 at point X. Further down that tunnel it connects to tunnel 3... so Hand of Evil's suggestion of tube maps makes perfect sense. The only thing to map is the connections between points and how they relate to each other, not the accurate representation of where they sit geographically.

 

[kolvar]

Knot-maps, like those used by some peoples in the pacific, but with several layers, that are knotted together - portable and still rather acurate.
For directions: up and down is rather easyly defined
the second would probably be following the rotation of the world, something, that can be measured, even if it is rather difficult.
I have no idea, how to get the third direction, though

 

[Felix]

I doubt they'd have much of a hard time determining depth on maps, since they can natually intuit how deep underground they are.

As for directions, take a page out of Terry Pratchett: dwarves communicate meaning with mine scrawl. So perhaps "#" means intersection. "/" means a silver vein. "^" means a vent to the surface. Depth could be portrayed as a number representing the tens of yards below the surface (or meters if they're European dwarves ). So the intersection with a silver vein and a vent hole that's 30 yards down is scrawled: "^#/3"

Each intersection would be unique, much like how our roads are.

A major thoroughfare would be two connected intersections:
"^#/3 ---- !#()6"

And a map would be a grid of connections, with the depth being portrayed at each intersection.

^#/3 ---- !#()6
|................|
|....X/*[]0...|
|.../............|
|../.............|
$#*1..........|
......\...........|
.......\..........|
........\.........|
.........\----%#()9

Maps could be created very easily on parchment, more detailed for a smaller area showing the small side tunnels, or only showing the major passageways for maps of the entire kingdom.