Hiromi Cota here with a guest update. For folks who don’t know me, I’m one of the co-developers for the Fifth Season Roleplaying Game core book and the developer for a few of the stretch goals.
Speaking of stretch goals, we’ve received the rough draft of the poster map! And it is gorgeous!
Cartography by Kate Moody
I didn’t make it easy for the cartographer; my brief for them was 14 pages long! I laid out huge amounts of vital information, as well as additional information that they could add if they had room to do so. They delivered in a big way! I love how the map looks ready to use in a game and how the features feel geologically-sensible and book-accurate. For example, Palela and Brevard, the first two towns we saw in Damaya’s tale, are about 40 miles apart or “a hard [day’s] ride” apart, which is reflected in the map.
A little behind the scenes for a portion of my process: I scoured through the books, looking for any mentions of what roads connected which cities and how far apart the cities were. For many connections, miles weren’t given, so I had to take my best guess, based on how many days it took to complete the trek and whether the characters were on horse, wagon, or foot, and what kind of terrain they were traveling over. Not all city-to-city travel sequences mentioned days, so I had to read through and take my best guess, based on temporal clues in the prose (e.g. sunrise, meals, nightfall).
Why would I go through that much effort?
Well, 4 reasons:
I care.
I have AuDHD.
I know there are superfans who will be looking for precise, accurate details, and I didn’t want to let them down (or risk their wrath).
Green Ronin doesn’t own the copyright to the map that appeared in the novels, which means we couldn’t use it, and we couldn’t base the new map off of it. Since we had to start from scratch, I wanted to make sure that the cartographer had all the data they needed to make the absolute best map that we could deliver to you.
A few additional fun facts about the map:
The geometric elements of the inset map are of Corepoint, while the organic shape ‘infecting’ the center is Warrant. It’s both metaphorical and a possible depiction of how the corridors of Warrant were “beaten and clawed out of the shield volcano over a period of days or weeks—hurriedly…” (The Stone Sky, p. 186).
I didn’t actually specify what kind of geometric shape, but the cartographer selected one of the most appropriate ones, as Corepoint has a rectangular motif!
If you look to the Western Coastals, you’ll see Deejna is just west of supervolcano. That’s “Madness,” the one that caused the Madness Season.
