Interrupting my regular posting due to special demand, a look at Dahlvier the lich who rules a patch of land on the western fringe of the Fellreeve.
Welcome back David, I hope you will like this one.
Born in -34 CY as Illart the son of Ehldard of Dahlvier, a minor lord of the lands in the far north which would become the Horned Lands. At the time it was lands rediscovered and settled after the great cold, and Illart's ancestors along with many others of the south had moved north as the world warmed up again in the centuries before the migrations.
Ehldard was like all humans around here at the time, of Flan descent. This took on a whole new meaning when the first Oeridians arrived when Illart was a child. In the beginning the new folks where greeted warmly but soon the old way of the Flan was questioned and young Illart saw his father become torn between the old ways and the new, eventually siding with the Oeridians. This caused lots of conflict with friends and family and in being a rebellious youngster Illart took the other side in this conflict. Young Illart could not have known that this would determine his existence for centuries to come.
The hardening conflict between the old elites of the Flan and the new Oeridian rulers in the south and east would soon start to spill over even up here. First by a wave of Flan fleeing the new order in the south, using the remoteness of the north as a safe haven, later the first Aerdy coming to conquer even these remote lands. The folks here, though few in numbers, but hardened by a tough life were determined to keep their freedom. Illart's rebellion against his father took a new turn when he defeated him in combat, the year was 5 CY and Illart was now Lord Dahlvier, the ruler of a sizable patch of land west of the Fellreev.
His dad had taken over an elven settlement, it is unclear how that happened, now it became abode of the new Lord Dahlvier who rose to become a capable lord in his own right. At first he had started out by becoming a force on the battlefield and already showing a talent for politics. He amassed a sizable hird of followers, and then became one of the early hierarchs of the Horned Society. A position that taught him the arcane arts and made him cling on to existence beyond his mortal years.
Already while still being a mortal man he treated his enemies with utmost cruelty while still treated his allies and followers with respect. This made him rise to power fast and soon he was one of the major rulers of the area, and for a time had a near permanent base in Molag leading the fight against the expanding Great Kingdom. His methods of treating his victims was notorious and something lord Dahlvier used for his new personal heraldry. He never used his family's old shield and no surviving copy or sketch of it exists. The new Lord who had no mercy for traitors like his father, it is strange why he choose a title used by his enemies.
Lord Dahlvier played a key part in running the Horned Society until a surprising development started. The lands of Ferrond, no longer beholden to Rauxes, begun a campaign to rid themselves of Hextorian influence. The expelled soon became another group of outcasts who sought a new home in the lands north of Oeridian control. Both the Bandit Kingdoms and Horned Society recognized talent when they saw it and welcomed a group who were both well organized and at home on the battlefield.
The new arrivals brought a previously unseen infernal bent the the Horned Lands, and Dahlvier who had delt with these folks before wanted none of it. Instead of outright confrontation he embraced the powers of his pact with Nerull, time, he was no longer a young mortal, he could wait out his enemies. So he retreated to his hold on the edge of the Fellreev, bided his time by carefully curate his following. He lashed out occasionally raiding neighbors who he felt was getting too close, or too powerful. Making sure they all feared him, and Nerull must have been pleased for his reputation increased with the horrors he inflicted.
Count Dahlvier seems to combine patients, rage and strategy which have kept him in politics for over five centuries. He has mentored such talents as Lerrek who has become rulers in their own right, just like he learned from the likes of Warduke in his rise to power. Lord Dahlvier saw the rise of a new upstart in the north Iuz became a force of the region. He never seemed to have liked him, or even met him. Maybe the inactivity has made Dahlvier soft, who knows. Is he the next player to enter the political stage again, or is he a force of the past to be added to the history books, no one seems to be sure.
I hope you like my take on Dahlvier, the lich of the Fellreev. For my games I always feel the need to give villains a backstory and a place in the world, to give me things like motivations, capabilities and quirks. Then with all that in mind I set out to develop the stats. Haven't gotten to that with Dahlvier yet, the characters haven't confronted him. In time that might happen.
With the introduction done it’s time to dive deeper into the boring technical bits. I’m sorry for those of you who are not at all interested in things like file formats, bit depth and such nonsense this one might not be for you, but for the rest of us map nerds lets dig into things!
When I launched my first attempt to map Greyhawk Internet was still in its early days, print was the norm and JPEG was just invented. At first, I just stumbled along and tried to make it look OK, but after a while I realized it would take years, many years, to finish so setting up a workflow that could work long term was crucial. Now when I’m starting over again, I’m keenly aware of the fact that this project will probably take the rest of my active days, so a proper plan is key to making it possible, and the result usable. The key bit in this project is that it leaves a robust set of cartography material for Greyhawk fans to use and build upon for the future long term.
The result will consist of digital data in various forms, images, heightmaps, masks, vectors, text and database files and more. My first priority is to try and use open files formats whenever possible, so files can be opened and edited even after the tools I’m using now will no longer be available.
Terrain starts with heightmaps, the greyscale image that provides elevation data. The resolution I’ve settled on is 5ft per pixel, as a D&D nerd I couldn’t resist that homage to the game. It is also a useful compromise between large- and small-scale maps. Detailed enough to show individual buildings, trees and the like, but still possible to cover large areas like a whole continent. The Flanaess will be around 22 million pixels across at this resolution.
World Machine and my hardware limit me to work on an area of 65,536 x 65,536 pixels (64K) which cover an area of 3,844 square miles at 5ft per pixel. Currently I have created a dozen of these areas, which are nearly 50,000 square miles and several more is in the making. So good progress at this stage.
The heigh data needs to be stored in a format that is accurate enough, which dictates the bit depth needed. If the goal would be a Minecraft terrain 8bit data would be enough, but Greyhawk the way I want to present it need more than the blocky terrain of Minecraft. The Bit Depth sets the limits for how much data each pixel can contain, a 1-bit file can have a value of 0 or 1. Minecraft terrain probably requires 16-bits with covers 65,536 height values. My aim is to cover a height from seal level to 12.5 kilometers which is a bit over 41,000 feet, which ought to be enough height for impressive mountains.
41,000 feet is over 400,000 inches so only having 65,536 height values might mean a bit of that jagged stair effect when looking closely. I’m not taking any chances and will store the heigh data using 32-bits which gives me 4,294,967,295 height levels to play with which is enough even for closeups. The file format I’ve chosen to use is OpenEXR, which was created by Industrial Light & Magic Studios to store all sorts of complex image data, and it supports 32-bit data.
When working with digital terrain creation, a way to select only areas that have a certain, elevation, slope, direction facing or other feature, or to manually place things like trees, roads or buildings. For this, masks are needed and they are greyscale images like heightmaps, white for total presence and black for total absence, and degrees of grey for everything in between. Bit depths range from 8-bit to 32-bit in rare cases. For 8- and 16-bits PNG is my format of choice. PNG is technically supporting up to 32-bits but that seems to be iffy, so I stick with EXR here as well for the few masks where I need lots of precision. Like Erosion masks used when creating textures for example, when very gradual changes are needed.
Most masks are only useful when creating and editing heightmaps or textures, but some masks are useful for changing things like rods, building, trees and other things on the map, so I will make sure they are preserved. For this I will use PNG, EXR and layered TIFF files. Which are all standards that will be around for many decades or longer into the future.
Textures will be saved as JPG’s and/or TIFF’s, depending on how detailed they need to be and how much storage can be saved using compression. WepP and JPEX XL are newer formats I’m looking into as well might be the way forward if they become widely used standards. Both offer great features, and good compression.
Areas that are done and ready to be presented will be summed up as JPG’s, PDF’s, and TIFF’s. The data will also be available as GeoPackage which is a way to package GIS data as a single database containing all sorts of stuff from terrain images, vector data for things like roads and borders and symbols all in one bundle.
My goal is to set up a server to offer this in a browser or for use straight into GIS software like QGIS, like OpenStreetMap is today. Started to test that on my LAN and its promising. The next step when I have more data ready is to set up a Virtual Private Server with my web hosting company and install it there. I have a domain name and server capacity ready to go. This might have to be by invitation only, if it gets popular the bandwidth costs can shoot up. The content will be available to download as final maps or GeoPackage for free for everyone, so you can run a server on your machine at home or set up your own server with your own version if you want to.
I’m using my webserver and Notion to host and distribute content. In many ways I prefer Notion, it is searchable and easier to work with. I’m thinking of moving all the downloadable content to Notion and letting my website become more of a landing page, sending people to my Patreon for my blog, Notion for downloadable content, and in the future a map server for online maps.
I’m tempted to present the new maps as JPG’s or PDFs of a 24 x 36 inch sheets useful both digitally and printed. 24 x 36 is a standard format available almost everywhere you can get stuff printed and the cost is reasonable. The problem with 24x36 inches is that it is too big to print on most home printers, 13 x 19 inch might be better for home printing. 8,5 x 11 inches are the easiest for printing and storage, but very limiting when covering large areas. Test maps have to be made.
Below is a layout idea for 24 x 36 inch maps. Oerth globe map top left to get a base idea where on the planet this is. Large area map on the left with other maps in the series marked out as well. Below that room is for notes of the area, sources and links. Scale projection and other technical details below that and Credits and edition at the bottom left.
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The main map area would be 24.5 x 24.5 inches and can be either top down or isometric, I’m going to make both versions. More on this is my next post, which will be a lot more interesting to look at.
This type of layout with mini-map and all the information might be useful for some series of maps, others might be most useful as full page maps with as little disturbing stuff on there as possible, so you can lay them side by side to present larger areas distraction free. I’m thinking that isometric maps might be really cool this way.
Maps that are primarily used to find things and to refer to them would benefit from overview maps, grids and scale information.
Next will be to present the map data I’m putting together, top down and isometric renders and some overview maps. Below are a couple of sneak peaks..
Starting my mapping of the world of Greyhawk all over again was something I started to plan for over a decade ago, as I was wrapping up Hepmonaland and started working on Southlands for Kobold Press. This time it’s going to be in a way I had dreamt of back when I stated in the 1990’s, high detail, 3D and customizable in a way that my first map could never be. If I had known then how far away from being able to do it, I would probably have given up long ago, but my goal was tantalizingly possible if I just had a better computer, software and more skills. For a long time my vision felt possible, but always thousands of hours away from being a reality.
Now over a decade and several computer upgrades later, and after spending many thousands of hours pursuing my goal of creating a new generation fantasy maps of a setting at a scope no one has been foolish enough to embark on since a group failed to map the Middle-Earth back in the early 2000’s. They were a bit too early, tools and computing power were not advanced enough to do it. They go a fair bit into it, and what they showed was impressive. Now a quarter century later I’m ready to paraphrase Peter Jackson, “Now is the time to do it”. Computing power is here, and the tools are good enough to start a massive project like this.
Most fantasy maps are beautiful works of art, produced by talent and skills. My new Greyhawk maps are being done in a different way, talent and skills play a role, but the main thing is being the way they are built up around data. Elevation, biomes, water levels, road and building area and height and so on. The image above shows some of the data, inf the form of colored masks, that makes up the map below.
The resolution I’m working with is roughly 5 feet per pixel which gives enough detail to be useful all they way from large scale worldbuilding to play out encounters on a VTT. The sample map is of the town of Hirtfer on the wester shore of the Veng River in the Furyondian barony of Herechel, that is a part of the Earldom of Willip. The sample map is 2000 pixels across, and at this resolution Shield Lands will be roughly 70,000 pixels across, the Flanaess will be nearly 22 million pixels. A lot of those pixels are water or uninhabited wilderness, which are a lot easier to do. Roads and buildings are all hand places which take quite some time. Nature can be made using procedural and fractals which speed up things a lot.
To get a better view of where Hirtfer is located below is an overview map. Thanks to its being data, I can easily throw the water mask of blue to represent lakes and rivers, add roads and settlements and then labels.
Testing how to do annotations and best integrate them as well. A simple top-down overview map might not be enough time to make good use of the fact that these map are based on heightmaps giving them three dimensions. Below is a 3D overview map with Hirtfer in the center seen from the SW and Critwall in the background. Hirtfer is an agricultural hub in the middle if the very fertile Veng floodplains forming a mile wide band along its shores. The Veng valley has its own microclimate due to it flowing south from the colder north causing a more humid climate with increased mists clouds and rainfall, compared to areas only a few miles inland away from it. This can still be seen on the Furyondian western shores with large parts of the forest that used to cover this area intact. The best areas for crops have been under the plough for many centuries but lots of forest are kept for timber and hunting. Wood for construction and boatbuilding are still a major industry in and around Herechel. The Shield Lands side used to have much more forest along the Veng, but most of it was lost during the siege of Critwall. Small patches and young promising regrowth can be seen.
Below is a closer look at Hirtfer from the air.
Hirtfer has a small port to support transport of agricultural products to Herechel and Critwall, and occasionally further away as well. The port is designed to cater to small and mid-size river traffic. There is a small lakes just outside of the town walls that have a boardwalk alongside it. This is a pod used for wastewater from Hirtfer’s wool and tanning business, the cleaning, treating and dyeing wool and leather. Dumping it outside the town wall letting it drain slowly into the Veng downstream. I’m very pleased with how the swampy shoreline turned out with reeds and trees.
The 3D horizon reference images are a great way to get a feel for a place and how it fits into the world around it. This is what Hirtfer looks like from the east across the Veng (top), downstream Veng from the south (middle), and from the northeast upstream Veng (bottom). These are quick views taken from World Machine and then given a fake sky in Photoshop. Blender and WM5 will be able to a much better job at this so landscape images of places from MeyerHawk will be a key part of this project.
Sometime its nor realism you’re after, you might want to give the players a copy of the stylized map they bought from a cartographer in Willip when they arrived in Furyondy aiding them in exploring. Below is a quick sample to show how you can use the data to make a map that looks very different but is still recognizable as the same place.
I tried to use the same method on the whole big tile scaled down to thumbnail size. First without styling:
And then stylized:
These are down sampled from 16,384 to 512 pixels, and thanks to masks for roads and settlements they can be enhanced to be visible. This samples are just quick test to prove that is works, with more work they can be made to look a lot better. Even at this low resolution it’s sill way more detailed than my old map, but it’s starting to look a bit like it.
When you need a base map to show anything from troop movements and historic borders to how that party progresses, a simple overview map is very useful. Below is a simple map ready to be a backdrop when you need it.
Often I just want to be immersed in an area getting a feel for those living there or characters traveling there are seeing. Great for worldbuilding and adventure prep. Where do the Iuzian hordes lay in ambush or how arduous the journey across the hills is?
How roads are laid out across the landscape becomes much more intricate when you work in three dimensions across a natural landscape with its hills, rivers, lakes and other natural obstacles needs to be mitigated. Below is a look at the road west from Herechel, again only a preview in World Machine but shows it well, I think.
City design is another very interesting part of cartography that enters when you move from setting maps to these much more detailed work. Critwall was my inaugural test bed and it has gone through numerous iterations over half decade I’ve been working on it, from simple sketches to full 3D model. Here is a closer look at Shield Reclaimed, the big temple and the Critwall old ward and its fortifications.
My take is that these might buildings are carved out of the rock, as much as they are built. The builders carved away stone from the inside to use to build up more of it. This way they could make it stronger and larger without having to lift all the material up from lower down. You can read about my take on the history of Critwall here: https://www.patreon.com/annabmeyer/posts/critwall-599-cy-88584154
You can download all the images shown here in full resolution (103.9MB): https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/New%20Generation%20Smples%201.zip
Thank you again for your support, without it, I wouldn’t have been able to embark on this new chapter. In many ways it feels like it did back in the 1990’s setting off on a journey to discover Greyhawk one small piece at a time leading to the first-generation map. That was like a fly over tour giving a distant look at things from afar, this time its more loke traveling though the landscape seeing each square mile in detail. This is what I dreamt of doing, and now thanks to your support, I’m off on another journey to discover the world of Greyhawk. I invite you to journey along with me. I’m currently mapping out Scragholme and the Veng Estuary and more way more is under way. I’m working in 6 stages, and I have more than 1 million square miles at stage 1, more than 50,000 square miles at stage 2 and around 3,000 square miles in the last stages ready for settlements roads and final touch up.
A teaser of what is coming!
After nearly a decade of trials test, failures and more learning the time has finally come to launch a new generation of Greyhawk maps. Thanks to your support all this time I can now finally start teasing this project, the biggest of my career as a Fantasy Cartographer for sure, and one that will be ongoing to the rest of my career.
I'm pretty certain that no project of this scope and detail have been attempted before. A whole campaign setting mapped in 3D detailed enough to see every hills, creek, road building and tree. It will be my vision of the world of Greyhawk at a scale of 5ft per pixel.
More information for patreons is coming soon. Thank you again for joining me on this journey to explore the Flanaess....
I will be nerding out about Greyhawk with Angelo tomorrow at 6pm PDT.
https://www.youtube.com/live/gTBhidbA07A?si=4qtHJFFpM1J__ZY0
Hope to see you there 🙂
A bit of house keeping. I haven't published an updated Campaign Map version of my Flanaess map in a while, here is the latest version: https://www.pathozoom.com/image/702589
You can download the JPG (115MB) here:
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Campaign%20Map%202026-06.jpg
I'll be back with more stuff soon!
I'll be streaming a work session tonight @6pm PDT on Twitch as usual. On the agenda tonight are a mixture of texture work in Photoshop and touching up the base heighmaps of the next part of the Shield Lands in World Machine.
Tune in at: https://www.twitch.tv/anna_b_meyer
See you in a few hours!
PBS is celebrate Earth month with several great videos, and one about maps and projections. It tells the story of Mercator and how he created a new type of map. Might not sounds that interesting or relevant to fantasy cartography but I think it is.
Battling with how to make maps of the world of Greyhawk that are located on a spherical planet, really appreciates this video. It tells the story about why and how the modern Mercator based map was created, and with it the way to create maps made to be a navigational aid. Something unheard of before, and something we takes for granted today.
For fantasy roleplaying are needs are different, we don't need maps to navigate the world in a "real" way, using compass, bearings, sextants and such. Out needs are more, in my opinion, to understand the landscape in order to improve our play. I think this means that maps that are area correct are preferrable, over angle accuracy. No need to be able to calculate a course and then follow it in the real world, fantasy navigation needs to understand distance, lay of the land, obstacles, ease of way, biomes, climate. This is why I prefer Orthographic Projection that is based on what an area would look like seen from space, it s accurate in the center but errors creep in the further away from the center you go. This means that Ortho projection works great for regional maps an smaller, city, provinces and most countries, but for the whole of the Flanaess the errors might be a bit too large at the fringes. I'm referring to reference maps here, the ones used primarily by the GM as a planning and worldbuilding tool, and then if it is detailed enough can be used during play as well. Inspiration and understanding being its most important attributes.
The PBS video shows examples and tells a bit about maps made before Mercator and projections were invented. I'm often wondering what kind of maps like hat would be made by the Flan during the age of Vecna, by the cartographers of Rauxes during the heyday of the Great Kingdom or by the Olmans. The Great Kingdom's mappers would use Rauxes as their center point at the later sages, and probably Rel Astra before that. I can image a map with Rauxes at the top and everything else show below it to show its reign of the world.
One day I'll create that map just because.... 🙂
Thank you so much for your support!
Time for some much delayed housekeeping!
Easyzoom got new ownership and restructured a while ago, and I thought they would cancel their image hosting service. To my delight they only rebranded it to pathoZoom, due to them now focusing on medical imaging. Despite their new focus the service still functions as before, but with new links, which are provided below!
598 CY map - 2022 Edition
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/356079/album/0/4?mode=manage
598 CY map - 2022 Edition - 12 mile Hexes
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/357865/album/0/4?mode=manage
598 CY map - 2022 Edition - 30 mile Hexes
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/331757/album/0/4?mode=manage
576 CY map - 2022 Edition
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/325836/album/0/4?mode=manage
576 CY map - 2022 Edition - 12 mile hexes
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/331665/album/0/4?mode=manage
Here is a link to my campaign map, which includes lots of stuff that are for my campaign as well (and in some instances instead of) the things on the public versions.
Campaign Map:
Unlock with Patreon