Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Headin' Down South



I've found three little bits of copy regarding the larger world and the Nentir Vale's place in it:

  • "A broad borderland region."
  • "The Nentir Vale is a northern land..." and
  • "(Harken Forest) separates the Nentir Vale from the more populous coastal towns of the south."
Sticking the Vale up along the northern border of the kingdom takes care of the first two points. Making the rest of this Nerath Empire remnant into a bastardization of southern England satisfies the third point as well a my current preoccupation with Bernard Cornwell's King Arthur books.

But please let me know if you've any better published sources for expanding the map, won't you? I'm working entirely from the DMG and H1.

Update: Misspelled "capital". D'oh!

Latest update: I got to thinking about Colmarr's comment that the Hammerfast trade route needed somewhere to go. It occurred to me if the Vale were on one side of a hellaciously vast mountain range, it would explain why people on the other side would refer to the mountains as something else beside "Dawnforge". Plus, a safe route through such rugged terrain really would be an asset worth guarding with a fortress. Thanks Colmarr! =)

14 comments:

Mr Co-Op said...

The location of Hammerfast doesn't make much sense to me.

IIRC, the dwarven city is on a major trade road, and there is no reason for a major trade road leading into coastal mountains with nothing on the other side.

You either need a port to the east of Hammerfast or the Dawnforge mountains aren't coastal.

brandykruse said...

I hear ya Colmarr and I wrestled with that. My thinking, however, was the "major trade route" could, once through the mountain range, could take a sharp left and head up the coast.

For some reason it would bug me if the "Dawnforge Mountains" were to the west of residents of the other side. Calling them the "Sunset Mountains" sounds a little too Malibu for my taste.

Thanks for dropping by!

dave said...

Nice! and Yoink!

I really like the little peak of the wider world you give here.

Mr Co-Op said...

Glad to be of service :)

Van der Hoorn said...

The "Winter of the Witch" article in Dungeon Magazine 162 also has some info on the Nentir Vale.

brandykruse said...

@Van der Hoorn: not being a subscriber, do you think you could bootleg me a copy?

SupSteff said...

Dear Doodle,

Why you don't integrate the information from the adventure P1 and P3 ; respectively, the therund baronny (and moon stair), the town of Vaester (and gloomdeep).

And more importanly, where is the elsir vale.

Thank you a lot, for your maps. There are very suggestive and deteilled.

Best regard

brandykruse said...

I'd love to Sup! I don't have either P1 or P3 (I only have the DM guide and H1) so I'd need someone to post/email a summary or an excerpt. You, perhaps?

Also, what is the Elsir Vale?

Thanks for stopping by!

Unknown said...

Great map. But there is a bit of information that you missed. In the last entry for Fallcrest (29. Lower Quays), there is this in the second sentence of the second paragraph.
"The Swiftwaters carry cargo all the way down to the Nentir's mouth, hundreds of miles downriver."
This makes the the information for the Harken forest a bit odd, since Daggerburg is described as being in the southwest region of the woods and close by the Manor. With the rest of the woods separating the Vale from the coastal cities.

Unknown said...

Here is the URL to the exerts from P1 on Wizard's site. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20081006a
The first two pdf files contain a brief description of its location in relation to Nentir and a map of a the region (respectively). Be aware that the scale of the map in P1 is different from the one used for the Nentir map.
Hope that helps.

brandykruse said...

Excellent, excellent, thanks for that catch! So help me with a solution here; the Harken forest should extend... further West? Feel free to send me a drawing if you want.

SupSteff said...

Hello,

The Elsir Vale is the location of "the scale of war" Dungeon mag campaign and of an old published 3.5. adventure "Red Hand".

And this vale that you can find many maps on the net, is linked by the "king road".

And there is an old article on en-world forum with map that show the link beetween the two zones.

Have a great day

Toldamore said...

If MY D&D4e world, Hammerfast leads to the large kingdom of Osden and straight across a vast desert (on the Great Desert Way road no less) is the marvelous Citystate of Brary and the eastern coast. That is what the trade route leads to.

-Esgo

Unknown said...

Not sure that I have a good solution for that one. The best I can come up with is to have the western edge of the forest be only 20-30 miles long but the eastern edge (following the Dawnforge Mts. south-south east) be 2 or 3 times longer (50-100 miles). If I were to draw a rough map I would have a buffer of about 80-100 miles between the forest and the coast. Maybe there are not any major settlements worth mentioning between the coastal cities and the valley.
As for the coastal cities, I would not put them on an ocean coast or even a sea, I would make it a large lake, like Lake Superior, whose eastern edge is also the Dawnforge, like the forest.
Depending on how meandering you want the river to be, the distances mentioned might about cover the "hundreds of miles downriver."