Hail Greyhawkers! Not much going on this week so I'm thumbing through the old 83 Guide and thinking about all the cities and towns that have been mapped in official Greyhawk publications (and there's alot of them!). Now I can imagine during the heyday of Living Greyhawk many many more towns were laid out, but I can't credibly count those since its not accessible anymore, nor should I count fan-made material as much as I want to (I recall a fantastic Radigast City and Rel Astra map out there) but Google is your friend in that case.Here are some major towns I believe have never been mapped but need to be, in hopes maybe I'm wrong or some enterprising cartographer online takes on the challenge. This list is by no means exhaustive, it's just a sample.
Dantredun (pop 666): Blackmoor's capital. Small but can be a nice base of operations for northern adventures.
Enstad (pop 6950): The main capital of Celene. An elven city! I know its an isolated nation, but why has no one designed this yet?
Ekbir (pop 29,400), Zeif (pop 40,300), Lopolla (pop 23,400): All Baklunish capitals. Exotic middle-eastern flavor architecture and lay out. Would be quite a challenge.
Krakenheim (pop 3300): A viking-like town home to the Frost Barbarians. With the fjords and such, this would be a picturesque place to draw.
Irongate (pop 44.000): I know it was wrote up in Dragon Magazine and there was once an Irongate Project online done by my friend Denis Tetreault, but he never did get far on the city map itself.
Gradsul: The main port of Keoland. A big city indeed. This one is high on my wishlist.Eastfair (pop 29,100): Capital of the North Province. This place would be a nice addition as much of the Great Kingdom development has been southward.
Admundfort (pop 21,300): The largest city set on an island in Oerik. Would look quite nice.
Update: Stuart has correctly pointed out this town has a map is in Iuz the Evil. I was testing you guys....yeah that's the ticket...
Monmurg (pop 14,200): The main capital port of the Sea Princes. It sticks out on a peninsula and has much sea traffic As I've done many Sea Princes campaigns, including one where I mapped Hokar, this is a map I'd most likely do myself someday.
Nevond Nevnend (pop 23,800): Capital of the Duchy of Tenh. I know zilch about the place, but the name is so weird I'd love to see it on a map key.
Ulakand and Kester: Okay okay I know, no one has made maps of these towns in Ull. Give me a break I've only had about twenty years to do one. Someday!
Update 06/24/2021: I made some buzz recently asking for a Monmurg and Port Toli map. If anyone comes across this old post, get to mapping!
11 comments:
There's a map of Admundfort on page 43 of WGR5 Iuz the Evil.
Nevond Nevnend has always fascinated me. The name has a form that is similar to Old Irish ('nd' is one of the OI orthographic conventions for a broad 'n', the other being 'nn', and the particle 'nev' is pretty common in OI, though usually spelled 'nem'). Since it's a Flannish city in a Flannish polity, and there are some similarities between the Flannish gods and "Celtic" ones as understood in the '60s and '70s, I'm pretty sure that this was a deliberate choice on Gary's part. It's one of the reasons that, in my Oerth, Druids are the chief practitioners of native Flannish religion.
Isn't there a map of Zeif in one of the Living Greyhawk mags?
Stuart: You are absolutely right. I put that one in last too. (I typed out of order) I had that book literally in arms reach and didn't double-check. Kudos man!
faoladh: That is brilliant! I have followed GH for ages and never sawe this linguistic reasoning for a flan culture before. Thanks!!!
Proud Nerdery: I dunno, let me check since I have that in arms reach too (I did this from memory guys)...LGJ #5, huge article on Zeif the nation map of the nation, no map of Zeif City (to be exact). Thanks for keeping me on my toes, friend.
Mike Bridges: Ha, yeah. My mostly useless obsession with ancient Ireland finds a tiny bit of value. *grin*
I could go on, maybe for instance pointing out how "nem" means "sky, heaven, holy" (see, for example, Gaulish/Brythonic "nemeton" = "holy place" or modern Irish "neamh" = "sky, heaven"), which could make for an interpretation of Nevond Nevnend as something like "Holy of Holies". Or how it's probably no coincidence that the Norman colonists in Meath in Ireland around the 13th century called their region the Pale and the Theocracy neighboring Tenh carries the same name. Don't get me started on how Pholtus is constantly described as opposing the other religions, even though he started as a member of the Oeridian pantheon. I have a pretty complex view of the religions of Oerik. I should write it up for my blog sometime. Or have I already? I'll have to look that up.
It seems that I did write up my concept of the state of religion in the Flanaess, around six and a half years ago when I was working more actively on the idea of GURPS Greyhawk (which I wouldn't mind getting back to sometime). The blog post is here. Some of those notes are GURPS-mechanic specific, but most of it is easily adopted or scavenged for parts.
One of my South Province regrets was that I got lazy midway through and repurposed another map instead of drawing Hexpools on my own. That would be an interesting map.
faoladh: That is remarkable! Greyhawk fans love this kind of minutiae. Thanks for the link.
Scott: I overlooked the South Province. Zelradton and Hexpools, hmm!
Mike Bridges: Thanks! Obviously, the notes about professions would vary by game system (it's not necessary to make polytheist priests "Magic-Users" in D&D games, though they should be modified from the baseline Cleric class by changing the special ability from "Turn Undead" to something more appropriate, and possibly altering the spell list). Equally obviously, I'm happy for anyone to grab whatever they like from those ideas or not, as they wish.
I know Saltmarsh is in DMG II but it isway too big. We need one appropriate to the original module.
Paul W: Yeah I never looked too deep into that Saltmarsh. I do appreciate them trying to give it a 3.5 update tho. I guess it was meant to be a catch-all player home base?
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