Greetings Greyhawk maniacs! Needfest is fast approaching and I don't have much new to show you, but I can muse about a strange thing I notice about the Flanaess map. If you've been familiar with Greyhawk and the community as long as me, you'll know the celebrated Darlene map, with all its artistic flair, has some dubious geographical features if applied to real life. In my youth I didn't care about that stuff, but now decades later my brain has ran over the map millions of times and I can't unsee the fact that Greyhawk-Duchy of Urnst is an island.
Look it at! The
Nyr Dyv and
Midbay area is the north coast, the meandering
Nesser River is the east coast, the
Woolly Bay is the south-south west coast and the short
Selintan River is the west coast. This island encompasses the "port city" of Greyhawk, the
Duchy of Urnst and the Bright Desert/BrightLands. I hope someone can explain me wrong about this, because without researching it, I'm sure there can't be a real life instance of an island bordering a lake, a sea and one or more rivers at the same time. Fantasy maps, gotta love them.
Running with this island idea though, it's fun how the geopolitical nature of this area is unchanged for the most part. Greyhawk seems more like a low land swampy domain nestled in its NW portion shielded by a range of highlands that runs the length of the islands from the
Cairn Hill through the mountainous
Abbor Alz middle that encircles the desert third. The Duchy is largely plain of course save a section of highland
Celadon Forest. The Bright Desert (formerly
Sulm) with the
Brass Hills in the center is likely the highest elevation on average in this hypothetical island. Those southern cliffs don't seem to sport any ports unlike the bustling port of
Hardby up the coast.
My brain tells me that the east and west river segments ruins the islands premise, but if you consider two swamps, the
Mistmarsh and
Gnatmarsh border these river systems, then one well placed flood can make this island even more noticeable! Crazy
Zendrelda the fortune teller
may be onto something. At any rate, the point of this island is, when you've played with the same fantasy map for nearly 40 years, its fun to sometimes turn things on a head and see what new you can do with it. Comment, refute and enjoy!
