Hand Drawn Oerth Polar Map

Hail Greyhawkers! Today I am sharing one of my ancient hand drawn maps that I evidently did for my own amusement, because this was pre-2000 and I clearly never did anything substantial with it until now. My best mapping buddy Anna Meyer has been doing among many current projects, an Oerth globe projection using scientific methods and cool software. My totally artistic, not scientific attempt back in the day looks like this: 

This zoomed in beast of a polar map is based on the expanded Oerik inset map in the boxed set Glossography. Back before the Dragon Annual #2 Oerth Map took the Greyhawk community by storm, I favored a looser continental distribution of my own. Mind you, I knew nothing about Aquaria back then, so no that is not on this map. Likewise, I didn't have the Scarlet Brotherhood, so I don't recall if my Hepmonaland is a large island or part of a greater southern hemisphere continent. Also, on this scrap map I drew migration routes that exist in the published source, but mine goes into where the Flannae migrated in ancient times!

Back then I had some intriguing ideas that the Flan were very old, but very advanced contemporaries of the Suloise Empire, but they had collectively declined by the time the Suel and Oerids migrated into the Flanaess. Notably, the Flannae at every turn were destroyed by the corruption of Tharizdun somehow; Sulm in the Bright Desert is one example. Where else did these Flan go? That's where this polar map shows their paths (marked "F")  and I have notes on the margins which I'll try to decipher for your consideration. Note that, the Flan originate in what is present day Land of Black Ice (and Blackmoor?). This was influenced less by Dave Arneson unfortunately since I didn't own much of his D&D stuff back then. Using the cursed black ice cap the Flan spread around my globe haphazardly. Let's see if this makes sense...

The Flan "eastern" migration leads to a pincer-shaped coast where there is Tdon, of Arnd's Invulnerable Coat fame. Tdon is a peaceful land of psionicists. Also in that bay I have notes in this region for illithids who take Tdonian slaves, an area of psioncists who are very lax and drugged all the time and an isolated island realm called Nuplacia. Sweeping north along that continent the Flan have "5 coastal kingdoms" bordering a valley of avariels. The eastern spur that breaks off an curls back toward the Flanaess I believe ends up being the Sinking Isle civilization seen in Greyhawk Adventures, that is gone by the time the Aerdi show up. If I recall, I theorized Tharizdun (of course) ruined these people long ago and turned them all into sahuagin!

The Flan migration trail that goes "due-north" over the ice into some subcontinent encounter snow elves, spirit lands.There is also contact with people influenced by Gygax's Oriential Adventures rules, realms called Edosaka and Morioka. The "northwest" trail of the Flan migration runs into another smaller continent of my own creation. Here there is a xvart culture, a mountainous enclave like Tibet, and a Pleistocene region with Neanderthals. The "western" trail splits through and curls back to Oerik interestingly running counter to Baklunish migration. Of course, before I knew anything of Beyond the Flanaess I had this branch of Flan pass through some places like the Forsaken Desert, the Valley of Spiders and instead of the lamentable "Orcreich" I have a place ruled by Jann. These notes are faded and written very small.

All in all it's fun to do world building with Greyhawk. I'm not crazy about my old mapping efforts, but I do still hold to my theories on ancient Flan being more advanced. Maybe if I find my old Flan notes I'll write up that treatise another day. If you have any comments feel free to add to this madness. Thanks for reading!