Thank you all for your patience. I have a prototype map up on my website. I also added a redirect page to get to my Brust Page, so you can get to it in one of two ways: 1. directly - http://bryann.net/content/brust/map.jpg 2. indirectly - http://bryann.net/brust.html and click on the "Version 1.0 of the Map" link. I will be writing a document explaining my thoughts on this map in the next day or so, but just to get the debate started: 1. "Dragon" appears to take place on a different planet than the rest of the novels. For example, as best I can tell, Vlad marched some 600+ miles to get to Fornia... 2. Paarfi says Newmarket is 60 leagues from Dragaera City. Tazendra says Newmarket is 30 or 40 miles from the Eastern River ford. As best I can tell, the distance between this ford and Dragaera City is at least 500 miles... accordingly, I left Newmarket off the map for now. 3. The most direct interpretation of the routes of the Yendi River, the Adrilankha River, and the "Grand Canal" has them crossing each other... which is, I believe, impossible. Of course, with the Orb, who knows, but if magic allowed them to cross, wouldn't they have "uncrossed" during the Interregnum? Anyway, to keep them from crossing, I left the Grand Canal off the map, and assumed Paarfi is mistaken when he says Khaavren and crew crossed the Yendi River and then the Adrilankha River (in that order) going East... One possible solution: The Grand Canal is a section of the Adrilankha River or Yendi River that has been "worked on" to make it more traversable. 4. Vlad says the only mountain range around Dragaera City is to the west, but Paarfi says the Boiling Mountains were to the east or southeast. To keep both men happy, I set the Boiling Mountains so close to Dragaera City that most of their length was destroyed by Adron's Disaster (Paarfi says at least part of the Boiling Mountains were destroyed). I left a peak or two to the northeast, to serve as the source of the Yendi River. 5. Clearly, the Coastlines, Mountain Ranges, and Rivers are all purely speculative. Here is a general explanation of how I made this map: a. I collected approximately 500 quotes from the novels about geography. b. I wrote a piece of software that accepted as input a set of data in the following format: <from this place>,<to get to this place>,<go this direction>,<this many miles>. It attempted to find the "best fit" for all these "paths". c. I then tweaked by hand the final output of this program. d. I then drew in the terrain that is supported by text. e. I then extrapolated this terrain and filled in the rest of the map using my (hobbyist) knowledge of biomes, climates, geography, etc, etc. To keep the file size as small as possible (the image is approximately 2400x2200 pixels, where 1 pixel = 1 mile), I converted the final map to grayscale, and optimized it with about 52% jpeg compression. This left the labels readable, but kept the image size down to ~200K. Unfortunately, when I converted it to grayscale, the difference between "hills", "forests", and "forested hills" basically shrunk to nil. Take a look at the eastern side of the Eastern Mountains. The little dark splotch that goes northeast is pure hills. There is a forest laid over it, so you should be able to see all three of the above terrain type side by side, and hopefully understand the rest of the map. Specific sites are labeled in one of six ways: 1. Large, italic font - Geographical or Political Region, as in "Sorannah" 2. Small, italic font - Rivers 3. Small bold font, starts with # - A specific location, that isn't a city, like Deathgate Falls. 4. Small bold font, starts with - - A small political region, like the Pepperfields 5. Small bold font, starts with ^ - A mountain/peak, like Mount Kieron 6. Small bold font, starts with * - A city or castle/fortress, like Adrilankha. The Shallow Sea is probably too large; as soon as Brust writes a novel that takes place in the extreme southeast, I'll happily fill in any missing land over there. Again, I'll write up a document explaining in detail how I made this map, with text references, in the next day or two. I would appreciate any criticism (good or bad) and/or suggestions that you have to offer. PS Anyone else think the map looks like the head of a Dragon? My brother and I both noticed it; I assure you it was unintentional on my part. Bryan Newell (http://bryann.net)
