NiceMarmot

Welcome! Glad to have you in the guild! I'm only about 11 months out of my dark ages as well. Bought the kid some LEGO for Christmas last year, and, well, one thing led to another and here I am...

Wow! Beautiful. Looks like a successor to MMV. I'd buy that set from TLG! Talk about setting the bar high; the Avalonians are cranking out some seriously good MOCs this week. I'm going to have to double down this weekend and produce some Kaliphlin goodness... Order more tan bricks!

Nice to meet you all! Great to have you in Kaliphlin! I think I'd like to get to know Lady Querida a bit better

Very nice! Great desert/arabian feel to it. The wagon wheel and skeleton are nice touches. I also really like the golden horns on top. And nice job making it fully removable so we can see each floor, including the cellar. I'll be coming over to hang out with you on the sun deck!

The compass rose and the two sea serpents are images I found on the web and cleaned up and slightly modified. The mountains are from custom brush files that someone put together to mimic Tolkien's maps. Again, I have slightly modified them. Everything else is hand drawn (rivers, lakes, shorelines, cliffs, roads, cities), or made from custom brushes that I hand-drew (like the forests, desert speckling, and swamps). And the text comes from the text tool in GIMP. If anyone wants my custom brush files, I'm happy to send them along.

Yakob -- Very nice! I especially like the red and dark tan detailing along the bottom half of the walls! Great details overall actually. You might want to take a few more pics with your minifig crew in action at the workshop. I'll have my ordnance master contact you about some acquiring some ballistas.

Very nice! Love the beams sticking out, and the interior scenes. And I'm jealous of that dark-tan landscape; I've got to get more dark tan plates and bricks! And a very nice arch effect around the front door. I hadn't thought of using that small 1x4 arch in combination with the other two; I'm going to steal, er, borrow that technique!

Extending it was someone else's idea, and it really made sense. Queenscross is turning out to be quite a strategic city! Lots of good MOC opportunities there, with a river port and fortifications, as well as fortifications protecting the pass. It should probably have a mixture of architectural styles, as a real meeting point between north and south, and east and west to some degree too. Are you building all the way down to the bottom of the escarpment? I think that will be hundreds of studs. Maybe you don't need 30 to accurately portray the cliffs; that's a lot of rocks and slopes. If you don't care about watching the desert behind you, then you don't need to build the tower as high either. I'm using GIMP because the $250 PhotoShop probably costs would buy me a lot of bricks on BrickLink! GIMP is fine once you learn how to use it. I used to use PhotoShop a bit at work years ago, and the transition wasn't too bad at all. Yeah I meant to put in the scale, now that we've got it figured out, but I guess I forgot... I'm sure there will be another version eventually anyway.

OK, here it is! This should be the last major revision of the Kaliphlin / Siccus Badlands overall map. Siccus Badlands (Kaliphlin Guildlands) Now with several more cities (Eastgate, Berigora, Na Ghitan, Queenscross, and Ras-el-Akhen), Wither-Woods and Parched Lands names, and all major rivers named. Also added The Dune Sea in the desert south of Salt Lake. Filled in more detail on the other guildlands from various maps. Extended the Great Escarpment west to the Arkbri River, so the Cedrica-Petraea road goes through a pass in the cliffs above Queenscross. We could probably fit in a few more major cities and features if we needed to, but it's at a pretty good place right now. BTW, based on discussions with the Avalonian cartographers, this map has a 2 pixels to the mile scale. From the Avalonian capital to Barqa in the western Siccus it would be about 265 miles by road, or 7.5 days by horse. And from Cedrica to Petraea, the capital of the Badlands, it's 271 miles by roads, which is nearly 8 days. From Barqa to Petraea would be about 215 miles by road, or just over six days on a horse. From Petraea to Qarkyr is about 144 miles, or just over four days on a horse. So maybe ten and a half days from Barqa to Qarkyr. At about 360 miles, that's slightly less than the driving distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Hope you all like it. I'm on a business trip next week, so no LEGO. But will have the computer, so was thinking about creating four or five maps zoomed in on sections of the overall map. Probably one for the east, one for Gorr and the south central coast, one Petraea and the north central Siccus, and one for the east coast. Each one maybe about a 3x zoom in.

Wow. That's really nice. Huge too. I like the variety of building techniques and styles - round, triangular, and square towers, different style roofs, etc. Very impressive. If you get a chance, maybe you could upload some higher resolution pictures of some detail shots? Hard to see the details in a 800x533 photo.

Darecold, welcome! You'll want to stop by Messahmuk, the trading center of the South Central coast, just across the straits from the Spice Islands! We've got good weapons here, with steel forged from ore mined off the slopes of Mt Erezhi. And our warm, dry Mediterranean climate produces red wines that are considered the best in all Historica, including the famous Siccus Opus Select vintages from Castle La-Feet. For white wine, I suggest sailing to Barqa or Eastgate. As far as meat goes, we've got excellent desert hare and camel, but for beef you should head up to Barqa; cattle from the plains north of the city are renowned for their taste. And as for ales, we have some good local ones, but I prefer the burnt dark ales of western Gorr wastelands (Wahil Musca can probably help you there), or the fine stouts of the eastern coastal mountains (stop in Peligrinus on Cape Dahaka and load up). If you go to Peligrinus first, would you mind picking up a few tons of Siccus Serpent Stout for me? I'll pay 1500 guilders per ton. I suggest that you retain one of my merchants, Growlfargh, as your agent in these parts. He's one of your kind who's settled down here for the better weather and the beautiful moonlight nights. A very reliable fellow. I'll post a portrait of him as soon as I find my artist...

Really, really nice, with a lot of great details. I especially like the whole working insides. And damn those pesky Dragon knights! Can't they just leave the peasants alone?

Not sure what you mean by not having the parts, but I assume you don't have enough tan bricks or PoP-style stuff? Let me remind you that Kaliphlin is the most geographically diverse of the guildlands! We've got it all, and there's plenty of room for everyone to build in all sorts of different styles. In fact, that's almost our trademark -- we're a mixed bag of styles, races, geographies, climates, etc. Sure there are lots of deserts in the middle, but we've also got huge forests in the far west. Plus the steep eastern slopes of the Rakath Mountains are heavily forested, with deep fjords and islands, sort of like British Columbia. North of Barqa and around the Arkbri River are grassy plains and rolling hills. In the Rakath we've got steep, rocky mountains, gorges, chasms, etc, some of which are so high they're snowbound all year. Plus we've got a huge coastline. There are plenty of islands, from the cold, foggy islands of the Goolag Archipelago near the Nocturnus border, to the tropical volcanic isles of the Spice Islands, to the pleasant temperate islands surrounding the Inland Sea. In fact, I can't think of a geography that we don't have. And if there's something we're missing that someone would like, let the Master Cartographer (me) know, and I'll see if we can 'discover' it! If you want to leave the guild, that's ok, but don't do it because you don't think your MOCs will fit in. You can pick your style and then find a location that fits it. Kaliphlin's style is whatever a Kaliphlin builder builds!

Well, the Arkbri River runs from the Mitgardian peaks, down past Cedrica, through the Siccus Badlands to the great southern port of Barqa. I think this is the river you're looking for. On the Historica map, it appears that Cedrica is not exactly on the river (if it's location is where the star is), but it could be magically moved. I'd leave that up to Thrash to make that call, since he did the Historica map. Having it right on the river and that big lake in the middle would be nice. Then perhaps Cedrica's citadel could be on an island in the lake, while the city is on shore, connected by a causeway? Plus the Avalonian map shows a river running west from Cedrica through Avalonia, so it would have water connections to Mitgardia, Avalonia, and Kaliphlin. Seems natural that a city would arise near where two major rivers almost meet.

Far be it for a Kaliphlin guildmember to tell you Avalonians what style to build in, but it seems to me that Avalonia is the area with the least amount of stone and the most timber of all the guildlands. So I would imagine your buildings, especially non-fortifications, to be mostly brown timber, palisades, or half-timbered styles. Rohan from LoTR is probably a great model.

Southlanders! I'm working on a (pretty much) final version of the guild map. It's done, except I was thinking of adding two more cities, if anyone wants to stake a claim and name them. One would be where the Cedrica-Petraea road crosses the Arkbri River and begins to climb through a pass in the Great Escarpment up to desert and on the way to Petraea. This is a great location, and probably a huge trading center, as it is on the river and the road, controlling trade on the river between Barqa and the north and trade on the river and road between the north and Petraea. Plus, as one of the few passes up through the cliffs of the Great Escarpment, it's got to be a defensive strongpoint too. The other is somewhere on the southeast coast, between the river delta/swamps and the southern end of the Rakath Mountains. Not sure where exactly to place it, so you can help position it, but we've got a lot of empty room down there and it seems like a good place for another city. There's a nice bay close to the mountains, but then the river delta offers a natural trading route from the sea up to Qarkyr. Maybe there's room for two cities there, one at each end of that coast. Anyone want to name these? Once we get them named, I'll post the map again.

Thanks! I appreciate the praise. It's been kind of fun making the maps. I hadn't really done anything like it before; only had done a little editing of photos before. As you might imagine, I definitely was using the Tolkien maps as an inspiration. Most of the effort has been in learning how to use the image editing tool. I'm using GIMP, which is sort of an open-source PhotoShop, and it's very powerful, but takes a while to learn and get proficient. Luckily there's plenty of tutorials and such on the Web, and there's also quite a lot of good info on the Web for fantasy mapmaking. Apparently there are lots of people making maps for mods to RPGs and so on. I had a week long business trip two weeks ago, with no access to LEGO, so mapmaking was a good thing to do late at night and on the plane. If anyone has any questions about how to do something, I'm happy to pass on what I've learned.

At 1 stud per foot, that would be 4,065,600 studs across. Anyone got that many bricks? I will be doing another version of the Kaliphlin map, probably in the next day or two once we get a few remaining key features named. I will post it to your maps thread when I do.

I posted most of this already in the Avalonia Guild thread, but it's definitely relevant here. On further examination, it appears that both the Avalonia and Kaliphlin guild maps were created with very similar scales in mind: For the Avalonian map, it's about 5.56 pixels per mile (the distance between watchtowers 14 and 18 is 50 miles). The Siccus Badlands map is 'zoomed out' more; it has an approximate scale of 2 pixels per mile. Someone on a good horse on a decent road or path can travel about 35 miles per day (without exhausting the horse; you could go much faster but you wouldn't be able to ride the horse the next day). I make the distance between Cedrica and the Avalonian capital at about 165 miles by the roads, or nearly 5 days by horse. That's probably a good distance. From the Avalonian capital to Barqa in the western Siccus it would be about 265 miles by road, or 7.5 days by horse. And from Cedrica to Petraea, the capital of the Badlands, it's 271 miles by roads, which is nearly 8 days. I think those are all good distances; not too close together, but also not unreasonably far either by medieval standards. From Barqa to Petraea would be about 215 miles by road, or just over six days on a horse. From Petraea to Qarkyr is about 144 miles, or just over four days on a horse. So maybe ten and a half days from Barqa to Qarkyr. At about 360 miles, that's slightly less than the driving distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Medieval ships probably did four to five knots, or 96-120 nautical miles in 24 hours (assuming there is wind). Taking an average and converting to land-miles, that's about 125 miles per day. Barqa to the Spice Islands is about 225 miles, so just under two days best case if you sail through the night (which you probably wouldn't). Barqa to southern Nocturnus is about 750 miles by sea, or six days sail, assuming you don't put into port for the night, and assuming the dragons and storms of Cape Dahaka don't get you. More likely they'd put in for the night rather than run the risk of hitting rocks and reefs, so probably more like a two week trip. Barqa to watchtower #8 in southern Avalonia is about 250 miles, or four days sailing if you stop for the night. By this scale Historica appears to be about 770 miles wide, from the western edge of the Enchanted Isles to the eastern shore of the Moruth Swamplands. I don't have a good map of Mitgardia, so Historica's north-south dimension is harder to measure, but I'd guess it appears to be about 600 miles or so. That puts Historica at about the same size as a rotated Texas, which is about 790 miles north-south and 660 miles east-west. By contrast, France is about 600 miles in both dimensions. We certainly don't need to get too accurate about scale and so forth (this is medieval cartography after all), but it's good to know what the approximate distances and travel times are.

"Yeah, it's nice and all, but, boy, today is really going slow. Life is dragging so much it's like time is practically frozen... Anyway, this dagger sure is great for opening tins of donuts!"

That's very interesting -- that makes the distance between your capital city and Cedrica about 130 miles as the crow flies. I was working off assumptions for the Kaliphlin map that gave almost the same exact value (140 vs 130)! Good to know that we arrived at approximately the same scale. By the way, someone on a good horse on a decent road or path can travel about 35 miles per day (without exhausting the horse; you could go much faster but you wouldn't be able to ride the horse the next day). I make the distance between Cedrica and your capital at about 165 miles by the roads, or nearly 5 days by horse. That's probably a good distance. From your capital to Barqa in the western Siccus it would be about 265 miles by road, or 7.5 days by horse. And from Cedrica to Petraea, the capital of the Badlands, it's 271 miles by roads, which is nearly 8 days. I think those are all good distances; not too close together, but also not unreasonably far either by medieval standards. By that scale Historica appears to be about 770 miles wide, from the western edge of the Enchanted Isles to the eastern shore of the Moruth Swamplands. I don't have a good map of Mitgardia, so the north-south dimension is harder to measure, but I'd guess it appears to be about 600 miles or so. That puts Historica at about the same size as a rotated Texas, which is about 790 miles north-south and 660 miles east-west. By contrast, France is about 600 miles in both dimensions.

Lord Khelperth -- as Dextrus Flagg says, it's probably no big deal where the border is exactly, as cartography in our medieval time is certainly no exact science. Our map of the Siccus Badlands does not even have a border drawn on it yet. However, since Dugal MacLean and his clan have staked a claim at the mouth of the Red River, and pledged for Kaliphlin, we should probably keep it north of the river's mouth. My best guess would be, on your map, that the border starts on the coast just north of small, green island below the word "Ocean", and runs approximately due east until it reaches the point where the Red River crosses the Barqa-Avalonia road, just south of those mountains, which we have always considered to be part of Avalonia. From that point east, we would probably agree with the existing border on your map. By the way, does Avalonia's capital city have a name?

I have conferred with their cartographer, and he states: So it appears that the Avalonians do not have extensive knowledge of the border-lands, and have simply erred in their placement of the border. No harm done. But I still think we should build a few watchtowers on the northern banks of the river and in the Wither Woods to solidify our claims...

I must admit, as a son of the desert, I am always a bit freaked out by the sight of so much fresh water when I visit Avalonia. Our southern instinct is to build cisterns or reservoirs to conserve the water for the inevitable drought. That you all let it run free everywhere all over your land is amazing to us. Our sentiments exactly! I am about to send a ship north to Avalonia to procure lumber for a bit of a building spree we have going on; this map will greatly help them find their way.

Kcaj and Dugal, welcome aboard! Tales of your feats and exploits has preceded you, and we are glad to have you with us! Fellow guildmembers -- I have received a copy of an Avalonian map, the first I have ever seen, though my travels to that part of the world have been many. I will update our own map with some of these new discoveries. One thing to note on their map -- they claim their border runs to the southern edge of the river that empties into the Inland Sea, the one Dugal MacLean calls the Red River (a fine name, btw). I had always thought our border was miles to the north, in the Wither-Woods forest north of the northernmost island bordering the Inland Sea. I'm sure Dugal has some opinions on the border also. To further stake our claim, perhaps we need a flurry of watchtower building on the northern banks of the Red River, and in the Wither-Woods. I have sent several ships with some of my best masons to scout out appropriate locations and begin building, but they will be able to manage only one or two towers at best. Gex