Sword Coast South

North Part 1 (Icewind Dale and Surbrin Vale)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The Silver Marches

I did this map to compliment The Wailing Dwarf article recently appearing over at WotC. I've greatly expanded the territory covered so as to include the stuff on the Old Valishar Map. A couple of things - The town of Elastam in Erlkazar was created by me, but the Duchy of Elestam was the name of this region when Tethyr controlled it, and there is also a local canon group called "Elestam's Crusaders". It was probably supposed to be a person's name, but I hate leaving crossroads without settlements so I found the closest thing I could to a canon one. The second thing is Redwater Lake; the name is mine, because I consulted at least a dozen sources with the lake, but none of them named it. On my original I called it the "East Lake of the Snake", but that was a mouthful. I took the name from the canon village sitting on it's shores. Everything else should be much closer to the original 2e maps then my last one, and I included many new locales I found. Some things may appear a little off from their 2e locations, but this area was greatly reduced so some ‘squishing’ was required to fit everything back in. When a discrepancy occurred between maps, I always deferred to text sources for exact placement. If you're not familiar with my map Symbols (they are slightly different then the official ones), refer to the Map Key also on my site. One major difference is the Octagon with the ‘X’ in the middle – it denotes an abandoned site, rather then a ruin.

Finally got this part finished. It's 95% canon from the old 2e Horde Maps, along with stuff added from modules. The rolling hills above Ejen Horo was my idea, because the Copper Mountains moved further away with 3e, and I wanted a way of defining that special area from the upper regions. Also, the name "Clearflow Vale" was my add, to help keep track of the different parts of the waste. The same goes for the "Dry Steppes". As usually, I tried to get everything back where it belong by modifying the 3e maps to conform to 2e lore. The biggest problem was the region between the Godswatch Mountains and the Jumpa river gorge - after rotating the map back to its original angle the lower half of the Hordelands got 'squished' (and the Horse Plains gained some room). I did the best I could, but Jorhat Citadel wound up north of Leopard Shan, when it should have been south. I suppose I could have shrunk Semphar up a bit, but I did that country awhile back, and only added the four campaign maps together recently. I didn't want to have to re-do Semphar from scratch, and the region that got compressed wasn't very important anyway. This region goes north of my 'Golden Waters/Ulgarth' map already posted.

EDIT: This NEWEST version has TWO non-canon locations - the Al-Visar Fortress and the Ruins of Troos. The fortress is the northeastern outpost of of the new nation of Yaimmunahar, constructed of Purple Stone salvaged from the Raurin Desert (and it radiates a slight magical aura). The ruins of of the capitol of lost Tsharoon, a short-lived kingdom that was swallowed up by the Quoya desert some 800 years ago.

This is MY Thay. All locations are canon - I have made some minor changes to geography to have things fit better with older maps. All the roads are canon as well, except for the 'dotted line' leading from the mountains to beacon Cairn. It just seemed kind of strange to me for the trail to just end at the mountains, so I made a path to where I think the Thayans would be most interested in going.

A black dot is a settlement, a circle a small city, a circle with a dot a large city, and two circles with a dot (the bullseye looking thing) is a metropolis. The circle with the square in it (Glarondar) is a fortified city. All other map symbols conform to the official FR maps.

.

I tried to place all of the 2e cities and towns as best I could given the changes to Halruaa's shape between editions. There was an 'unamed town' just above Talathgard on the original map, that I wanted to include. The first problem was the location - the Bandit Pass was no longer next to Mount Tallath - things had shifted quite a bit. I decided it should be a Large Fortress (Citadel), reflecting the proximity to the Bandit Wastes, so I kept it closer to it's original site, moving it further away from Talathgard, which it used to be NW of. I like that it's on the end of the Bandit Pass, and of course I changed it from a Town to a Fortress (the size of town, with many civilians living within the walls in 'support roles'. It is named after Halruaa's founder.

I also 'coolified' the area around Mhairhetol - When I rotated the maps back to their original, and merge the official halruaa with the rotated one, things got a little weird in that corner (I wound up with duplicate mountains), especially since I 'smushed' stuff to get Sharreach back. I think it looks much better now (Volcanos!), and that narrow strip of Jungle is a nice little addition for DMs to develop as they see fit.

The map in the 3e SS book showed a little 'booger' of land sticking out in the SW, that doesn't show up on any other map. The old 2e SS map shows an island there - so I compromised. The land is now a Bayou-like Jungle-filled swamp that can actually be crossed over in quite a few places in shallow boats, and becomes disconeccted from the mainland during storms or other periods of exceptionally high tides. I also made up the name. Everything Else should be canon, although I did take the liberty of putting 'swampy' terrain in the Azhal pass (it seemed appropriate). I'm thinking 4e Swamp-halflings in Zhal.