Thursday, December 1, 2011

Mapping: The Adventure Zone

The map below is at a scale of 1" = 1 mile. At 8-1/2" x 11", this makes the map 8-1/2 miles by 11 miles.
It should take about four hours or so so travel from one end of the map to the other, terrain notwithstanding.

Harrow Parish, County Carr, Merchant's Republic: 1" = 1 Mile
The a winding road climbs up to the fortified town of Carrnach, which sits perched atop a hill overlooking Harrow Lake. This road happens to be part of the paved Via Imperium, a relic of a fallen empire. A smaller road continues west with several forks. There is a small fishing hamlet on the shore of Harrow Lake. South of Harrow Ferry, another small hamlet hugs the Greenrush river for about two miles. The Village of Harrow is on an Island in the midst of the Greenrush, accessible by ferry.

Harrow Keep is a ruined keep dating back to the days of the empire. Beyond the keep (ah! just caught the typo!) on the north shore of Harrow Lake lie two small hamlets, fairly isolated even though one of them lies within two miles of Carrnach. Across the Greenrush are two more small hamlets. It is quite conceivable that the people who live there have never been to Carrnach, even though they can see it in the distance on a clear day.

There are numerous opportunities for adventuring in such an area. Besides political and commercial  involvements with the town, village, or any of the hamlets, there may be numerous ruins to explore or discover. Harrow Keep is the most obvious of the ruins, as the crumbling towers can be seen from miles away, but there may certainly be others along the river. The Greenwood and the Dire Bogs can hold all sorts of adventure worthy secrets, and there may even be forgotten caves or dungeons in the hill beneath Harrow Keep. Perhaps there are submerged caves within Harrow Lake. The Islands up the Red River are substantial in size, and any one of them could be the home to an inhuman host.

The adventure is in the space between... in what is not shown, rather than what is shown.

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