Apr
22nd
2018
Charting the territory · 12:31pm Apr 22nd, 2018
If you've ever delved into the blogposts surrounding the Palaververse, you'll have had cause to rue that the only world maps available as reference points were those produced by my own hand. If you've not seen them, just know I've got the same knack for legible draftsmanship and cartography as a particularly inept tree-stump, and adjust your expectations accordingly.
Rue no more.
Courtesy of Fallen Knight, an actually good map of Ungula and surrounding territories. There's colour. There's bonny wee city icons. There's clear labels. There's appropriate terrain and all sorts. It's a cool-as-heck thing to have had done, and all due appreciation to Fallen Knight for it. 
oh man :D
Sweet!
This map is really well done!
Though I notice that there really isn't anything to the south. There is the Utmost North,
where Elsa has built her castlea place we know absolutely nothing about, but what is to the south? Antarctica, land of Giant Ants?And is Antleris anywhere on this map? Or should I throw a dart in the middle of the oceans and say, "There's Antleris!"
So, geography question.
In the later versions of the official map that were produced after you originally made this, Griffonstone was introduced as a city or kingdom on another continent eastwards across the sea from Equestria. Now, the Palaververse map already ignored the official one when it was first made, by orienting Manehattan and Equestria's east coast in general to the south instead (while somehow also keeping the Crystal Empire to the north). My question is... since Equestria in the Palaververse doesn't have an east coast, and yet Griffonstone is still a thing... where is it? Is it due south, in the Cheval Sea? Is it west? I want to say that it's on the other side of that large inlet with the island in the middle, since that actually corresponds fairly well with the official map, but that's Asinian territory, isn't it?
I actually found out that you can import up to 10 assets of your own so i found a vector of canterlot, for the girffon tribes ill try something nordish.
Should actually read the blog post of each nation to properly put themes to them i imagine.
Sweet, I'll add my heartfelt thanks to Fallen Knight as well. Now I'm of course hoping this blessed content creator will convert the southern part of your great geographical gift into the same kind of gorgeous map ;)
Oh, this is gorgeous. I give my thanks to Fallen Knight -- that is a very nice map. All the little details like the cities and the dragon in the Burning Mountains really make it come alive.
4845113
Ain't it just. Major thanks are due and then some.
4845114
4845118
The sweetest.
4845120
Southaways, you get the rest of the known world, as cack-handedly rendered here. Ceratos south-east of Ungula, with Dactylia south-west and running all the way down to Utmost South.
Antlertis lies on the other side of the world, somewhere in the vast Black Ocean ... or so beings can only presume, none having survived any voyage to discover it.
4845121
I'd had the notion that Griffonstone was to the north, amidst some of the nice big mountain ranges there, and with no sea betwixt it and the rest of Equestria. Roundabouts where it says 'Griffon Tribes' on this one is where you'll find its Palaververse incarnation.
It's not my worst sin against canon, grant me that.
4845122
Ace! I'm keen to see what you reckon's a suitable theme for each one.
4845126
Deid sweet, and many thanks due indeed. T'would be ace if they did, though discerning two additional continents and all associated details from my scrawling would be a big ask.
4845133
Oh jings, I hadn't even noticed the wee dragons. That makes it even lovelier.
4845120
Antlertis IS the Black Ocean, or at least the epicenter of it. The australia-sized island-continent of Antlertis got shoved down to the bottom of the sea by an angry Yog-Sothoth. The supernaturally monolithic nature of the event subducted the entire sea floor towards Antlertis for thousands of miles in every direction into the crust of the earth, turning that section of the planet's sea floor into an an unnaturally smooth abbyssal plane . The "Black" part of the sea is due to the nasty hole rent into reality by the Antlertian mage-lords when they tried to reverse the summoning ritual for Hastur in an attempt to invade and-or enslave the Outer Gods domain, and the lingering wrath of Hastur from the initual summoning ritual has turned that wound in reality into a magical eye of a cursed storm, with clouds as black as night and as violent as a category 6 hurricane that spreads across an entire hemisphere of the planet, with cursed winds occasionally blowing beyond the border of the storm.
Please note that "To The Black Ocean" is marked on both sides of the map!
4845135
Okay, granted. You have still yet to surpass time-travelling Sombra.
Ooh, cool! I've been a sucker for fantasy maps ever since being exposed to Tolkien at a young and impressionable age, and this one is quite lovely.
4845136
As decent a summary as any.
Yup. The Black Ocean's bloody massive.
4845158
4845174
I hear that. The Lord of the Ring's maps and appendices did terrible, terrible things to my impressionable young mind.
4845194
Now do one with Sombra and the Crown posturing at each other.
Whelp.
Canterlot is a bit jarring compared to the rest. But hey the candy colored tiny horses called Equestrians also stand out so its fitting i guess. Maybe overdid it with the hills and mountains but that all easily fixed. Onwards to actually reading about the lore and finding out how the land looks like!
oi64.tinypic.com/zu04sp.jpg
http://oi64.tinypic.com/zu04sp.jpg
If you notice any changes to the land and such, thats totally your imagination and not the fact that the last saved version was just the empty land mass (hexagonal squares).
4845201
I would, but I'm not sure how I can end it in any other way than them arguing over what colour the wallpaper in their new house should be.
4845213
Hah, that's excellent! Good wee icons for each of them. Canterlot's good and distinctive, aye.
So, have you made any decisions on how the Palaververse will be affected by the Storm King and the hippogriff additions to canon?
4845226
Ah, that there's one of the scary decisions. I'd definitely love to include them, the hippogriffs especially, though I'll admit the movie and season 7 finale managed to torpedo more than a few Palaververse elements. Natural consequence of canon filling in its own unexplored gaps, I suppose. I'll give it thought.
Nice; thanks to Fallen Night for this. :)
Though I do think your maps still have a certain charm to them.
4845194
""I'm a wizard-king, speck, and can and shall do whatever.""
...
Brain.
Brain, why are you now shipping Sombra and the Crown. Brain, why.
4845225
...And apparently my brain isn't the only one! :D
4845229
...Uh. Hm. It does occur to me, it just came up in these comments that there's one famous, gigantic, perpetual storm in the Palaververse... one so fearsome and unexplored that it's potentially plausible some inhabited islands close enough to the edge to have survived the Fall and not be immediately deadly to their inhabitants might just have been missed by explorers. And if an angry, violent, powerful lone unicorn alienated from her people and with nothing much to lose decided to carve her own path and seek power for herself by being the first to plunge all the way into that storm and return, she might fail at that and still blunder into those islands and their harsh people unknown by or knowing of the rest of the world.
I mean, that only takes care of fitting some of the aspects of the movie in, and might not even work for that, but it seemed an interesting idea, at least.
4845229
Hmm. The dangers of creating fan material for an active and evolving canon -- beyond a point, it stops being a question of if the show will contradict your universe and more a question of when and how throughly it will do so.
I suppose that this is the sort of situation where an option might be to integrate one's preferred elements piecemeal -- so, rather than trying to fit in the whole plot and world, which may not really be squeezeable in into the preestablished universe in question, one can think "well, I like this element/character/setting/whatever, and it looks like I can fit them in this part of my canon with only minimal adjustments if that, so I might go ahead and include them there".
(For instance, I think this is more or less what you did with Griffonstone and the Yaks? Your universe was already around when "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone" and "Party Pooped" aired, and you managed to weave them in with your preexisting lore fairly well. Same with the Dragon Lordship from "Gauntlet of Fire" and your preexisting Fire Queen. Insofar as the movie goes, I'm not so sure how that could work... perhaps Capper's species and/or the parrots could be among the many sapients of Gazellen?)
Alternatively, 4845255's idea might have some merit -- I don't know how deadly you envision the storms of the Black Ocean, but the magic of the Wyld Storms would at least account for the menagerie of bipedal animal-people in Klugetown. The issue with that would be what to do with the hippogriffs, since Mount Aris seems markedly pleasant and non-storm-wracked.
All this may be completely incompatible with what you want your world to look like, of course. Feel free to disregard if so.
4845265
Oh, the idea I proposed was only, in my conception, for the Storm King's own homeland and people; I didn't have something for any of the others.
4845289
Ah. Fair enough, I could see that working. The official map released with the movie did show his realm as being a rocky, jagged, lightning-blasted island way at the arse end of the world.
4845291
Huh, I didn't even know/remember that; thanks.
4845255
4845265
Still concocting any way to contrive Palaververse congruity with show canon, but I might well revisit these comments when doing so. Fizzlepop venturing into the Black Ocean in search of power certainly appeals as a notion, and if there's any nation in the world I've established that has enough diversity and undefinedness to accommodate Klugetown and the new species, it'd be Gazellen. It even has deserts. And access to a vast expanse of terrifying, unexplored jungle from which anything could emerge.
Issues would arise with regards to geography and travel - at what point off-screen would the main six have crossed the Cheval Sea?, and others - and it's almost certainly going to be a case of integrating things piecemeal. I'd definitely prefer to site Mount Aeris closer to Equestria than Dactylia. But hopefully there'll be a few clever things i can do to weave them in.
I'll definitely consider things.
Looks lovely!
Also, have you mentioned much about the Utmost North? I recall a small amount of it being talked about in the early parts of the Capra blog, but nothing else comes to mind.
4845361
I don't think I've gone into much detail about the Utmost North. It's been referenced once or twice as having had expeditions head up into it (and invariably not return, because the setting's beings doesn't get to fill in their maps that easily), and I've got the vague outline of a story in or proximal to it, but otherwise, I think I've been pretty vague on it.
4845356
Well, if I end up having been of help here, pleased to be so. :)
4845213
Out of curiosity, what did you use to make the map?
4845417
A web based thing called inkarnate. Has some assets (most of what you see is their own, except canterlot that i imported to it manually and just cut out the asinian one from a showing of their pro version lol).
Its really easy to use, and the basic version is free (the pro one is the one thats being developed and improved by its creator, the free one is more of a trial version).
God I love a map. It's not a proper fantasy novel unless it's got a map at the front of the book. Especially one with an area on it where Dragons Be.
Thank you to Fallen Knight for drawing it, and you for sharing it. It's lovely!
4845922
Gotta love a map. There's some fantasy authors whose stuff I enjoy who have a strange aversion to dispensing them, and though I may be biased, that's the worst possible aversion.
4845924
There's a thesis (or at least a really amusing third year English Lit paper) in finding a correlation between fantasy maps and the fun you have in reading the book.
With massive amounts of citing Ben Aaronovitchs' exceptionally charming Rivers of London series, which commits itself so well to the Map Theory of Joy that it whacks a beautifully drawn map of the weirder areas of London right on the cover.
4845935
Hadn't heard of Rivers of London before, but on that recommendation, the map fixation, and on looking it up, definitely giving it a read soon.