I drew this map on paper. Everything on it that is a shape — the coastlines, the black ink — got read back off the picture by a script and wrapped around a sphere. Everything on it that is a note — the rivers, the roads, the towns, the place names in green — stayed flat, because annotation belongs somewhere you can read it and not smeared around the curve of a globe.
Six regions, forty landmasses. Point at one to light it up, or use the list underneath, which works the same and does not require you to hit a four-pixel islet. The back half of the world is open ocean: I only drew the front.
Bagii Atoll
- Capital
- None — the market moves with the season
- Main export
- Everything, briefly. It is a place goods pass through
A broken ring of islets off Kretavia's east coast, and the only place Feldian and Kretavian merchants reliably meet. Both sides prefer it that way: business happens on ground neither of them owns.
Bagii Isles
- Capital
- None recorded
- Main export
- Ships, crews, and pilots who can read a kraken's weather
The chain off Feldia's west coast and the primary home of the Bagii. They are not easily impressed and they do not talk about Jrakvia, which is its own kind of statement about Jrakvia.
Eisenmark
- Capital
- Eisenstadt
- Main export
- Weapons, chain, and iron by the ton
Closed borders, open forges, and the whole western foot of the Spine, from the Korn's spring down to the sea. Trade with Kretavia has grown a great deal of late and diplomatic contact has become routine, and neither party has explained why. Its Duke has held the seat longer than looks reasonable.
Erka Fjords
- Capital
- None — each fjord answers to itself
- Main export
- Dragon oil, bone, and passage north of the Dragon Line
Snow, mountain tops, and cold water. The only latitude dragons range, and the Erkish are the only people who have made anything of that rather than simply moving away from it.
Feldia
- Capital
- Kronstadt
- Main export
- Grain, wool, and the peace between its own duchies
Eight duchies bound by habit and trade more than by unity, with a High King who negotiates rather than commands. It works, mostly, and everyone involved is quietly aware of how little holds it together. East of the Spine are the Wastes, and something there is wrong.
Grenzmark
- Capital
- Grenzburg
- Main export
- Cavalry, and men who have already seen a war
The march, running from the Korn down to the northern shore of the Sea of Coin. It has fought every neighbor it has at least once and keeps the horses to do it again. Border patrols have been going missing lately; the official word is desertion and nobody's family believes it.
Jrakvia
- Capital
- Not disclosed
- Main export
- Nothing. That is the policy, not an accident
An island that broke off Kretavia's Old Wood and drifted. Three hundred uninterrupted years later it has looked at the rest of the world and declined. The geography enforces the decision without walls or armies — what arrives comes in by accident, and what leaves does not go back the way it came.
The Kharsa
- Capital
- None — the oasis cities each keep their own
- Main export
- Metalwork, textiles, and water rights
The desert proper. Cities sit where the water is and the distance between them is measured in what a party can carry. It is not dramatic country. It kills the unprepared quietly, in ordinary weather.
Kirchberg
- Capital
- Kirchberg
- Main export
- Scholarship, letters, and counsel nobody asked for
Feldia's oldest university and its most influential bishop, on a hill, in that order of self-regard. A great deal of what the rest of the duchies believe about the world was written down here first.
Kornfeld
- Capital
- Feldmark
- Main export
- Grain, livestock, and horses
Flat open steppe under wide skies, and the duchy Feldia cannot do without — it feeds the rest. Horse culture runs deep, the grasslands carry wild herds, and the distances between towns are real distances.
Kronstadt
- Capital
- Kronstadt
- Main export
- Wine, credit, and access to the court
The seat of the High King and the largest trade city in Feldia, with wine country running west of it to the coast. A chairman's capital rather than a conqueror's: business gets done here by leverage, and everyone doing it knows exactly what everyone else is owed.
Kretavia
- Capital
- No single seat — a council of religious and military authority
- Main export
- Fine metalwork, textiles, dates, and missionaries
The southern desert nation, older in faith than Feldia and certain of it. Its traders carry more soldiers than the goods require and its missionaries travel armed, which the Kretavians consider prudent and everyone north of the Sea of Coin considers something else.
The Old Wood
- Capital
- None
- Main export
- Timber, resin, and things the resin is used for
Ancient forest on the mountainous west coast, older than the faith that surrounds it. Jrakvia broke off this coast and drifted; whatever the Old Wood is rooted in, the island took the branch and left the root.
Sahalim
- Capital
- None — a coast of port towns
- Main export
- Dates, citrus, salt fish, and shipping
The green coast. Mediterranean weather, irrigated ground, and every harbor Kretavia has. If a northerner has been to Kretavia at all, they have been here and nowhere else.
Seehaven
- Capital
- Seehaven
- Main export
- Ships, salt, and salt fish
Feldia's coast, its harbors, and its temper. Seehaven shares a canal with Kretavia and has been raided across it often enough that a southern sail on the horizon empties a market square.
The Sundered Sand
- Capital
- None. People do not settle here
- Main export
- Guides, at a premium
The south-east, where the stories cluster. Riders arriving days before they set out; a camp that burns down every night and is whole by morning; a man who came back speaking of forty years and had not aged a season. Scholars argue about what it is and have never agreed. Guides charge more to cross it and do not linger.
Steinmark
- Capital
- Grimmhold
- Main export
- Iron, coal, stone
Highlands at the head of the Spine. Hard country, hard weather, and people who have concluded from both that outsiders generally want something. They are usually right.
Waldheim
- Capital
- Waldmark
- Main export
- Timber, fur, charcoal
The deep wood. Insular, older than the Crusade, and pagan enough about it that the church has stopped making a point of the matter. Things are left at the treeline here and nobody local finds that remarkable.
The Wastes
- Capital
- None. Nothing holds here
- Main export
- Nothing anyone will admit to carrying out
Badlands east of the Spine, which is the only reason Feldia sleeps. Whatever is wrong out here has been wrong for a long time and is not getting better.