Map of the Moonshae Isles - and a note on your PC's knowledge of geography

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Knighted
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Map of the Moonshae Isles - and a note on your PC's knowledge of geography

Post by Knighted »

Important note about your character's in-game knowledge of the Isles:
Accurate and useful maps of the geography of the Moonshae Isles are not commonly bought and sold on Gwynneth.

Moreover, there is simply no such thing as a complete map containing all the major locations on each Island.

To your knowledge, no-one has fully mapped Gwynneth, as much of its land mass is wild and untamed; though that does not mean that there is no point in asking local people, scholars, druids or others for information on locations you may wish to find. And it certainly doesn't mean that there is nothing for you to find out in the wilds...

Those who wish to find a particular location they have heard of, should seek information from local peoples, scholars, druids, sailors or other people on Gwynneth - but some locations may simple be hidden and you can only find them by going out and looking!


In particular, locations such as many of the groves and moonwells of the druids, are hidden and would need to be searched for, as even powerful or learned figures such as a member of the royal family, lairds, or scholars may not know of their locations. That is, unless you can convince a druid to tell you...

To many residents of the mainland, the Isles are dismissed as a far-off and unremarkable backwater; even those who dwell in the great trading cities of the Sword Coast are likely to have limited knowledge of this setting. However, those well learned of lore would no doubt have some rough knowledge of the general geography of the Isles (especially the geography of the coastline which sailors will, to a basic extent have made charts of over the years).

The local Ffolk, of course, have no need of maps; everyone knows where everything is, after all! An' anyone who don't know, well they must be a foreign'r, an' so they's not to be trusted no-how.


For these reasons, your character is unlikely to have much knowledge of the geography of the Isle of Gwynneth unless you have invested in Lore, or unless you are someone local who has a good reason for knowing much more geography than a regular resident of Gwynneth would ordinarily know. Even then, your character will not be able to get ahold of detailed maps of the interior of the island; as noted above, much of Gwynneth is known to be wild and untamed, and vast stretches of its land have no civilisation at all, only the very occasional isolated farming hamlet or village.


Image
A rough, parchment map, drawn by hand by Cmdr. Vermis of the Caer Corwell guards, shown to certain characters who were aiding the Guards in combatting a bandit menace...


OOC note, 29/3/2021:
Our team, spearheaded by Bartleby, Stormbringer, Senor_T and Electryc, began re-building the mod mostly from scratch in late summer 2020. They were later joined by Zetamog and El Grillo.

One of the reasons for starting afresh, instead of just re-hosting and building on the pre-existing old mod, was so that the new Moonshaes can be built accurately to-scale with the canon map you see above. This follows the precedent set by Waterdeep and other servers, but as a standard approach we are using the largest possible area size NWN supports, in order to properly communicate to players a true sense of the grand sweep of landscape that makes up the Isles. By contrast, the old mod (being mostly built by more sane individuals than ourselves, and in a time when computing resources were more of an issue) took a more liberal attitude to the canon geography of the Moonshaes.

As of spring 2021, a large chunk of southern Gwynneth is already in-game and playable. Players of the original mod may recognise that the various separate areas which used to make up Corwell City have been salvaged, and are now stitched together into the single large contiguous city area you can see in the mod today. However, almost all other areas, including many of the Corwell city interiors, have been built from scratch.

At the time of posting, work is focusing on perfecting low-level content and filling the current map areas with things to do; you can check our releases thread for a highly abridged version of the additions, fixes and updates that have been made to the mod since launch.

However, there are a host of areas waiting to be given the finishing touches and be linked up to the mod. Much of our current content work is designed to allow us to more easily and quickly populate the new areas we will soon start adding.
Morevoer, other areas outside the initial launch zone of southern Gwynneth, including the epic location of High Home (the dwarf city in the Cambro Mountains of eastern Gwynneth) have been salvaged from the original mod and will be updated & making a return in due course.
As winter thaws and the mountain passes open up, those areas - together with many more brand new areas - will gradually be linked up and become visit-able by players, as we continue to expand the borders of the mod. In time, other islands will also become accessible as sea-routes open up.

Our aim is to bring as much of this characterful, epic setting to life as we possibly can.

We hope you enjoy exploring. Good luck on your second character!
UKTZ DM and builder on the ALFA: Sea of Swords server The Moonshae Isles. Builder on Daggerford server. Contact me on Discord for any DM-related queries.
Find out more about the NWN1 revival (in NWN: Enhanced Edition) at www.alfanwn1.org

Discord u/n is El Grillo. GSID is Elyas T'almera.
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Knighted
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Re: Map of the Moonshae Isles - and a note on your PC's knowledge of geography

Post by Knighted »

Update, 19/11/2021

In recent weeks and months, the size of the mapped area of Gwynneth has increased dramatically, and even some of the old module's still-extant locations such as small towns, villages, and the dwarven stronghold of High Home, have been linked up to new areas. Since launch, the size of the exterior area of the module has tripled, and a large number of dungeon locations, interior areas such as shops, and other places of interest - along with NPCs and enemies to populate them - have been added and populated.

The next phase of development, once the completion of our upcoming version 7.2 hak update is complete, will be to begin re-establishing the sea routes that link the Isles together, allowing players to once more travel the waves seeking out adventure across other isles besides Gwynneth.
Initially this will involve re-connecting old areas such as Hammerstaad and Rottesheim in the Norheim isles, and a few other locations.

Once old areas have been re-connected to the mod, we will begin looking at renovating any areas which look like they're showing particular signs of their age.

You can read summary notes on the major Moonshae Isles module releases in this thread: viewtopic.php?p=641048#p641048
UKTZ DM and builder on the ALFA: Sea of Swords server The Moonshae Isles. Builder on Daggerford server. Contact me on Discord for any DM-related queries.
Find out more about the NWN1 revival (in NWN: Enhanced Edition) at www.alfanwn1.org

Discord u/n is El Grillo. GSID is Elyas T'almera.
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