#dragon age map

[ammocharis]

Thedas

Interactive map of Thedas

Earlier this year, fandom wiki site has introduced the "interactive maps" feature. Now, the Dragon Age wiki has its first fully interactive map!

[exhausted-archivist]

Where are the Deep Roads?

Thoughts as of July 2024 - watch The Veilguard just kick this all over like a sandcastle.

So I've been plucking away at maps for a while, and I've been finding new things and yelling about them near endlessly. The depth of the Deep Roads being one of them, and how they're so cold you will apparently freeze to death without a heat source. There is a lot, and I really hope we get more for da4. But I digress. I've been trying to figure out where the dao Deep Roads map fits on the map, especially as I finish up my Ferelden map.

My current thoughts are that it roughly looks something like this:

Assumptions Made for this Map

The golem marker on the Deep Roads map to the left of Orzammar is Amgarrak and not Kal'Hirol.

The star marker on the keep map for Orzammar is the actual location of the thaig, as the surface entrance itself is likely several miles/km away due to the depth of the Deep Roads.

That like in Horrors of Hormack short story in Tevinter Nights, the staircase leading into Orzammar isn't one straight shot but a set of spiral staircases and antechambers.

That the Deep Roads section we traverse are smaller than Ferelden since it takes only a month to cross them despite collapsed pathways, cave ins, darkspawn, mega fauna - blighted and otherwise; while it takes a year to travel the entire nation of Ferelden.

The crossed axes south of the Anvil of the Void are a marker for an entrance to the surface/to the Avvar. This is used to mark entry points to the surface in the DA TTRPG as well.

Where am I Getting the Lore?

Dragon Age Keep World Lore Map

It gives some information not found elsewhere, however it is taken with a grain of salt; because like most BioWare lore sources there are some contradictions on locations of previously visited locations. Such as the Kal'Hirol thiag and Soldier's Peak.

The Keep map marks Kal'Hirol south of Amaranthine and next to Soldier's Keep. However, this is a discrepancy compared to the location provided in Awakening.

Amgarrak's location

On the Dragon Age Keep, they label that Amgarrak is south of Jader and west of Orzammar.

Deep Roads Lore from the TTRPG

This, while canon unless stated otherwise by more recent/direct from BioWare, should be taken with a grain of salt. In the adventure Buried Pasts establishes this lore provided by BioWare.

Heat and Fuel

The majority of Deep Roads and thaigs are built about two to four miles beneath sea level, although in the Frostbacks that means they're actually much deeper beneath the surface. Dwarven mining galleries normally stretch up rather than down, tunneling up into the mountain regions of Ferelden and Orlais from beneath, while the thaigs themselves burrow downward toward pockets of lava that have moved up from the mantle. Most older thaigs (including Orzammar) have open regions of molten rock near their center that are used for heat, while more modern thaigs (ironically those more likely to be abandoned thanks to the darkspawn pushing the dwarven empire back on itself) used steam heating. Inhabited regions between thaigs are heated and lit by oil lamps using the fat from nugs and brontos. Away from lava or artificial heating, the Deep Roads are bitterly cold. The lack of weather is a mercy, but travelers that go too long without a source of heat will begin to feel the effects. As their lanterns are likely the source of their heat as well as light, travelers must take extra care with the amount of fuel they have; the dwarven empire once maintained frequent waystations along the Roads for resupply, but running out of lamp oil in the modern Deep Roads can be a death sentence...

-- Dragon Age Tabletop RPG, Buried Pasts p. 4

[samsdaimods]

4k Map Textures by Lala125

4k Upscale of all Map Textures (+ DLC)

DOWNLOAD

[rubecso]

(Click the link below the image for a full-size version) Behold! A new super-detailed Dragon Age map to add to my ones of Ferelden and Orlais. This time it's the Free Marches. This one took a lot more creative license than the others, 'cause the canon information is much scarcer. There are the named city states and a few other locations, but other than that almost every location is my own invention. Same goes for some of the terrain; I put a lot of farmland along the river and inland, with patches of plains or swamp here and there. While I drew internal borders for the other two, I decided to try something different here. Since the Free Marches is a collection of city states, it makes sense that their territory is subject to a lot of shift. I reflected this by giving each city a central heartland that solidly belongs to it, then a region of outer territory that's mostly under their control, then a region of Marches between each one where the ownership is much less secure. I really like how it turned out. Placename-wise, Free Marches doesn't really have a clear OC language as reference. So I used a mixture of different roots and used a semi-consistent system for putting them together. Down in the south there's more overlap with Fereldan place names, up North there are some Romance roots to reflect the border with Antiva. Over by Nevarra I used some Basque root's; I don't think this is reflected in canon but they provided some good variety. Forts/ruins/deep road entrances are almost all my invention. For tabletop purposes, feel free to add or change as you need. This was a fun one! Thanks to Aaron for requesting it :)

[jackdawyt]

The (US) physical copy of Tevinter Nights comes with this stunning map! 

[dragonage4news]

In 2016, Mark Darrah was getting a ‘big map printed...’ 👀

[barbex]

The Fifth Blight

I’m really bad when it comes to dragon age lore. Names, numbers, heartfelt letters found on the floor in a burning house -- they all just fly by me as I run to the next elfroot. But I’m a fic writer and that compels me to obsess needlessly over tiny details to mention in one half sentence that nobody cares about. 

So, the Fifth Blight, eh? That’s the one during Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2. I wondered how far it actually spread and how many fereldans got in contact with darkspawn, so that they fled over the Waking Sea.

Here’s a map of the Fifth Blight across Ferelden, according to the info on the wiki:

I’m certain that’s not all of the area affected, these are just the places mentioned in the wiki. And not every area got Blight sickness like Lothering from it, or the Hinterlands would be a very bleak place in DA:I.

[wyrdsistersofthedas]

I look in wonder at your skills with Thedas' map. I have a problem I wish I had an answer to: How does Redcliffe village work? We get different maps for it in DAO and in DAI (supposed eastern part) and they don't seem to fit together. I can also not make heads or tails of Redcliff's supposed location on the world map (like with position of rivers/lake) in relation to the mini map in, say DAI. Nothing seems to add up. Could you help me make sense of this? Maybe maps need some turning or sth.?

*blush*  Thank you so much for your kind words!  It is a labor of love…that occasionally causes me to want to tear my hair out.  ;)  Redcliffe is one of those places that makes not only my scalp to itch, but my eye twitch.  (So at least we are in good company.)  

Nothing about the geographical lore of Redcliffe makes any sense.  For example, the codex entry used both in Origins and Inquisition is full of nonsensical statements.  For example:

“King Calenhad Theirin once famously declared, “The fate of Redcliffe is the fate of all Ferelden.” Certainly, the castle is the first and last defense for the sole land route into Ferelden, and the country has never fallen to any force that did not first capture Redcliffe.”

Um…what?  Redcliffe is on the sole land route into Ferelden?  Redcliffe is even near the sole land route into Ferelden.  It may be closer to Orzammar and Gherlen’s Pass than West Hill or Highever, but you could definitely reach Denerim without having to travel close to Redcliffe.  

Now, you could definitely argue that it would be really, really bad idea to leave Redcliffe untouched if you planned to occupy Ferelden.  By the time an invader reached Denerim, Redcliffe could muster an army and use the southern arm of the Imperial Highway to aid Denerim or attack from behind.  So if this was the only incongruous information, I could deal with it, but then there are these nuggets:

“The castle, which despite being three times captured is popularly described as “unassailable,” also guards one of the largest and most prosperous towns in Ferelden. Redcliffe village is well situated near the mountain pass to Orzammar and the Orlesian border, and so serves as a center of foreign trade. For these reasons, Redcliffe is accounted an arling despite the smallness of the domain.”

Again, huh?  Don’t you mean the reverse?  Redcliffe is a village of about 200 people, but the arling itself is quite large.  Honnleath is part of the Arling of Redcliffe, and presumably parts of the Hinterlands are also included under its protection.  So it isn’t exactly small.  

And whatever the scale of the map you use to calculate how far it is from Redcliffe to Orzammar, it is strange to say that Redcliffe is “near” the pass that leads to Orzammar and Orlais beyond.  It is at least 150-200 miles to travel between Orzammar and Redcliffe.  There are several other Ferelden towns and arlings (Kinloch Hold, Wutherford, West Hill Bannorn, Waking Sea Bannorn) that should be better situated to profit from international trade than Redcliffe.  But it gets better:

“The inhabitants of Redcliffe village are primarily fishermen or merchants who ship dwarven goods through the pass from Orlais to Denerim. When the entire village smells of smoked fish on certain late autumn mornings, the merchants in their finery do their utmost to pretend otherwise.”

–From In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Travels of A Chantry Scholar, by Brother Genitivi.

Sigh.  Why would you take dwarven goods all the way south to Redcliffe if you plan to ship them to Denerim?  That tacks on hundreds of miles to your journey!  Just take the North Road!  

None of that makes any sense…unless you look at where Redcliffe was in The Stolen Throne.  

If Redcliffe were located where it was placed on this map, then the codex entry about it would make complete sense.  It would be a much smaller land area, but the position of the town would make it a far more likely trade center and “first and last line of defense” for Ferelden.  

There are even signs that this location almost made it into later maps.  

In spite of the fact that moving Redcliffe messes with the lore about the village, it appears on the southern shore of Lake Calenhad on every other map that Bioware has published.

So why did the developers move it?  Most likely it was game mechanics, or rather, button mechanics.  If Redcliffe had remained where it started out, it would have made the button placement on the Origins map rather awkward.  It is so close to Haven that players might have confused the two.  

(There is a similar problem with where the Temple of Sacred Ashes should be.  It should be very close to the edge of the game play map in the mountains to the west of the town, but in game it appears an equivalent of 35-65 miles south of Haven so it won’t be so close to the edge and it won’t obscure any writing.)

And most casual game players wouldn’t think there was anything strange about Redcliffe being so far from Orlais and Orzammar.  In fact I was really glad it was so close to Lothering the first time I played Origins.  Only when you are really examining the geography of Ferelden does its placement become questionable.  Am I 100% sure this is the reason?  Not at all, but the map sure is more balanced with Redcliffe at the bottom of the lake and easier to read, all of which is desirable in game play.

And then there’s the problem of DAI’s map.  Sigh.  So….I replayed a large part of the Hinterlands and did a bunch of math for this post.  And I now have a bit of a problem with my own map.  

I am pretty good with spacial relationships and so I used a lot of landmarks and large scale measurements to place various locations on the map I shared.  That works well when adding towns, temples, landmarks, etc from the various published maps, but it doesn’t work so well for the highly detailed area maps in Inquisition.  

I confess that I should have done a bit more math when I started to add Inquisition zones to my map.  If I had I would realized that this small neon green dot you see above is the equivalent of about 5 square miles, depending on which map scale you use.  I went with the smaller 1” = 50 miles scale. That dot is 1/16” x 1/16”.  That means there is more than enough space for the whole Hinterlands map, which is about 2-3 square miles, to fit into that tiny green square.  Wow.

(BTW, I went out to the interwebs to see if others people had come up with a similar area number, and found an estimate that all of the areas in the game put together (minus DLC) is about 45 square miles.  They probably went with the larger 1” = 70 miles.  That would make Thedas about the size of Western Europe, I think.)

So the reason it is difficult to figure out the DAI landmarks on the Thedas map is that the map is far too small for such minute detail.  I’m going to have to ponder what to do now that I know the true scale we are dealing with and update my map accordingly.  

Thanks for the ask!  It made me do math, and we’ll get a better map at the end as a result.  :)

-MM