#scale of maps

[davidlavieri]

What torture it is to hold on to reason as desire intensifies.

Belén Gopegui, The Scale of Maps

[atomicpen]

On maps and distances

So maybe I should just do the background work for someone who will actually write the damn story instead of just making everything up about the world, because I certainly do far more of that than actual story-writing, it seems.

In light of this post, I decided to work out some more distances, since my DABB might very well contain some pretty crazy travelling, and it's always good to have references (which... might be part of my world-building/background-creating problem). But... apparently there are a few different scales on some official maps, and then there's some stuff in-game that throws off other things. So, I found the biggest map I could and printed it out to use for myself, resulting in my findings:

If you use this map (which is too big for tumblr), which is the one I used, going off of what Dagna says about Orzammar being "at minimum" 18 days' travel from the Ferelden Circle--if you figure people laden with gear and supplies, on foot, walking through mountainous terrain, they wouldn't go more than probably .8mph. If they want to make that trek in the 18 day mark, they'd only go about 7 miles a day if they travel for 9 hours a day, which would mean Orzammar is 140 miles from the Ferelden Circle--and that includes going around the lake. So, that means the scale for this map is 1"=100miles, which actually makes things easy. (Keep in mind, I printed the map out at 100% on landscape, so hopefully that'll be accurate for other people if they want to use it, and I measured the distance from Orzammar to the Circle, going around the north side of the lake, which is what it shows in the game, to be about 1.4")

Not saying the other post was incorrect or anything, but 243 miles between Denerim and Ostagar seemed.... a bit far to my mind, number-wise. But I could be wrong! So, I suppose it really depends, right now, on which map you use and how you want to tweak time/distances in writing/rping/etc, so the scale I made is really only good for the specific map I used. I would say, "BioWare, just put out ONE official scale, goddammit", but going through the same process myself about figuring distances in my own world... I kind of understand.

(by the by, my scale makes Denerim and Ostagar about 138 miles, in case anyone was wondering. Also! I'm going off of an average person walking at about 2mph, and horse going at about 6mph... And, the distances are probably a little closer than what these numbers are, since people--and horses--don't walk 24 hours a day--which was factored into the calculations. It also depends heavily on terrain and how much weight everyone is carrying (and that includes how much the horses are carrying, and also if the horses are trained for long distances and heavy weight bearing or not), so the numbers can certainly be finagled with. Also, everyone travels at different speeds for different lengths of time, but these should be good enough averages to at least work off of. Want a real challenge? Try figuring these numbers and travel time and distance for dragons--you gotta factor in flight time and all kinds of different things. That's my personal world fun.)