Asia Minor

I've resisted working on maps lately, as they keep me from working on more player-directed material, such as spells or rules, such as for thieving abilities and the like. My players generally prefer I work on the more hands-on stuff, because it tends to settle more arguments and allows for a greater understanding of what they can and cannot do.

But ... I love maps. And I have an excuse. The online party was going to be needing the maps below for general travel, as they are going to a place called 'Melitene,' where one of them was born. That city can be found almost center of the map, or at any case on line 179 (you can see the numbers on the right side, which I use to locate things).

Asia Minor - elevations

As is evident, eastern modern Turkey (Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, etc) is a very up-and-down place, with low valleys and dizzying heights. The central mountains historically produced isolated cultures and tribes, until Islam and ultimately the Ottomans unified the whole mess (almost everything on the map is Ottoman, the yellow in the political map below dominating). It has always been better known by its regional names, rather than by an appellation like "Turkey," even the Byzantines and Romans thought of it as a collection of regions, rather than as a single region in its own right.

The bottom of the map, those parts labeled Syria, Gazira, Palmyra and Damascus, those are all the northern half of modern Syria, stretching down from the mountains into the deserts, which show their northern edge as a sort of pinkish-red (it looks like dotted rust on my publisher map).

Asia Minor - political

The two big rivers are, of course, the Euphrates and the Tigris - Euphrates on the left, descending through Cappadocia and into Gazira, and the Tigris on the right, descending from Harran into Mosul. Both produce cultures of considerable development (bright green and yellow), which on the map below appears as the well-known fertile crescent. The route through the map's center is the great highway from Persia to the Mediterranean Sea, ending in Cilicia and Hatay, which in the 17th century would have been among the most cultured parts of the world - though obviously not European culture.

Asia Minor - infrastructure

Well, these maps have been fun. The party has an intention to move from Asia Minor to the south of Russia, so I'll be working on that next. I do feel a bit burned out from working on other things ... which are not words my parties enjoy hearing (where are my rules for freaking find traps???).