Paksworld

So…the kitchen table is now covered with drafting stuff.  Three sheets of drafting vellum for a smoother surface, taped down for security.   Scanned printouts of the earlier maps in the books (one enlarged by the person who gave it to me in New Zealand last year, and whose identifying info went *poof* somewhere along the line–it’s *almost* the same scale as the Gird map) are taped to the top layer of the padding in the correct (nearly) orientation, and the working sheet is over that.  Aarenis and Fintha are now traced on.   Bits of the north coastline of Old Aare are on, tentatively.  The coastline of the north (Prealíth from the mountains to the Honnorgat, and Dzordanya north of the Honnorgat) is on (with fingers crossed that it’s not *too* different.)   Certain necessary points have been marked (Chaya, Vérella, Valdaire, Cortes Vonja (which presents the usual problem for me…which side of the river is it on???) and I’m now working on the roads.  Sort of.  Actually I’m in here posting this.

Yesterday’s foray into the city took me to Wilson Blueprint, which–as I’d been told–has everything a map-maker could want, and then some.   I bought the aforementioned four sheets of 24×36 drafting vellum,  new Rapidograph pens and ink for inking, a really good pencil eraser (let’s all pray that I don’t need to erase any ink…), a new small-size T-square (not finding the old T-square), drafting tape (doesn’t lift the tooth on vellum),  and was assured that they can do the copying/printing/conversion to digital in any format/size I need.   I restrained myself from buying new colored pencils and various other goodies.

Squaring up my map-space on the kitchen table instead of on a drafting table wasn’t east (esp. since I’m using one end of the table for the work proper and it has a curved end, not a straight side there.  But the table is in two pieces, so there’s this “groove”  across the middle that I’m avoiding.)

The official explanation of any differences between this map and the map from the Paks and Gird books is that one was drawn by one mapmaker and the other was drawn by another.   Considering the change in my age and appearance from then to now, that’s actually true, but let’s blame some fictional mapmakers in two different cities or palaces.  Bermond, let’s say, did the map of Aarenis for the Guild League.  The map for Gird was done by Luap with the help (!) of Gerffod and Hanis, merchants with no mapping experience but they insisted they  “knew” the roads.   They left out their favorite short-cut lest someone else find it.  The *new* map was done (is being done, but pretend it’s done.  Wish I could)  by a grouchy old woman with a wicked sense of humor, who wondered if anyone would notice when she put cities on the wrong side of rivers.

Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?