The map is where you watch the world. It is the painted map of Aldawyn with the twenty-five regions drawn over it, and it shows you what is true right now rather than what was true when the world began.
Drag to move, scroll or pinch to zoom, FIT to see the whole world again. Click a region to open it; click it again, or the ×, to close it.
The buttons on the left change what the colours mean. Nothing is fetched when you switch. The world arrives all at once, so all five are already there.
| View | What the colour shows |
|---|---|
| Borders | Who holds each region now. Conquest changes this; the map follows |
| Terrain | The region's climate: the seven kinds of place described in Weather |
| Weather | How warm it is, right now, region by region |
| Health | Where a plague has reached, described in Epidemics |
| Faith | Which faith leads in each region, described in Religion |
A legend in the bottom-left always says what the current colours mean.
Crossings is not a sixth view. The button under the five draws the routes between regions on top of whichever view you are in, so you never have to give up the weather to see what you can reach. It is on until you switch it off, because the borders with no route across them are the one thing the painting does not show. See Travel.
Fronts is the other overlay, and it too is on until you switch it off. A region drawn with diagonal hatching is one being fought over, right now. The hatching takes the colour of the side pushing: the attacking country on a war front, and the country the region began in when its people have risen against an occupier. Over Borders that reads as one country's stripes across another's ground, with no key needed. The two kinds run in opposite directions: one grain is a war front, the other a resistance. A world at peace draws no hatching at all. To fight in one, go to War → Fronts; see War.
The Weather view turns at freezing. Colours run cold-blue below 0°C and warm-red above it, and the change is sharpest at zero rather than in the middle of the range. That is deliberate: zero is where rain becomes snow, so it is the temperature that actually changes what is happening outside.
The Health view is usually quiet. Most of the time no plague is running anywhere, and the whole world is drawn in one flat, dim colour with the legend saying no outbreak running. That is the world being calm, not the map being broken. When an outbreak begins the view comes alive, and you can watch it travel from region to region across the borders people can actually cross.
A region shows you its climate, its temperature, the weather over it, whether the plague has reached it, how far north or south it lies, and how many of its borders can be crossed. A ★ marks a region that was a capital when the world began.
It also shows what its name means. Every name in Aldawyn was made by writing an idea down, translating it into that people's language, and wearing the result smooth. Stoukarbolg is "war hammer". Bor Norex is "chief tree". Where the original phrase survives, it is shown too.
If you have a character, it also tells you whether you are standing there, whether you can travel there and what it would cost, or that you cannot reach it from where you are. The map marks the region you are in and outlines the ones you can enter. See Travel.
It also shows the region's faith: each faith's standing there, which one leads, and its archprelate where one is seated (religion); the duchy standing over the ground, who holds it and under which king, and the claim you could make or press on it (titles, claims); and, when you hold a character, the expedition you could mount there for a relic (religion).
What the chronicle has recorded there is read in the event log's Here view, when you are standing in it. See The chronicle.
The temperature leads somewhere. Click it and you get that region's recorded weather over the last cycle. See Statistics.
The latitude is approximate. It is measured from the three latitude lines actually drawn on the map, which were drawn by hand and are not evenly spaced, so it is good to a degree or two and no better.
The picture at the top follows the climate, not the region. Two desert regions are headed by the same kasbah. It is scene-setting, not a portrait.
The map colours a region by who holds it, what climate it has, how warm it is, whether the plague has reached it and which faith leads there, and marks where a fight stands, and by nothing else. Warbands and camps are not drawn on it: it shows where a war is being fought, not who is fighting it, and that is under Rankings and War. Nor does it draw wealth, prices or who is standing where; the characters ledger under Rankings filters by location, and what a market holds is at the market. Where you might expect a number on the map and find none, it is because the map does not carry it, not because it is hidden from you.
The header reads something like Year 412. That is the world's age in years, the same years people are counted in, the ones you grow old through.
The Weather view's legend shows something else: great year · day 26 of 30.
These are two clocks and the difference is the point. A year is a year. A great year is one full turn of the seasons, and it takes six of them. So winter comes round every six years, not every one, and a person who lives an ordinary life sees about a dozen summers.
That is not Earth, and it is meant not to be. It is why the world can feel old while your own life in it is short, and why the slow things in Aldawyn (the ents, still standing in Arbor lean, whose every region is named for a tree) keep a rhythm that people do not.
Whenever you see a great year, it is the seasons. Whenever you see a year, it is a life.