Day 4 - Is There a Map?
Day 4-Is there a Map?
Give us a visual! Show us a map of your setting! Don't have one? WHY NOT?!?
Elowen’s Journal
"I never cared much for maps before I came here. I grew up knowing where things were because someone told me, or because I walked there often enough that my feet remembered. I do not think I ever once looked at a map of my home village. It felt unnecessary, maybe even rude, like questioning something that had always simply been there.
West Haven changed that.
The first maps I saw were the ones made after the Great Flood. Clean lines. Familiar shapes. Lake Haven drawn the way it is now. Later, Esmé showed me the older ones, the maps from before the water rose. That was when things finally made sense. I had been seeing ghosts along the lake shore since I arrived. Quiet ones. Confused ones. People who seemed to be looking for doors and streets that were no longer there. When I saw the old maps, I understood. The original Haven settlement lies at the bottom of the lake now, and some of the dead never realized the world had changed around them.
Maps help me make sense of the land when the land does not make sense to me. They explain why a ghost lingers in the wrong place, or why a road feels older than it should. I have maps made by scholars, by merchants, and even by goblins, whose sense of distance and importance is… creative. I love all of them. Each one tells a slightly different truth. I think that is why I look at maps of West Haven so often. I am still learning how this place fits together. And maybe, by learning that, I am also learning how I fit here, too."
Designer’s Notes
So. I have maps of the Haven Valley, both current and prior to the "Great Flood," the disaster that destroyed the original Haven Settlement and created Lake Haven. I am not sure where they are at the moment. I knew one of them was in my car, but I can't seem to find it. ETA: Found it!
I really should get on commission someday. Better than the sketches I have on legal pads. There hasn't been much need for one, since I have a clear idea in my head of where everything is.
The Broken Mountains are to the far north. East Haven is, naturally, to the east, on the other side of Lake Haven. It's not directly across, in some maps it is North East, other South East. I like the idea that the North East is slightly higher ground than West Haven. The Goblin Wood is to the North West of West Haven. It is old, once an elven forest until the elves abandoned it and the goblins moved in. The Maiden Wood is to the South West of West Haven (and south of the Goblin Wood). Named for the dryads that still live there, but don't seek them out or even go into the wood unless you get permission from their leader, Mellenpei.
The village of West Haven itself is divided into four quarters: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. The central plaza is dominated by a large fountain. The central circle, named "Fountain Circle", is also often called "The Square" despite the fact that it is a circle, is home to the farmer markets during the day, and the goblin market at night.
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