Over the last few months I have come to the conclusion that Tircambry (278K sq.km.) is probably bigger than I really want or feel at home with, so after consulting with admins I have decided to give up over half the territory and concentrate everything into a smaller area. The surrendered territory will become UL148.

The shrunken Tircambry will have a land area of c.127,000 sq.km. - a bit smaller than England or Greece. All the existing provinces and cantrefs (counties) will be bunched up into this space, so the political structure and history will not change. This will be the new Tircambry (in red):

I will move the island of Ynyspur so that it remains in Tircambry, and adjust the coastline a bit, leaving a reasonable-sized coast for UL148.

Lots to do … so I had better get started.

Happy mapping!

Pawl

Merry Christmas from Wesmandy, Nadolig Llawen o Tircambry, Joyeux Noël de Cernou!

It’s nearly the end of the year, so I thought it was time that I posted an update on Wesmandy.

My intention - late in 2015 - was to develop Wesmandy chronologically : map the whole country (not in too much detail) as it was in the year 1400, and then update it century-by-century while writing the history at the same time, until I got to the modern era. Since medieval towns are small and simple, and villages are even simpler, I naïvely imagined that I could have the 1400 “baseline” completed by about June …

It’s now December and I am nowhere near completing the whole of Wesmandy 1400. I have roughly mapped rivers, main roads and administrative boundaries throughout the country, and put nodes for cities, towns and villages, but have only done more detailed work in my three eastern shires of Cilveyland, Eskland and Southclist : about 20% of the total land area. There are various reasons for this, including wildly underestimating the effort needed, changing my mind about exactly what I’m mapping, getting diverted by other things (e.g. Porthbrenin), which I’ve done historically from 1400 to 1900) and simply not having as much time on OGF as I would like.

If I keep going like this, it will be years before Wesmandy joins the rest of you in the 21st century (am I the only person who didn’t map a single motorway in 2016? :) ). I enjoy “mapping medieval”, but it is frustrating to not to have Wesmandy in the modern world, so I’m thinking of changing tactics and doing my historical mapping area-by-area rather than keep the whole country in step. The national history will get written as I take the first area forward through time, so, with luck, Wesmandy will have a 21st-century presence sometime in 2017.

Water, water, everywhere!

… See full entry

Today is the first anniversary of me joining OGF. It’s been a fun experience, with some great people, and I thought I’d post an update on my activities:

Nearly all my attention at the moment is going on Wesmandy (map here: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=8/57.760/41.976, wiki here: http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Wesmandy). I’m trying a historical approach to mapping the country, creating it was it was in about 1400, after which I’ll update the map and the history in tandem until I get to the present day. It’s a big project if I’m going to keep the whole country in step through the centuries, and I can’t say how long it will take. I had hoped to have the medieval “baseline” complete by Easter, but I don’t think that will happen. After that, going through the centuries should be fairly straightforward until industrialization starts, when things will get complicated!

When I started this I dithered about various things such as how much detail to include, but I think I know where I’m going now, unless anybody comes up with any glaring problems or omissions! :-

Throughout Wesmandy, I have mapped the major rivers and lakes, although I am adding more streams as I get down to detail. I have located and named about 530 cities, towns, hamlets and (mostly) villages, but I’m adding more villages and hamlets as I get down to detail. I also mapped the roads between them, designating roads between cities as Trunk, between towns as Primary, between main villages (centres of manors) as Secondary, and everything else as Unclassified. The designations indicate relative importance of the routes, not the quality of the roads - most will be dirt lanes at this time.

… See full entry

Wesmandy is a small country in northwest Uletha, Ingerish-speaking but formerly Caeltig. It shares the “Dihobarth Peninsula” (formerly Bayland) with Ionadàlba (owned by Udilugbuldigu), and we have already worked on some early history together to explain the peninsula’s demographic make-up.

I’m going to try developing Wesmandy a bit differently from most other OGF countries, by mapping the country “as it happened”, starting in around 1450 and then jumping forward in stages to the present day, producing history and geography together as a coherent whole.

Since Wesmandy is not a huge country I’m hoping this approach won’t be too overwhelming, although, obviously, it will mean that for some time it will look like a “chronological anomaly” in 21st-century OGF. I’ll have to see how the mapping goes as far as the level of detail is concerned, and at times I’m going to have to resist the temptation to modernize places before I’m ready.

I will still put some general modern stuff in the Wiki, but obviously there will be nothing which links to specific map locations (e.g. embassies) until those locations exist; and I don’t want to commit to too much modern detail until the historical background is in place.

I’m wondering what to do with roads on my early maps. For example, do I map main medieval routes as primary roads, even though a medieval primary road will be nothing like a modern one, and may be little more than a dirt track? Or do I leave everything as unclassified until the modern age of road classification? The problem with that is that no roads at all will show on lower zooms.

My initial work on the capital, Eskwick, is here

Comments welcome!

I was wondering whether there should be an agreed name and background for the OGF equivalent of Christianity. It seems to me that the words “Christian” and “Christianity” relate to a specific religion originating in a specific Earth time and place, so we ought to have another name. It can still have a Christ (which is from the Greek for “anointed”), or Messiah or Saviour, and could be called something like Christicity, Christicism, Messianity …

Similarly, “Catholic” simply means “universal” or “all-embracing”, which is fine, but “Roman Catholic” refers to a specific city which doesn’t exist in OGF.

Could we agree on the basic origins of the religion? Where? When? Preferably similar to the Christian story, but not the same (and without getting into too much doctrinal detail!). I know there’s been some discussion on the Wiki, especially about the papacy, of which there are at least two in OGF - one in St.Richard’s (Pretany) and one in Peritan City. Whatever is agreed still leaves plenty of scope for variations, just as real-world Christianity has many different denominations and traditions.

I’m asking because, if we have an OGF equivalent to Christianity and Uletha is the OGF’s Europe-equivalent, then it would make sense for my Tircambry to follow this religion rather than its own home-grown Puritism. I’m thinking of altering my history accordingly, changing Puritism to be part of the wider Christic(?) church.

Hi all! I joined OGF a few weeks ago and started creating Pedwatir and its sister countries in territory AR056 in southern Archanta. My preferred choice of territory would have been somewhere in western Uletha, but none was available at the time. Recently, UL149 (Reinuva) has become free, and I have been allowed to re-establish my countries there, leaving AR056 free for someone else. Fortunately, I haven’t yet done much detailed mapping, so a move is feasable without losing massive amounts of work.

UL149 is a better fit for the Cambric (Welsh)-speaking country I envisage, geographically and historically, partly because Uletha was already identified as the source of the Cambric language before I joined, so my new location can be the ancient homeland of the Cambric peoples.

The transition of Rienuva has begun, and I expect AR056 to become “free” very soon. I apologize for the inconvenience to the two or three people who have already mentioned Archantian Pedwatir and Cadwynyg in their Wiki pages.