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OneHellofaBird — His Dark Materials map (The Golden Compass)
Published: 2013-08-13 00:18:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 39996; Favourites: 131; Downloads: 162
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Description
There's also the official movie map here . This is the world of The Golden Compass/Northern Lights (and the Lyra's Oxford "Globetrotter" gazetteer, now available here ) by Philip Pullman: this work's richness smote me so hard that it's shaped my own career. The trilogy starts in a parallel world that actually closely resembles Kingsley Amis's The Alteration--a planet mostly ruled by an Ortho-Catho-Calvinist church drawn from the worst fever dreams of Jack Chick and Dan Brown (though it's authentically Renaissance). When John Calvin was elected Pope (presumably to dismantle the office) he moved the Curia to Geneva and ever since then the center of gravity for Christendom has moved all around, with power settling back in the genevois Consistory in the 20th century.
The world of HDM has two distinct "feels" to it, one Baroque and one Victorian. Technologically there's zeppelins, rifles, polar expeditions, photograms, package steamship tours, and science-fictional tech like "atomcraft." And then there's a constant stream of signs and wonders, worthy of the bygone world of Blaeu, Testu, Lopo Homem, Kircher, John White, Richard Hakluyt, William Dampier, Walter Raleigh, and even Marco Polo and Mandeville (or Lord Darcy for that matter). So most of the map is based on those of IRL 1700 and 1789, with a lot of 1910.
The Great Powers that carved up our whole world 1860-1911 have been far, far weaker here. Cultures are more mixed--there's enough Native American Skrælings to have some be fanatical agents of the Holy Office, enough Welsh to affect Brytain's spelling, enough zombis for the GOB to buy a whole army of 'em from Benin, and Afric clockwork spy-bugs that use demons as their guiding intelligence and mechanical power. In some ways it scratches Alternate History's usual itch of letting the "losers" of history win.
Muscovy is described as facing constant Tartar invasion even though it's reached the Black Sea [Odessa and Novorossisk are listed in Once Upon a Time in the North, and Muscovy isn't described as having any "South Tartars" on the Dnieper]. There are tigers (and the wild Lithuanians who worship them) still running around right at the doorsteps of Warsaw and St. Petersburg. Brytain has to deal with child-snatchers abducting children to be sold in the Levant.
As in the Baroque vision of the world, there are nonhuman species and unconquered cultures--windsuckers, blood-eagle Breathless Ones, cliff-ghasts, hungry nälkäinen ghosts, and who-knows-what-else outside of the Far North. Pullman's universe has a teeming multiplicity of metaphysics: there's Dust-resonant A-Bombs (even if the theorists had been sentenced by Canon-Law drumheads in the 80s), Italian alchemists, Gnostic Christian angelology (the Random House site gets everything from The Dictionary of Angels), zombification, shamanism, Ugric nature-witches, and an astro-Cabbalistic mechanical dark-matter memory theater whose emblems read you back.
All these forces are shown to send an a-Bomb into a different universe through quantum entanglement, chase you across Russia in a Calabi-Yau Merkabah, raise a Nigerian-Cossack combined force of walking dead, control lightning and bird flocks to destroy three blimps in one night, let one prophesy and talk with trees and weasels and live for a thousand years, and know anything anywhere anytime. It all sounds like a world where Atlantis not only never sank, but started training special ops for the Swiss Guard! Again, this isn't Pullman throwing in the kitchen sink, but a good picture of the various creatures, peoples, magics, sciences, and marvels discovered or thought possible by the Baroque [I also detect resonances with Crowley's Ægypt, CS Lewis's Discarded Image, Eco, and Borges].
HDM also shows a curiously antique fear of plotting Papists, and his work's highly derivative of one of his main sources, Kingsley Amis's The Alteration. But despite overtly signing on to the Draper-White myth of a Church quashing joy, science, curiosity, "control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling"--what Pullman actually fears is heartless automatism. The worst result of Lyra's failure is all existence, every timeline in the multiverse, turning into deterministic "interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life." Now, I've heard people blame Catholicism for creationism, Lincoln's assassination, both world wars, Stalin and Hitler, lack of Mars colonies, and the bubonic plague , but never abolishing the ability to think itself.
In fact, Magisterium and state combined are unable to suppress even the Gyptian Traveller /Sea Beggar hybrids in industrialized, modernized, and conformist Brytain. This world's mightiest military Muscovy has heathen Tartars, shamans, nature-worshiping literal Witches, and violent, Authorityless talking polar bear sellclaws underfoot. In London epicenes with same-sex dæmons walk in broad daylight and the regime can't keep its own kids from being kidnapped as odalisques and dancing boys in the Muslim world. The Magisterium in fact never burned any witches and the very suggestion floors this world's witches with its unthinkability. There don't seem to have been any European wars [Amis], and napalm is unheard-of in New Denmark. Our world may give nuns the right to leave the cloister over eating marzipan and kissing Italians (though not vice-versa )--but all we get in our reality is McWorld battling the hyper-Salafists, and maybe the I Ching.
[the following is mostly my own invention; countries with an asterisk * aren't canonical]
Americas
New France reaches as far as Manitoba, which was the site of two Franco-Skr æling M étis Risings. Being far from Paris, Rome, and Geneva, its natural theologians are freer in pursuing the nature of physical matter.
New Denmark is a highly confederated republic that united in 1761 and won Mackinac, Osage, and the trans-Mississippi from France in 1848 (precipitating a crisis in Europe). Independent of all European powers but friends to everyone, it's become an economic powerhouse by specializing in transshipment, finance, and "pure" natural-theological research, rivaling Moscow, Constantinople, and (almost, at least according to Lyra) Oxford. It provides significant theological freedom, with Hussites, Lollards, Doukhobors, and Waldensians pouring into the Great Plains [Amis]. They've also invented the "moving picture," where you draw on cellulose acetate and re-project it (though Lyra's never seen one). [Alternatively New Denmark proper stops at the Mississippi, New France continues down to NOLA, and California's Castilian.]
States and cities:
The Republic of Texas is confirmed as a country (and fits the feel of the TL), so I created a New Albyon* [I'm guessing TTL wanted to block New Denmark from being a continental power after it took Louisiana so I guess Geneva, Madrid, and London encouraged enduring buffer states in North America] and California* a priest-run backwater where Native refugees of the Forty-Niners fled to, causing the Friars' War 1912 between Skrælings associated with the Franciscans vs. those backing the bishops. Italian and Brytish immigrants to the towns that grew around the missions bring a lot of fun cults.
Castile's Empire of Méjico, or Nueva España, is home to the College of the Holy Cross of Tlatelolco which specializes in training the noble sons of those families who survived the cocoliztli. Castile stayed Habsburg 1714, so the Bourbons didn't annoy the colonies: the first king to visit Chapultepec Palace was in 1911. The local militia handles revolts caused by commercialization and industrialization. The Castilian Empire has in fact been "Americanized," Chile legally as much part of Castile as Andalusia or Asturias.
Veneçuela* is a colony of Catalonia, which has a protectorate over the Aboriginal kingdoms of Bacatà* and Popaian* to the southwest and Roraima (or Orinoquia)* to the south.
The Empire of Brasil is sometimes called High Brasil, in contrast with Hollands Surinam* (with its particularly nauseating loup-garou). Brasilian and Antilian slaves are no less brutalized as in IRL. I made the Empire of Peru still under the Sapa Inka but Christianized (the Emperors don't need to ask any Pope for dispensation to marry their own sister any more). It's wildly rich from selling Putuqsi's silver to China, Castile, and Germany, giving us a worldwide silver Thaler. Chiquitos* and Paraguay* are Reductions under the Javierites' direct rule, so they're big, whip-happy maté plantations but the Guaraní have beaten back every Iberian attempt to "liberate" them from direct rule by priests. La Plata* and Chile* are settled by Castilians, Brytish, and Italians, and home to the Americas' most famous Cardinals, Borges and Bergoglio. Terra do Fogo, or Magallanica is an island at the southern tip of Patagonia.
Oxford has Van Tieren's Land separate from Baffin Island and moreover it's in "atlas order" [ever since Ortelius maps run from Iceland to Tierra del Fuego] after America and Patagonia, so I guess it's either the Antarctic Peninsula (or, from the movie map, another Arctic island). Terra Antarctica is surrounded by the Isles of St Maclovius (France), Sandwich Land (Brytain), and the Desolation Islands (Denmark)* often used as Magisterial dumping grounds for heretics, and the Church has several international stations around the Unknown Continent. The people of Van Diemen's Land and the Chatham Islands have taken to a largely-seafaring life and are expanding mines around the Ross Sea and turning up odd things.
Europe
The Kingdom of Brytain comprises the Kingdoms of of Eireland, England, Mann, and Scotland and the Princedom of Wales; Arthur Tudor produces an heir TTL [Amis], leading to King Alfred IV. Scandinavia of course comprises Norroway, Sveden, and independent Lapland (again we have kingdoms' names left untranslated; Trollesund is apparently supposed to be Bodø, or based on it, though Tromsø's bigger and matches this very bad map ). I added Finnland or Suomy* because even though the coordinates for Novorossisk in North are for Finland it was a misprint in Pullman's source that he copied in its entirety , causing the discrepancy. Denmark includes the Duchies of Holstein, Scania*, and Schleswig; in the Atlantic it rules Estotiland*, the Færøerne, Fireland, Frisland * [super-Rockall], and Grœnland. Holland, or the United Low Countries, has acquired more of Friesland (with its famous wooden planetarium ); I left Utrecht a prince-bishopric (though the commercial oligarchs electing the Stadhouder may not have liked so "feudal" an inclusion).
The Continent's #1 or #2 power is constitutional-monarchical Bourbon France: its Benedictines, Carthusians, Cistercians, and Trappists were key to both France's industrialization and in providing the libations that'd make factory work bearable for former peasants. Less-constitutional monarchies are Habsburg Castile and Aviz Portugal. The Catalonian Foral Republic lost Valencia and the Balears to Castile in 1580, and regained them in the confusion of 1815. Navarre's fuero expanded into today's Basque Republic.
The German Electorates or Holy Roman Empire's emperors are elected by Austria, Bavaria, Bohemia, Brandenburg-Prussia, Valois Lower Burgundy, Hannover, Mecklenburg-Hither Pomerania, and Saxony, the Prince-Archbishoprics of Bremen, Cologne, Trier, Liège, Salzburg, and Mainz, and the Electoral Palatinate (with the Rosicrucian Hortus Palatinus and Fate-Books still drawing visitors). Pavel Khunrath, who had Jost Bürgi manufacture the alethiometer, was an adherent of Rudolf II and burned at the stake in Prague by the Winter King Friedrich IV to show the occultists they worked for him now. Germany's executive capital tends to bounce around depending on which dynasty's elected Emperor--Prague, Berlin, Wien.
Italy has the Duchies of Modena*, Mantua*, Milan*, Parma*, Piacenza*, and Savoy* and the Republics of Tuscany*, Ferrara*, Genoa*, Lucca*, and Venice (still resembling Pullman's source, Brian Aldiss's Malacia Tapestry--perhaps even with Ancestral hunts and astrological "fortune bonds" being gamed by precogs), and the Kingdom of Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily (whose Joachimites are unique for conducting experiments in "experimental history").
The States of the Church comprise the old Papal States, Venaissin, and the canton of Vaud. Rome has the judiciary Vatican Council and the once-dominant College of Bishops, whereas the 12-man Consistorial Court of Discipline commands the Helvetic Guard and rules almost the Christian world. The leader of each significant Magisterial agency in Rome is a Cardinal Palatine ex officio, though Geneva prefers to let Rome keep the empty pomp and titlesm, the intrigue and factional fighting while they do the real governing. The States are formally protected by Florence (since Savonarola stormed Rome and was acclaimed Pope), Muscovy, Savoy, Germany, and the Swiss League*.
The Hungarian Empire (including a Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia) is the main bulwark against the Turk, protecting the Princedoms of Moldavia*, Transylvania, Wallachia* and the Székely Magyar Republic. It's the source of coveted Tokay wine (seriously, even the cheap stuff will floor you). Oxford has "the Baltic States" so I have Livonia* or the Terra Mariana.
Svalbard is the largest kingdom of the ice-going panserbjørne.
Witches
The Bridge to the Stars site has an official map here . Witch-domains expand with the flowering of plants and contract with migrations; a fight between Leutara and Kamäinen was ended "when a cloud of midges drifted east over the coal-moss beds." We know Witches cover Siberia and I'd say they go out through the Pripet until the woods get too thin.
Russia
Muscovy's many "Tartars" (Alans, Balkars, Cheremiss, Circassians, Dargins, Finns, Iazones, Kalmyks, Karachays, Karelians, Kumyks, Laks, Letts, Lezgians, Mordvins, Nakhs, Nogais, Tabasarans, and Tavastians) ensure that the Empire is under tenuous control at best and often looming invasion at worst, giving Moscow the strongest and best-equipped army in the world, especially its elite Imperial Guard. Despite (or because?) the iron grip of its regime it's made great strides in natural theology, emphasizing fields that Europe or New Denmark doesn't like rocketry, informatics, nanometallurgy, and epigenetics. Even their dirigible tactics would shred the armada of any rival (other than Cathay): the Imperial Guard and its allied Witches conduct lengthy combined-arms drills over the taiga, some lasting for months. If a Guardsman dies, that's a true tragedy to the State and the senior Commissar will personally visit his wife and/or mother.
The duchies (Belozersk, the Don, Kiev, Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk, Tver, Vladimir-Suzdal, Yaroslavl) and princedoms (Astrakhan, Azerbaijan, Crimea, Kharkov, Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, Ryazan, Tiflis, and Yelizavetpol) are depcited here in a lighter color: these are autonomous semi-hereditary realms (the Romanov Emperor--Ivan VI's heir Alexis III) meddles in which son or nephew in the dynasty the local Assembly of Nobles "chooses").
There's doukhobors and skoptsy a-plenty, given the Magisterium's anti-wiener policies [frankly having Will meet a vegetarian nudist castrato would be much more shocking than having a priest give him vodka and rant about witches stealing his seed--but Spyglass is so Middle-Englander that one's as scary as the other I guess!]. [Just spitballing, but I'd guess Muscovy failed to expand its frontage past St Petersburg (Oxford's 1812 "Baltic Wars") and napalmed Corea in treacherous alliance with Cathay in the 1950s-70s (to make a TTL Vietnam?).]
Western Tartary is partially within Muscovy, and extends over the Urals: it's a recruiting ground for the Imperial Guard among its "martial races "--Ostyaks, Samoyeds, and Voguls.
The Khan of Kazan* is de facto chosen by the Muscovite Emperor: he gives Muscovites full rights of movement and residence among the Bashkirs, Bolgars, Chuvash, Komi, Samoyeds, Tartars, and Votyaks.
The Khanate of Sibir* is particularly favored by Cossack settlers--and Muscovy's sharashkas where heretical Scholars are sent. I have the panserbjørne in Amber Spyglass settling in the Altays (since Lake Baikal has seals and sea access via the Irtysh), and not the Himalayas or Kunlun Shan.
The rest of Siberia is heavily settled and garrisoned by Muscovy at Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, but has troublesome Buryats, Dolgans, Evenks, Evens, Koryaks, Oirats, Yakuts, and Yukaghirs.
The Pashalik of the Kazakhs (or Turkestan) includes the Kyrgyz, Naimans, Uzbegs, and Turkomans. Given its ruler's title (and its location) it'd be Persianized, maybe maintained as a universal buffer by Moscow and Tehran.
Asia
Mehmed IX is the Sultan-Caliph, Padishah and Khagan, Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of All, Guardian of the Three Holy Sanctuaries, Emperor of Rome and Protector of Orthodoxy. The Ottoman Empire's vassals are the Deylik of Algiers*, the Sultanate of Ægypt, the Pashalik of the Fezzan*, and the Beylik of Tunis*. Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece aren't quite puppet states, but must remain neutral buffer states . Amis has it as his TL's USSR-equivalent so it's divided into Albanian, Pontic, Adjarian, Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, Libyan, Dobrujan, Bosnian, Syrian, Mesopotamian, Rumelian, Anatolian, Palestinian, Hejazi, Lebanese, Druze autonomous provinces/districts. Like Protestantism TTL, Shiism got reincorporated/subsumed by Nader Shah (sovereigns love anything that supplies them with warrior-monks!). The Sultans present themselves as emperors of Christians as much as St. Petersburg, London, Prague, etc.: they send clever agitprop, plant stories, chat up pious pilgrims and decadent tourists of the Mideast. The Porte is also an atomic and ordinator superpower: this superpower's hidden strengths include the Cabbala, the Baetylus, the Sabians, and any ol' jinn they can seize on the sands.
[Oxford has Brytish officers in the Hindu Kush, so India's at least partially colonial, and unable to stop toffs from fishing in Afghanistan. India's also a British viceroyalty in Amis--but so's all Indochina!]
Cathay, Corea, and Nippon are moderately industrialized: Confucianism and the I Ching inspired the Church and Scholars, and in turn the Javierites provided plenty of European geographical, astronomical, and military expertise to the Manchu and Han dynasties that seized Peking. The Ezo Republic* and the Kingdom of Luchu* were Muscovy's targets of influence when it set the three East Asian powers against each other. The eastern Tartars--Buryats, Kalmyk, Khalkha, and Oirats--are only nominally subject to Cathay and federated at Urga. The Ignatians run the international ports at Macau and Dejima.
The Austral Empire has suborned Maori New Holland and "protects" the islands of the Peaceable Ocean. Only Owyhee* has escaped its reach. Auster proper was settled by Brytish, Cathayans, Dutch, Javans, and Nipponese atop the black, russet-haired Autochthons. I myself imagine it to be full of Austro-Bavarian Baroque works, like at Admont , St. Gall , St. Florian, or Melk .
Africa
West Africa has Portuguese Guinea and the Green Cape, French St.-Louis, Muscovite Ft. Andrey, Futa Jalon* (west) and Futa Toro* (north), and the Pepper and Ivory Coasts. The Empire of Benin, or the Empire of the Niger, is resisting Christianity with its hated "Separated" troops and its profits from slaving; it's also famed for its bronzes.
The Sahara has several oases benefiting from trade with the Empire of Fez and Morocco: Adrar, Agadez, Awdaghost, Bilma, Figuig, Laghouat, the Mzab, Tadmekka, Taghaza, Tawdani, Touggourt, Wadan, Walata, and Wargla.
Yemen* dominates the Red Sea entrance and wants Omani Soqotra to seize the frankincense trade.
flags here and here ; religion map here
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Comments: 47
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rearranged the imperial circles for Germany (though some circles have more than one Elector): TTL Cardinal von Dalberg of Mainz created the Imperial office of Prince-Primate and rearranges the Holy Roman Empire into its current existence as the German Electorates, the main bulwark against a rampaging France at the start of the 19th century, to create less-border-gory units for conscription and what would later be called "abbey industrialization" (a la the Cistercians and ironworking, Benedictines and Carthusians and distilling)
there's no Thirty Years' War so Germany grew, stabilized, and industrialized faster than OTL: they were even the first to codify die Hohe Küche for the idle rich
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The Secret Commonwealth has independent Greece and Bulgaria, so I added those (plus Serbia and Bosnia in non-TACOS colors so you can see them): presumably they'd be highly Finlandized, though SC's Ottoman Empire seems as weak as OTL fin de siecle (whereas in Amis's Alteration it's a superpower matching all Christendom and has the Danube as its border, so I kept the ethnic "SSRs"); SC has Austria-Hungary but that's not in Lyra's Oxford so I've had to rule it out
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"our timeline," it's common in the alternate-history community
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between the frontiers of New France (Duluth is a French name, after all), New Denmark's Winnebago province (Wisconsin), and Dakota Country; I really have no idea what to do with North America
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the dark-blue patches with cyan edges (Svalbard, Groenland, and the Arctic islands); I also put some in the Altay Mountains and by Lake Baikal--Amber Spyglass says they're the Himalayas but that's impossible since Siberia's Arctic rivers don't reach there (and Lake Baikal has nice fat seals for the armored bears)
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What is the small blue-grey country between Norroway and Sveden?
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Jämtland, won from Norway OTL, though Halland's Svedish to give it a port on the German Ocean upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia…
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Thanks! Also where is Laurentia and the Grain and Ivory Coast’s?
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Laurentia = Madagascar (named São Lourenço in Portuguese, "Madascar's" used in canon but comes from Mogadishu); Grain Coast = Liberia and Ivory Coast right next door, with the kingdoms of the Kru unified enough to contrast to their upland neighbors; The Secret Commonwealth might have more worldbuilding as Lyra heads to the Mideast and Central Asia
Africa I wanted to have as much infill as possible, to suggest the fantastic cultures suggested in Blaeu's maps, before Africa was turned to an empty outline in OTL 18th century, but with real cultures: I borrowed freely from a professor's D&D PBEM whose Web 1.0 link I saved from high school
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If a person in Lyra's World live in a town on the shores of lake Lubana lets say, would they be from Livinoia?
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Where exactly would Van Tierens land, Babylonia and Mesopotamia be in our world?
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I mentioned in the description VTL is hardest to pin down--in fact that's part of The Golden Compass's mystique: all we get there is mention of a fire-striker used by Capt. Hudson on his voyage to Van Tieren’s Land at the Royal Arctic Institute: is it OTL's 16th-century namesake of Hudson Bay? is the RAI making some ventures south of Terra do Fogo in this world's 1997? it's a rich and resonant scene, with the mighty whale Grimssður and a stone clutched in Lord Rukh's mummified hand, carved with a language known to no scholar on Earth: this is Pullman at his peak
Babylonia's south Iraq--a country named OTL after the First City, Uruk; Babylonia's named for the mid-Mesopotamian city of Babylon (so it'd have to go up to Ctesiphon/Baghdad set up at the same Tigris/Euphrates narrows); "Mesopotamia" can refer to all OTL Iraq but often means al-Jazira ("the Island") from Baghdad north to the Anatolian mountains: I've noticed that since the 16th century there's been a lot of autonomous Kurdish and even Armenian statelets , south of Lakes Van and Urmia and thence far into the west
of course the two names are ultimately just headings in the Globetrotter map catalogue and might not be sovereign at all, so I made an editorial decision and made them Ottoman/Persian buffer states: TTL seems to favor the smaller "losers of history," which might help explain the Catho-Calvo-Ortho-scientist domination of the Magisterium; The Secret Commonwealth this October will be set in the Mideast and Central Asia, and we'll see what Pullman does (and doesn't) do with the political-theological situation there
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Regarding, Lake Visha and Nania I believe have found the lakes they correspond to in our world. Lake Visha is most likely lake Varsch and Mania, most likely the Narva reservoir
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what aspect of the map do you mean? (or do you mean the description?)
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I mean the actual map. Also I noticed you didn’t label anything in Australia and it’s hard to identify the states in New Denmark and countries in Africa from the description you gave.
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I'll make a nice labeled map someday, but that day keeps dwindling away into the future ...
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"Beautiful deadly sailors of the Antipodes, where there was nothing but open ocean until the frozen sea of Terra Australis Ultima, who saw their island as just a mountain on a moving plain, dark as their inked teeth, dark as the ocean that was their true home."
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What flags would be used for the duchies on the Denmark Peninsula?
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just OTL's, they don't seem very interesting ...
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I would quote the book, but I read it in Spanish and I don't remember any
Great map
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Have you read the verbal map? Thoughts?
amcalmaron.deviantart.com/art/…
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back to front: they definitely got all the implications
everyone's waiting for "The Book of Dust" in 2037 so we can finish our maps!
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Is it ever established that the Tartars are russians in the books?
They seems to be the go to army guys, which made me really confused when they were guarding bolvangar, which from what I understand lies in Sweden.
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IIRC the Imperial Guard are mentioned as being full of "Tartars": Lyra's Oxford has Muscovy going down to the Black Sea
all I could gather about Bolvangar is that it's a few days through forests from "Trollesund," which I assume as a stand-in for Tromsø: I guess Lapland (mortal and witch alike) was able to play off Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm against each other and created a condominium , or maybe even sparked a war outside of Scandinavia
we'll get more clues when The Book of Dust comes out 2016 or 2036
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Alans, Circassians, Dargins, Finns,Karelians,Laks, Lezgians, Mordvins, Nakhs,Tabasarans - not tatars
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ach, that's just what Europe calls 'em: that's also why I listed every major group I could find--and it fits with the level of detail in Pullman's works; the Baroque richness of the world is what makes it so attractive
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ooh, and even the stereotypical Japanese salarymen out in our world's Oxford are described as "a group of Tartars meekly following their leader, all neatly dressed and hung about with little black cases"; so it's a catchall for anyone east of Poland and Anatolia by the looks of it (again sounding quite 17th-century)
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added an eighth Canarian island and Lake Tritonis in Tunis, plus a little more on where Pullman was effective and where he was an inchoate mess
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Truly, this is an amazing map and I love it, but it's really hard to correlate what you have listed to what you have on the map. Even if it was numbered, I think it would be much easier to follow and read.
That being said, you put an incredible amount of work into this, and it shows. Its fantastic, and I guarantee that fanfiction writers will eat this up!
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yeah, a reader definitely needs geographical knowledge for this (though I did put everything in order by continent), so it turns into a big list; I just made deductions from the 17th-c. stuff (and Aldiss) that inspired Pullman (a lot's actually been published on him and his sources)
I've never been one for the "AH.com numbered map" but I hereby authorize thee to do what you want with my map--but unlike most SF/fantasy writers he isn't active in the "community": it's the only fantasy around today without the obligatory map, and he's very reticent regarding his conworld--he hasn't even promoted his promised 4th work
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but I just found a need and filled it--an itch that I just scratched
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Also, if you wanted someone to label or number everything, I'd gladly volunteer
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Granted, I haven't read very far into the first book, but somehow I assumed that New Denmark was roughly OTL Canada, and that New France was roughly OTL U.S.
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Lee Scoresby's a New Dane from the country of Texas--make of that what you will! But Once Upon a Time in the North has plenty of Anglophone Texans. New France is described as having good scientists and banning trepanning, but that's it. The Alamo was a fight between Danes and French TTL, so both groups had a strong presence in that area (which still retains its Caddo name and a chief port named for a Gálvez).
Alas, all we have to go on for world-building is the rich epic description of Northern Lights/Golden Compass, some bits and pieces from Subtle Knife, set in Cittàgazze (based on Aldiss, Canaletto's paintings, and general Renaissance magic/alchemy), some scraps from and Amber Spyglass, which spends most of its time wasting ours, and a complete list of countries--some surprising--in Lyra's Oxford. But Pullman basically has abandoned this fantasy universe, as opposed to authors who gush forth multi-book cycles and handmade maps and supplements and atmospherics for their eager fanbase.
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This is too complicated for me to read right now but I am amused and shall return for a proper review at some point. Keep up the cartography!
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