GAZ1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos was revolutionary for Mystara in all sorts of ways. One of the more unexpected things it gave us was a completely new map of the capital city of Specularum. This had been mapped three years previously in B6 The Veiled Society, but GAZ1’s map bore almost no resemblance to B6’s. But while GAZ1’s map was radically different in shape and style, it also included a wealth of detail that was brand new to the setting.

The first map of the city of Specularum appeared in module B6, in 1984. It showed a large urban area with hundreds of streets crowded around a large bay. The city was divided into the Old City, with a dense network of small streets, and the New City, with large meandering avenues and the occasional cluster of crisscrossed streets. A wall encompassed the New City, with an older wall fencing in the Old City inside it.

Alongside its Alfheim Town Area map, GAZ5 provided one other close-up map. This one covered the Sump and Weir, into which all of Alfheim’s magically augmented rain collects and drains. As with the Town Area map, this one used a peculiar setup with huge hexes overlaying what was otherwise not a hex map in form. The scale here matched the inset map of Alfheim Town in the corner of the Town Area map, with a nominal 1 mile per hex.

GAZ5 actually included two ever-so-slightly different versions of this map. While they were functionally the same map, the cropping around the northwestern edge, as well as the positioning of the map title, was just a tiny bit different. In a slight departure from the Atlas’s usual policy, I am treating these as the same map. This was a peculiar map, as although it was nominally 8 miles per hex, in fact the detail was more in line with a much larger scale such as 1 mile per hex.

This was the final map showing the Polar Openings in the Hollow World Campaign Set, and the pair of the Outer World Antarctic Cap map. While that map showed the southern polar region from the Outer World, this one showed the Hollow World side. As with the other polar maps from the Hollow World Set, this map was revolutionary in its portrayal of Mystara’s polar area in a suitable projection for the first time — of course while attempting to show the curved polar opening connecting the worlds.

The pair of Hollow World Set Outer World Arctic Cap, this map showed the northern polar gate from inside the Hollow World. (See the Outer World map for an overview of this set of maps.) The Hollow World maps suffered from few of the stretching problems that plagued the Outer World, as they mainly presented the wholly new internal world.

Just as the Outer World Arctic Cap map showed the norther polar opening, the Antarctic Cap map illustrated the southern gate into the Hollow World. (For an overview of these maps, see the post for the Arctic Cap.) This map gave a clear indication as to what lands were intended to fold into the opening, with just the southern tip of Davania and a few slivers of the Vulcanian Peninsula on the inner slope towards the Hollow World.

The Hollow World Campaign Set pioneered the intriguing (not to mention highly eccentric) idea that the world of Mystara was hollow. The world maps appeared to tackle this peculiar configuration by adopting a projection with flat northern and southern edges. However, in fact these were simply Robinson projections, and the flat lines at the top and bottom of the maps would normally represent the poles of a regular globe.

For the full story behind this map, see Hollow World Set Hollow World Planetary Map. As with the Hollow World Set Outer World Planetary Map, there was an art error in this map, with Lake Chitlaloc appearing as plains instead of water. A second error lay in the shading of the nearby Malpheggi Swamps, which were coloured light brown surrounded by a river.

The Hollow World Campaign Set did not just provide a revolutionary map of the Outer World; as the name indicated, it also presented a companion map of the world’s inner surface: the Hollow World. As this was a brand new addition to the setting, and the first (and indeed only) world map of this inner land, it did not suffer from the same problems that plagued the Outer World map.

Michele’s ninth and final Known World geographical history map brought the region into the world of Wrath of the Immortals and the Poor Wizard’s Almanac series, with the addition of the Great Crater and the demise of the Canolbarth Forest. Fan-made Map by Michele Carpita (November 2006) The Known World 1006-1013 AC by Michele Carpita, November 2006

This was the eighth and also the penultimate map in Michele’s Known World geographical history series. It brought the area to its present day, 1000 AC configuration. The main change from the previous map was deforestation in the Northern Reaches, presumably due to settlement and other civilised actions. The region remained in this state until the events of the Wrath of the Immortals…

The seventh map in Michele’s sequence brought the Known World much closer to its familiar modern-day configuration. 500 BC saw the demise of Nithia, with the River Nithia vanishing and the Alasiyan Desert replacing its once-fertile river valley. Fan-made Map by Michele Carpita (November 2006) The Known World 500 BC-425 AC by Michele Carpita, November 2006

Michele’s seventh map showing the evolution of the Known World’s geography centred on two major events. With the creation of Alfheim, the mighty Canolbarth Forest made its appearance. Around the same time, the newly raised and expanded Atruaghin Plateau towered above the surrounding lands. Perhaps as a result of these changes, large areas to the west of the map — the Adri Varma Plateau and the Sind area — were now undergoing desertification.

The sixth map in Michele’s cycle of Known World geographical history showed the area 500 years after the catastrophe of 1700 BC. Recovery was once again well underway, although much of Glantri was still once again ice-bound and desolate. It would be hundreds of years yet before it completely overcame the after-effects of the disaster. Fan-made Map by Michele Carpita (November 2006)

Michele’s fifth map chronicling the geographical history of the Known World depicted the region in the immediate aftermath of the cataclysm of 1700 BC. His dating suggests that the after-effects lasted for the next five hundred years, with desolation centring on the newly-created Broken Lands, but the lands further away still flourishing. Fan-made Map by Michele Carpita (November 2006) The Known World 1700-1200 BC by Michele Carpita, November 2006

This was the fourth map in Michele’s sequence of Known World geographical history. It brought the area right up to the eve of the cataclysm of 1700 BC that created the Broken Lands. The southern coast had finished its transformation, settling into its familiar modern-day shapes. Ice sheets had receded into the depths of the mountains, and the area was teeming with new forests and plant growth.

The third in Michele’s sequence of Known World historical maps brought the lands up to immediately before the catastrophe that created the Broken Lands, in 1750 BC. During this time, early in the second millennium BC, the ice sheets had completely receded into the mountains, and the uncovered lands were flourishing with new growth. Michele had the southern coastal area in the process of splitting off from the mainland, but with more volcanic upheavals still to come.

This was the second in a sequence of maps detailing the physical history of the Known World area. See also Known World 3000-2500 BC, the first map in the series. In this period the ice sheets (grey) had largely receded from lowland areas, remaining mostly only in highlands. Forests (green) flourished in the newly open lands. Fan-made Map by Michele Carpita (November 2006)

In November 2006, Michele posted a series of ten maps to the Italian Mystara Message Board. The sequence told the physical history of the Known World over the past four thousand years. He explained to me as follows: It is a set of maps aimed at showing all major terrain changes in the Known World area since the Great Rain of Fire.

Michele made this map to illustrate a theory about the Beachhead marked in M2, proposing that it was the site of an abandoned Alphatian colony. In exactly the way we have all come to expect from Michele from his years of work on Mystara, he deftly brought together information and hints from numerous sources. He assembled the evidence to point to previous settlements at that location — not just the Alphatians, but also the Alatians as well as the Horde of King Loark.

Michele created this wonderful topographic map of the Isle of Dawn’s Crossdawn Road in August 2021. He was drawn to the area because it’s a setting that is ripe for adventures, as he explained in the article accompanying the map, which provides lots of information for the map’s locations. The style of the map was itself rather interesting, as Michele incorporated detailed hill shading in a way that had previously been virtually unknown in Mystara’s maps.

Michele wrote an article for Threshold #27 adding background to the Hulean invasion of Wrath of the Immortals. Of Masters and Deceptions - Behind the Hulean Wars was a mostly narrative account, but he included this map of Hule back at the time of Hosadus’ Reincarnation. The map builds on all the official sources for the region — of course primarily X5, but also…

The eighth and final version of his North Central Arypt, 72 miles per hex map, Michele placed a whole series of adventure locations. These referenced the many adventures he had collected together for his project — many from Dungeon Magazine, as well as Dragon, the AC series, and others besides. A lot of these adventures were generic, not necessarily designed for Mystara.

Michele’s seventh map variants for his North Central Arypt, 72 miles per hex map provided information on trade routes. He produced two versions: one with the main trade routes marked on a hex-grid variant of the Settlements map; the other with the same features but no hex grid, instead highlighting each route with the nation that uses that route. He then included a write-up of the main trade routes in his…