Maps, Oceans and Clarity

[asmith1989@gmail.com]

Hi,

 

So I am currently working on creating my own map of the full wheel of time world. Effectively it would be the map here but scaled up and with all the detail of the smaller maps (examples here and here).

 

I am intrigued over the size of the oceans and specifically the Morenal Ocean. This is the sea between Seanchan and Shara. Is the size correct?

 

In this map it is evidently very small because when you measure this (assuming the borders of the map continues on the other side) it is only 2000 miles across.

My question is why the empire never considered mounting an assault on Shara considering it is over 10,000 miles closer than 'randland'.

 

I know that Shara was never part of Hawkwings empire but I am surprised that they never thought about going there if only as a resource for damane.

 

Anyway if someone knows any more on the actual size etc. it would be great to hear some input so I get my map as accurate as possible!

[Tyzack]

On a slightly related note, i have always been curious as to why the narrative is so limited to what apears to be 1/4 or so of the landmass.

 

I am specifically interested in what happens on the isle of madmen and shara.

 

Also, doesn't the map contradict multiple statements that there is no blight (trollocs) on seanchan? What about Shara?

[asmith1989@gmail.com]

This map is from the book 'The World of the wheel of time' by Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson so I think it is fairly accurate.

A quote from the book says of the isle of madmen:

 

'Approximately equidistant from Seanchan borders and roughly south of our land across the Sea of Storms is the third continent. Nameless, except to its inhabitants, it was discovered by the Sea Folk, who call it 'the Land of the Madmen' and do their best to avoid it. Until this publication , they were the only ones even aware of its existence. The sea Folk have not even tried to chart its shoreline, though they do state that the continent is approximately seven hundred and fifty leagues across and five hundred leagues from north to south, with its southern coast extending to within five hundred miles of the southern icecap.

Many active volcanoes are located along the coastline, easily visible from the sea. Earthquakes and large storms are common in these seas, and icebergs are a constant danger to any ships that travel far south of the northern edge of the continent, possibly owing to the numerous earthquakes cracking the edge of the icecap.

The Sea Folk tell fearsome tales of those who chanced to go ashore on the Land of the Madmen and made it back to their ships. The natives apparently never recovered from the breaking, and never managed to re-establish order of any kind. The people are reported to live ion wretched hovels in small, primitive villages. Any foreigner runs the risk of encountering channellers of either sex. The male channellers are frequently insane, of course, due to the taint, but the women are just as dangerous and unpredictable. If the stranger meets no channellers, he will simply be overwhelmed by a mob of villagers who attempt to kill anyone on sight anyone unknown to them. There seems no possibility of peaceful contact.'

And that is everything on the isle of madmen. Not really story material :).'

 

[Ananta]

On a slightly related note, i have always been curious as to why the narrative is so limited to what apears to be 1/4 or so of the landmass.

 

I am specifically interested in what happens on the isle of madmen and shara.

 

Also, doesn't the map contradict multiple statements that there is no blight (trollocs) on seanchan? What about Shara?

 

I'm pretty sure there's Blight in Seanchan, but that the Trollocs and other shadowspawn have been completely wiped out from there.

[Suttree]

On a slightly related note, i have always been curious as to why the narrative is so limited to what apears to be 1/4 or so of the landmass.

 

I am specifically interested in what happens on the isle of madmen and shara.

 

Also, doesn't the map contradict multiple statements that there is no blight (trollocs) on seanchan? What about Shara?

 

The blight does exist in Shara.

 

In addition it is possible the country is in total chaos. We have Graendal who stole there ruling couple which breaks their supposed pattern influenced "seven year" rule. In addition we see the silk worm merchant from Shara who stole away in KoD. Based on how they had managed to so tightly regulate trade and the movement of it's people it's unlikely he would have escaped if there were not major issues going down. The last thing that is important to note is that they are the only country who have basically been breeding channelers and should have a higher percentage of women who can do so.

 

I for one feel it is to late to really introduce anything from this area, but the signs mentioned above show something may have been brewing.

[Tyzack]

On a slightly related note, i have always been curious as to why the narrative is so limited to what apears to be 1/4 or so of the landmass.

 

I am specifically interested in what happens on the isle of madmen and shara.

 

Also, doesn't the map contradict multiple statements that there is no blight (trollocs) on seanchan? What about Shara?

 

The blight does exist in Shara.

 

In addition it is possible the country is in total chaos. We have Graendal who stole there ruling couple which breaks their supposed pattern influenced "seven year" rule. In addition we see the silk worm merchant from Shara who stole away in KoD. Based on how they had managed to so tightly regulate trade and the movement of it's people it's unlikely he would have escaped if there were not major issues going down. The last thing that is important to note is that they are the only country who have basically been breeding channelers and should have a higher percentage of women who can do so.

 

I for one feel it is to late to really introduce anything from this area, but the signs mentioned above show something may have been brewing.

 

I agree that it is way too late; this is something that has been annoying me for years now.

 

Slightly related (sorry for the thread-jacking)

Did the trolloc wars affect either seanchan or shara?

[baalsmistress]

I would suspect that there was little to no impact on the lands where the Seanchan have been living for the past 1000 years, because they were not there at the time. The Seanchan empire dates back to the time of Artur Hawkwing, whose reign ended with the commencement of the hundred years war. The Trolloc war was much earlier, and so the seanchan empire simply did not exist at that time.

 

As to the point of why they Seanchan empire didn't invade Shara, 3 thoughts occur

 

In no particular order

 

1. The sea gap between the 2 nations may well be much wider than supposed on that map, or simply noone explored successfully and returned in that direction.
2. There might have been attempts to invade that are off camera and the seanchan have not/do not refer to
3. Randland is the birthland of the original settlers in the army of Artur Hawkwing that crossed the ocean. They were charged with securing the lands across the Ocean for the Hawkwing Empire. Thus it's relatively natural for them to seek to return to the 'mainland'. On arrival, they have found Hawkwing's empire long since fallen and the land devided by people's that they consider to be oathbreakers - I get the impression that for the seanchan, oaths are inherited. Faced with this, they left and came back in force to revive the empire.

Personally I consider 3 to be the most important consideration. The only thing that is really not according to plan, is the army taking about 1000 years to get around to reporting back.

 

 

 

[Suttree]

Slightly related (sorry for the thread-jacking)

Did the trolloc wars affect either seanchan or shara?

 

We have this from the BWB...

The Sharans claim to have a monolithic empire, one nation completely at peace since the Breaking, with no wars or rebellions of any kind. They often claim that even the Trolloc Wars did not touch them, despite Aiel statements that it did, and the fact that the Mountains of Dhoom and the Great Blight cut across the northern part of their land in much the same way as they do our own. Occasionally a Sharan will admit that the Trollocs were a problem, but only a minor one. They consistently deny any knowledge of Artur Hawkwing's invasion fleet, insisting, despite the Sea Folk's eyewitness accounts, that it never existed.

 

As for the Trolloc Wars and Seanchan, Shadowspawn had already been eradicated on that continent before that time with the help of creatures brought back from Portal Stone worlds.

 

BWB

These strange new creatures were not Shadowspawn at all, but the descendants of beasts brought back from parallel worlds, via Portal Stones, during the first thousand years after the Breaking, probably in an attempt to find aid against the real Shadowspawn. While the creatures' effectiveness was not recorded, it was during this same period that all remaining Shadowspawn on the continent were eradicated. The creatures remained, their care and training surviving through all the political upheavals until Luthair's arrival. The knowledge that allowed their procurement by way of the Portal Stones, however, was lost.

[tlburchhardt]

Personally, I was surprised how big the ice caps are. It makes you wonder what is under there.

[bobarose]

I thought Hawkwing had sent people to shara to?

But nobody ever returned.

[1Brotherbill]

When you make the scale map make sure that you remember that a Wheel of time week is longer than seven days. So what takes Rand and Mat a few weeks to walk to Camelyn is a longer distance than you would expect.

 

Also if the ocean between Shara and Seanchan is larger than Randland and Seanchan then the planet is made up of ninety percent ocean and ten percent land. Surprise there isn't an aquatic species that has developed.

[Luckers]

It's possible there is some sort of enviromental issue preventing crossing that ocean--or even some remenant of the Breaking that makes it dangerous--a ter'angreal creating storms or something....

[1Brotherbill]

Maybe it's flat!

 

I never heard of the land of madmen or whatever it was called. Seems that men who can channel on a land that big would play just a little bit of havoc world wide to me. Maybe they get killed by females at an early age. From the description it seems like some sort of Lord of the Flies going on down there. He or she who carries the biggest stick wins.

 

Satelite story: Female channeler Madmen learns how to fly and ends up in Randland killing all Aes Sedai.

[asmith1989@gmail.com]

I thought Hawkwing had sent people to shara to?

But nobody ever returned.

 

You are correct! I thought of that this morning and was going to mention it. Hawkwing sent one of his daughters with a force comparable to the force sent to Seanchan. This was sent one year after the assault on Seanchan but I think it likely that his son knew of the plans to attach Shara.

This makes it even more likely that they would consider scouting out Shara and seeing the initial invasion had failed attack themselves.

[Agitel]

http://s963.photobucket.com/albums/ae117/Agitel/

 

Some work I did awhile ago. I keep saying I want to revisit the topic and touch on Seanchan but I've yet to do that. I'm very confident in my interpretation of the "main" continent of the series. All the distances work out correctly, compared to the distances given by Jordan and comparing to the "world maps" that exist. That would make Seanchan the "future" of the Americas. I've read that Seanchan is 4,500 miles across at it's widest point, I grossly underestimated it's size in the little sketch I have over the Americas on the world maps in the link. I'd say that the farthest west the continent stretches is the Rocky Mountains in the USA, though I've yet to do a rigorous analysis in the comparison of the "past/present" geography as I have with Eurasia and Africa.

 

The quote above also confirms I was wrong on the Land of Madmen. It's a greatly expanded chunk partially "grown" from the southernmost part of the African continent, but we really don't have much to go on to judge it's size. But that should give you a very accurate reading of how far across the Morenal ocean is. The "world map" above is greatly wrong on the distance of the Aryth Ocean.

 

And yes, the Wheel of Time world is Earth and I'm convinced that the maps given us are heavily based on real world geography. The most obvious examples in Eurasiafrica are the remnants of the Himalayas (you'll see this much better in maps specific to just that continent and Shara) and southeastern Shara, which follows the same generalities of southeastern Asia, even going so far as to cross the equator in a very similar fashion. The distances across the main continent and the distances I measured for the endpoints in Africa and Asia also match up. I was also able to infer much of the Randland coastline by looking at maps of the Earth, following mountainous/plateau regions and the like. Shorelle, the city Asmodean describes being grown up in, would be very much on what becomes of the Caspian and/or Aral Sea, while the distance from the post-breaking coast to the pre-breaking coast (described by one of the Aiel in Rand's flashbacks while in Rhuidean) would put Comelle conveniently on the African coastline. I'm somewhat undecided as to where to place Shayol Ghul/V'sain. It's described as being an idyllic island in a cool sea. So I would assume it's in the White Sea, which may actually work distance-wise with a little stretch, or if we're willing to break from the book-maps a little more in this one case on the assumption that Jordan didn't want to have miles and miles of empty blight taking up room from the rest of the map, I would place it on the island of Novaya Zemlya, north of Russia, and part of me wants to place it at the test site of the Tsar Bomb, the largest nuclear bomb ever tested. Want something to thin out the Pattern in an area? I'd put my money on that.

 

I likely shouldn't have added that last line, as that last part is mere fun speculation. I hope it doesn't detract from the rest of the post. Anyway, I'm not insisting that the geography was EXACTLY the same in the Age of Legends, there's a little bit of give in seas and rivers, though I'd say the major landmasses would be pretty similar, based on the maps.

[SylvanFox]

Hi,

 

So I am currently working on creating my own map of the full wheel of time world. Effectively it would be the map here but scaled up and with all the detail of the smaller maps (examples here and here).

 

I am intrigued over the size of the oceans and specifically the Morenal Ocean. This is the sea between Seanchan and Shara. Is the size correct?

 

In this map it is evidently very small because when you measure this (assuming the borders of the map continues on the other side) it is only 2000 miles across.

My question is why the empire never considered mounting an assault on Shara considering it is over 10,000 miles closer than 'randland'.

 

I know that Shara was never part of Hawkwings empire but I am surprised that they never thought about going there if only as a resource for damane.

 

Anyway if someone knows any more on the actual size etc. it would be great to hear some input so I get my map as accurate as possible!

 

 

On the Morenal Ocean... I think it must be bigger than it looks on this map.

 

This is kind of a crappy piece of evidence, but look at the curvature on the sides. It's nowhere near what we would see on one of today's maps. See how it curves so far outward? I guess the mapmakers of Rand's time didn't see the need to include all that Ocean space.

[Stubob]

http://xkcd.com/977/

 

I choose A Globe. Easier to store my booze.

[bobarose]

http://xkcd.com/977/

 

I choose A Globe. Easier to store my booze.

yeah but how do you pour out of that globe friend?

[AquilaInfernus]

http://xkcd.com/977/

 

I choose A Globe. Easier to store my booze.

yeah but how do you pour out of that globe friend?

 

Obviously that's what the bore is for