Hidden in Shadows

 In this POST from a few years ago, I was concerned with the issue of scale and distance in Blackmoor in the course of which I attempted to determine the intended scale of the "original Northern Marches" - the March 1971 map of Blackmoor - by fitting it onto a map of the Netherlands. For those unaware, the reason for doing so is that in the FFC, Arneson said his Blackmoor map was modeled on a map of Holland. Of course, there have been several attempts by different folks over the years, trying to figure out how Blackmoor might fit on a map of the Netherlands. For the most part it was assumed, by me certainly and I think others, that Arneson's "old Dutch map" on which he based his map of Blackmoor was a 19th or 18th century one.

It was purely on a whim, mostly because I wanted an accurate scalebar, that I choose to look for an older 20th century example to use instead, and so I settled on a colorful Rand McNally Atlas map of the Netherlands from the 1930's.

I now think this map I had more or less stumbled on is the very map that Arneson actually used, and I have come to this conclusion in the light of new material from the Fletcher collection.

There were several outstanding maps among the material Ken Fletcher had collected and handed over to Griff Morgan at last years Arnecon, now published in the Blackmoor Foundations book.

Two of these in particular caught my eye, as being truly Foundational.  I wasn't sure if these two maps on separate sheets, one vertical and one landscape in orientation, were part of the same drawing or would go together but shortly after I mentioned they might be related (and that one of the maps had been scanned upside down, the other sideways) Michael Calleia   http://chanceand.com/  demonstrated not only were they related but they fit together seamlessly, like this:

What you are looking at is, almost certainly, the original "proto Blackmoor" map. For the rest of this post I will refer to this map as the "Ur" map for convenience. Of course, this isn't a Blackmoor map at all, but a map of central Holland, drawn by Arneson, most likely on a light table or using a projector or some such.  You would be forgiven if you don't see an immediate resemblance to Blackmoor as you know it, especially considering how "busy" the Arneson map is.  However if you look closely you can clearly see Glendower peninsula with it's funny little finger of land at the northern tip, and that curving western coastline noticeable in Arneson's March of 1971 Blackmoor map but turned to dry land in all later versions. To show you what I mean, here is the same map superimposed on the Rand McNally Netherlands map.

And here it is again ghosted:

And here it is with the March 1971 "Northern Marches" map of Blackmoor, that heretofore was our oldest know map (note I colored in the water on this version to add clarity):

I don't know why the "Ur" map was created. Arneson's Corner of the Table Top newsletter does mention a planned Napoleonics campaign in the Netherlands and it seems quite possible that is what the map was originally made for, before becoming repurposed as a basis for Blackmoor, but at this point I'm only speculating. If that were the case it seems a bit odd to use a twentieth century map for an early nineteenth century campaign, but maybe that was all Arneson had access to and perhaps the inaccuracies seen here and there, the occasional odd line, and the non-matching settlements are a result of imperfect tracing conditions compensated for with creative license. In any case, what this series of map images hopefully demonstrates is that the "Ur map" was traced off of the Rand McNally map, and the 1971 Northern Marches map was then traced off of a portion of that. The Rand McNally map is sure to be the model as can be seen most clearly in the Markermeer/Ljssemeer / Blackmoor Bay region of the Ur map.

Note in particular the red outlined areas with red diagonal lines marked NE, and NW in what is now the Ljssemeer lake region of the Netherlands. These lined areas only appear on Rand McNally maps and I have only found it on maps in atlases with print dates ranging from 1936 to 1941. The one I used was dated 1937.  The red slashed areas represent a land reclamation project begun in 1932, never fully completed and later changed, so you won't see these areas marked on earlier maps at all or in the same shape on later maps of the Netherlands.

However, looking at the Ur map, we see that Arneson traced the red diagonal area marked NE nearly exactly as if it were land:

Identifying these maps is a breakthrough, but only a start.  I notice for example, that many of the roads, rivers and borders in the Rand McNally map line up with lines on the Ur map that could be roads or rivers, but many of the other features such as lakes, forests, mountains and swamp seem to be filled in by Arneson without much regard for the real topography of the Netherlands. Settlements also seem to have been placed by Arneson without regard to the location of actual Ducth towns.

One humorous exception I noted is that there is a city marked on Blackmoor maps at the corresponding location of Amsterdam on the Netherlands map, and that city is none other than the Coots Nest of the Egg of Coot! 

We are only scratching the surface here, but for this post I want to bring in one more observation of particular interest to Greyhawk fans. One the many fascinating bits of information Jon Peterson related in the Dungeons & Dragons - the Making of Original D&D 1970-1977 book sprang to mind as I looked at this map of Blackmoor on Holland. On page 18 Jon offhandedly mentioned that "Arneson was allocated the Northern Marches; he originally planned for this realm to occupy the northwest corner of the map below the Far Ocean, but Gygax placed it at the innermost cove of the Great Bay instead." 

According to Rob Kuntz, who was in charge of the newsletter at the time, Arneson was involved with preparing the images due to Gary Gygax having lost access to the necessary equipment. In this case he would have had the opportunity to pick his spot before the map was published. If one looks at the Great Kingdom map and at the Blackmoor map it is easy to see what Arneson was thinking.  Here is the "official" map as it appeared in the Domesday book Newsletter in 1971:

In fact, we can drop the Netherlands map right into that section like so.

 Related to my last post, and a fun topic in itself, it is something of an open secret that the recent and ongoing "Chentoufi" series of adventures co-authored by Luke Gygax take place in a setting not unlike that his father Gary created in the western Flanaess.  Like the Arabian flavored Baklunish Empire of Greyhawk, the Arabian flavored empire of Luke Gygax's World of Okkorim was decimated centuries previously by a great magical devastation.

In both settings, the heart of the ancient empire was basically fried by a magical cataclysim, leaving behind a wasteland with a few outposts of struggling civilization at the edges.  In Greyhawk, the barren lands are known as "The Dry Steps". In Okkorim, its called the "Blighted Lands".

While I don't for a minute think Luke Gygax is trying to be sneaky here and give us Greyhawk with the serial numbers filed off, I do think it is not unreasonable to suppose Mr. Gygax is designing the Okkorim setting in a way that will (and does) make it easy for those who may wish to transplant his adventures into the Greyhawk setting. 

So how might we do that? Chentoufi is the city around which the various adventures take place.  It rests on a north-south coastline with ocean to the west and the Blighted lands to the east.

Thus we need to find a portion of the Flanaess of the right size with a north-south coastline, just west of the Dry Steppes which is the Greyhawk equivalent of the Blighted Lands.   There is one place, and only one place, that fits - maybe you guessed it - The Gulf of Ghayar.  Any further west on the Greyhawk map and you will leave the Dry Steppes  behind, not to mention there is not really a suitable coastline.

Remarkably, the eastern coast of the Gulf of Ghayar is mostly undeveloped in Greyhawk lore.  The Chentoufi coast can be plopped right in without much fuss.  Below is my attempt at doing just that.  

(Note I did rotate the Chentoufi map about 25 degrees NE in order to make the curving coastline on the bottom of the older line drawn map from the original release fit better to the Gulf of Ghayar coast.  I don't think the slight shift affects the geography very much,  The newer color maps of the Chentoufi coast don't go quite as far south and thus lack the coastal curve that necessitated the compass shift and it would be possible to re-align to North and still make the new color map fit if that were important to your game.  YMMV)

 Ten years ago I started this 'blog.  To celebrate I have a gift for all of you.

Below is a new, top quality map of Arneson's Blackmoor set within the Flanaess, continent of Oerik, world of Greyhawk, drawn by professional mapmaker Daniel Hasenbos of the Netherlands - where better to find a mapmaker for Blackmoor!  For more of Daniel's Maps look here.

Last fall I began to create something I realized was sorely needed.  Blackmoor, as my readers will know, and Greyhawk started out together as locations on a shared world.  Blackmoor belongs to the world of "Oerth" as much as Greyhawk does, yet few Greyhawk fans know anything of Arneson's Blackmoor and those who may be interested can't be faulted for not knowing where to start the journey, being bombarded with an array of products from OD&D supplement II to current day fan works.

So I took it upon myself to write a free guidebook to Blackmoor for Greyhawk fans.  To that end I commissioned this fantastic map.

Interestingly, and coincidentally Daniel finished the map in March of this year - the fiftieth anniversary of the letter Arneson sent to Rob Kuntz with his first map of "the Northern Marches" enclosed.  That map formed the bases of our new map, along with some input from the "sketch map" of Blackmoor found in the FFC.  All the later maps were also drawn upon for fringe areas, particularly to the south. For more see these posts:

10a/2019

10b/2019

I'm releasing the map now because I am nearly finished with the guidebook and will have that out shortly.  You all may freely use this map as you please as long as you ALWAYS acknowledge where you got it.

I cannot begin to explain in this blogpost all the care and research that went into the maps production but let me reassure you all that this map is as true as I can make it.  I'll even venture to say no Blackmoor map has been so exhaustively researched for accuracy and fidelity to the 1972 Blackmoor and Castle & Crusade society originals while simultaneously designed to fit directly onto the popular Greyhawk map of Anna B. Meyer as shown below.  

And a better resolution version on the 2017 hexmap:

Happy Anniversary everybody.

 Funnily enough, this process started with Izmer, the setting of the first and second D&D movies, as discussed in previous posts.  You might think that placing Izmer off the western edge of the Greyhawk map would be a fairly simple matter.  The trouble begins, however, with the fact that no map of the lands of Izmer was ever published. 

Luckily (?) it is pretty well established that "Izmer" was drawn from the filmmaker's home brew campaign, loosely based on Alphatia, an Island empire in the Mystara setting.  Again fortunately, Bruce Heard, one of the principal creators of Mystara, has been posting useful maps of the island. So I just snagged one of Heard's maps of Alphatia, played around with resizing to get a good fit, and tacked it on to the missing end of the Oerth map.  Okay, that's good, I thought.  I'm done.

That's not quite the end of the story, as I read deeper into what others had to say about western Greyhawk, more "canon" material came to light.  First there is a fair amount of information to be found in Gygax's Gord the Rogue books, a useful summary of which is On Drangonsfoot.

So, of course I had to add all those in.  I also found a useable Telchuria map that fit and scanned in some screen shots of area maps from the movies, including a map of the islands where the Orb of  Falazure was hidden: 

and This map of the area around Antius and the Tomb of Savrill.

Still not done.  There is still a blank area to the south unaccounted for.  Typically fan made maps of Western Oerik utilize the Dragon Annual "Bearskin" continent, - namely this turd-like peninsula dangling from the south end.

Okay, now I'm done right?  Nope.  Enter Sagard the Barbarian.  Let me quote Wikipedia. "Sagard the Barbarian is a series of four Hero's Challenge Gamebooks written by Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and Flint Dille, screenwriter,... Flint Dille met Gary Gygax while Gygax was in Hollywood and they began collaborating on a number of projects, including the Sagard the Barbarian gamebook series (1985-1986)...".  

These are teen "choose your own adventure" type books, set in yet another version of Greyhawk.  I don't have these books, but the maps are readily available online.  Here they are in order from the books:

If you look closely, you will note that it is only the Hydranian Islands that connect all these maps.  We can easily assume their placement on the book 3 map is simply wrong, and therefore Ratik can remain as Ratik is in the first map and as it is in all other Greyhawk maps.  

So then we are left with placing the peninsula shown in maps 3 and 4, and where better to put this than in the place of the "turd" peninsula from the Dragon Annual, non-Gygaxian map.   

It turns out I wasn't the first one to think along these lines.  Oerth Journal #26 (Here) has an excellent article by Erik Mona wherein he distills all the important setting information from the Sagard books and places them on the map in this very location.  Unfortunately, he choose to scrap the Sagard maps and tries relocate these countries onto the turd, along with the place names TSR had already put there ("Nippon") and some fan created material ("Sunela").  Nevertheless, most of the country descriptions in the article are terrific and useful if you just ignore his map.  Heck, if I had seen this article first I might not have done all the research into the Sagard maps, but I'm glad I did.

Now, yes, I'm done.  Below is a map - crudely but accurately done - that incorporates all the research from Izmer, the Gord novels, and the Sagard books into one functional, fascinating, gameworld. Whew! 

Hopes were high when the D&D movie came out, but most gamers found the film to be very disappointing.  Looking back with 20 years of hindsight, it isn't such a bad movie.  Parts are even well done, but the structure of the film was flawed in that it was generic fantasy with few iconic D&Disms and one of the main characters, a thief called Snails, was just ruinously, hideosly, awful, at least as portrayed by the actor. 

So the movie went into the dustbin essentially, and even though there was a low budget, but still much better, sequel, (Wrath of the Dragon God, 2005), the movie did not generate the line of role playing products originally planned.

A few articles and short adventures did appear on the WotC website however, and two of those were written by Dave Arneson, who had been asked to contribute to a planned sourcebook for the setting.  These articles are interesting in themselves, as they show Arneson's take on the setting, and in some ways lay a foundation for his later re-boot of Blackmoor - we will leave that discussion for another day.

Besides, there is plenty written about this stuff in the forums, such as HERE , and I don't want to recap all that now.  What I do want to point out is that in the correspondence posted in those forums, Arneson mentions that since his work on the Empire of Izmer wasn't going to be used for a sourcebook, he was incorporating it into his personal Blackmoor campaign.  He wrote "Since I did all that work, and WOTC scrubbed movie support (Before the movie came out BTW) I added it to my campaign world.  In my case I placed the Empire beyond the Great Mountains to the West...." 

Readers of this blog will know that of late I have been focusing on how Arneson's Blackmoor may best be retro-fit into Greyhawk as it originally had been before the rift with TSR, and that brings up the question of how Izmer would fit also.

It's always bothered me a little that the Greyhawk maps don't show a coastline in the west and southwest. Just looking at the map gives no clue how big the Sea of Dust is or what is on the other side. I know a lot of people have wondered. 

Long after Gygax had parted company with TSR, an Oerth map was released by TSR  that attempts to answer the question of what lies beyond. The TSR map shows a huge, bearskin-rug like continent extending from the west of the Flanaess. This monstrosity not only dwarfs the Flanaesse into insignificance, but it is completely ugly and unnatural. I really don't think it makes any sense as is, and a majority of Greyhawk fans reject it as ridiculous.

The story behind the map was that it was found in Gygax office after he left the company, so it must be legit, right?  Recently the real scoop about the map was related by Skip Williams in an interview on Lord Gosumba's Greyhawk channel (YouTube).  Yes, the map was found in Gygax's office, but it was not in his handwriting and most likely had been drawn by his friend François Marcela-Froideval for his French commic series.

So that's that. 

In thinking about what might lie at the edge of the Greyhawk map in contrast to the ideas of Mr. Froideval, I remembered what Arneson said about Izmer.  From there it is a simple deductive syllogism: If Izmer lies west of Blackmoor, and Blackmoor lies in Greyhawk, then Izmer lies in western Greyhawk.

Interestingly, one doesn't need Arneson's idea to come to this conclusion at all.  As we shall see, Izmer has it's own Greyhawk clues.

An important caveate to make at this juncture, one which will often be brought up, is that Greyhawk exists in multiple versions, a multiverse of Oerths, Aerths, Yarths and what have you's.  That to me is just a metagaming tool of no real consequence.  I figure what may exist in one multiverse Greyhawk/Blackmoor prolly should exist in another, so there was a reason to possibly place Izmer to the far west of Blackmoor in Greyhawk too, and, as it turns out, there are additional clues that tie the movie setting to Greyhawk. In fact the second movie includes the  Greyhawk references to Obad-hai, Jubilix, the Ghost Tower of Inverness, the Barrier Peaks, and the Shrine of Kuo-Toa. So it's not out of the question to put Izmer somewhere west of the Sea of Dust.

You can have a look Here on FB where some of the research - meaning notes from watching the movies - is discussed and is all pretty accessible for anyone interested in drawing on the Izmer setting.  The movie novelization, however, may be a lot more obscure, so I will close out this post with my notes from that book.  In the next post I'm going to look at pulling all the information together into a workable map - along with another twist to this story before we get there .

The D&D novel by Neal Barrett Jr. isn't exactly a gold mine of new information.  The plot follows fairly closely to that of the movie and there isn't much in the way of new scenes, but of course there is still some information to glean.  As a side note, the Snails character of the book is something of an exception, in that he is much more likeable and believable - not the annoying jar-jar binks nock off that Wayans portrayed. 

The notes I give here though aren't about the characters.  I looked specifically for geographical information, historical information, and general description to augment what we know from other sources.

SUMDALL

Page 0. Map showing the heart of Sumdall.  Sumdall proper lies on the north side of the river (unnamed).  Four bridges are shown crossing the river into "Oldtown", the city south of the river where the poor and underprivileged live.  The map only lists a few principal buildings such as the Council of Mages, the Imperial Palace, The Magic School, and Profion's Tower on the banks of the river in Oldtown. 

Page 17 "...he could see one of the heavy stone bridges that linked Oldtown with the opulent domes and towers of Sumdall city - or, he thought, cut off the very rich from the multitude of poor."

page 17.  Sumdall is millennia old, and was established at a time when "short, bronze-armored warriors had come down out of the north to conquer."  There is no mention in the book of the Turanians, but these warriors seem a good candidate.

 There is no shortage of taverns. Some named in Oldtown are "Ferret and Fox (the oldest), Dog and Duck, Hoof and Hair, and Hare and Hound." In Sumdall there is a tavern named "The Rusty Sword", which is the oldest surviving tavern in the city.

COUNCIL OF MAGES

Page 40 (and elsewhere).  The council of mages is described as an advisory body, not a legislative one.  However, if the council comes to a decision by majority vote, the Emperor/Empress is bound by law to obey the decision. (per pages 176-178)

ANTIUS

Page 105.  Description of Antius; "Antius was a city even older than Sumdall.  A city built atop a city and a myriad of cities under that, going back to even before the great war... It was a cramped city with a crumbling fortress wall perched atop a steep hill.  The place had nowhere to go but up.  A stranger approaching this kingdom of thieves was awed by the towers and keeps that seemed to push one another aside, stretching high into the low clouds..."

TARAK

Page 134 "Profion of Tarak".  There must be a territory or city named Tarak somewhere in Izmer.

PRETENSA

Page 65 Marina comes from a place called Pretensa, her "birthland in the far mountain reaches of the north."

DAMODAR'S CASTLE

Pages 140-150.  Damodar's camp at a ruined castle is less than two days journey from Antius.  They travel one day, sleep, and travel at least half of the next day to get there.

Page 221 The surrounding lands are described as "Elwood stood alone in the shade of the rocky spire.  He looked past the scattered bodies, past the thicket of woods, past the stony plain."

HUNTER ELVES

Page 179, The hunter elves in the forest near Damodar's castle belong to the Verdalf clan of hunter elves, renowned for their healing ability.

Page 183-184 The Verdalf clan is lead by "the clanmaster healer", Hallvarth Fyrlief.  (played by Tom Baker in the movie)

Page182 "Elwood was startled.  He was no stranger to the forest, but this particular creature had simply walked out of nothing, as if he were part of the shadow, part of the trees themselves.  He knew this was an elf, but not one of the ordinary breed.  This one was clearly a hunter, a slender being with a nut-brown face, dark eyes, and pointy ears, a creature with hard and corded muscle, muscle wound up like a spring.  His clothes, like the forest, were a hundred shades of green and his strong, intelligent features were tattooed with the patterns of vines and leaves, marks that twisted across his brow, down his cheeks, and onto a bare shoulder.  His eyes were the color of berries, his hair a shade of brown and ochre lichen that grows on the bark of trees."

 Page 183 "Marina would have passed the elven village by, certain there was nothing to see.  Even Elwood, whose folk were as different from humans as elves themselves, sensed the presence of life but saw no dwellings, no paths were the grass was beaten down, no smell of campfires or food.  Marina was sure there came a time when she was somehow invited to see what there was to see, for the hidden to be revealed.  For in that instant a great elven village appeared in the trees.  Lights she would have taken for tiny stars were not stars at all, but lights from dwellings twinkling amidst the thick canopy of leaves.  The closer she looked, the more there was to see.  The village was a maze of twisted walkways, ladders, balconies, and stairs, not a one that wouldn't pass to unschooled eye as a cluster of vines or gnarled branch of a tree.  There was no aspect of elven life that intruded on nature - every home, every window, every bridge, and even the elves themselves - seemed as if they were meant to grow here."  

DRAGON WAR OVER SUMDALL

As described in the book, the war over Sumdall is horrific.  There are literally hundreds of gold and red dragons fighting each other in the skies and fighting the soldiers in the city who are equiped with war machines, catapults, etc.  All but 5 of the hundreds of gold dragons involved  die and fall destructively on the city.  Most of the mages die too.

Page 267 "No one spoke as it vanished over the ruined towers of Sumdall, the charred, crumbling remains of this grand and ancient city."

Page 268  Somehow, despite the devastation of hundreds of dragons and two armies fighting and dying in the city, after "not so many weeks", everything is back to normal and life goes on in Sumdall.  This is just ridiculous.  The city must surely have been totally ruined in the fighting, not to mention all the burning dragon blood and bodies everywhere.  Sumdall must have been rendered an uninhabitable smoldering ruin.

BANNER

Page 269 "...the Empire's proud new flag: a Golden Dragon wreathed in oaken leaves, rampant on bright squares of silver and white."

CLAN AND HOUSE NAMES

Page 270

Marina's mother Nalrid: House of Staverid

Norda: Ancient and Royal Clan of Tripidantes

Elwood Gutworthy: Revered Oakenshield Clan

 Here we go.  For fun, take a look at the map below.

What you are looking at is one of the best medieval maps of the world, produced in 1154 by geographer al–Idrisi.

Observe how it is recognizable, yet "wrong".  Some places - like Spain or Arabia, are almost correct, while others like Britain and India are very wrong and in some cases there are places that are likely not even real.

That "similar but wrongness" is one way to look at the Great Kingdom map below.   

This map, as we've talked about before, was published in the Castles & Crusades societies Domesday Book #9 newsletter around June of 1971.  Details are still being researched, but the map was drawn by some artistic hand, apparently based on a map by Gary Gygax.

Technically, it is the first published map of what we now call the Flanaess.

Originally it was intended to be the shared map Castles & Crusades society members would use for campaigns - using whatever rules - involving their various holdings in and out of the Great Kingdom.

Few labels were put on this map by the cartographer, but using other hand-drawn copies, such as Dave Megarry's below, we are able to fill a lot of those blanks in.

Some of those names are familiar to Greyhawkers - like Nyr Div and Urnst - some, like Catmelun, not so much.

Nevertheless, it was on this map that the earliest Greyhawk adventures took place, and early Blackmoor adventures too, but like the al–Idrisi medieval map above, it was a crude representative of the world.

When TSR decided to publish Greyhawk in the late 70's it was decided a new and better map was needed - a modern map.  "For certain the WoG product as published by TSR came into being about two or three months before the date of its printing and sale.  Brian said that a campaign setting was needed, so after ascertaining the maximum size map sheet we could have printed, I free-handed the land outlines on... two sheets of paper, used colored pencils to put in terrain features, located the cities, and made up the names for everything. That took me about 1 week. Then I went to work on the text while Darlene made prettier maps."  Gary Gygax DF Forum

The end result of this process was the Darlene map of the Flanaess.  Did Gygax create one or more intermediary Flanaess maps between the 1971 C&C map and Gygax's new map of the Flanesse used by Darlene?  It doesn't appear that there was, but I don't presume to know all the steps it took to get to the final Darlene version, except that it all starts with the C&C Great Kingdom map.  

So I thought it would be fun to map the parts of the C&C map onto the corresponding locations on an official Greyhawk map, along with location labels, to see what may result.

The first thing you will notice is that I have cut the C&C map into 8 pieces where it seemed logical.  In two cases (Nyr Div and Catmelun) sections have been rotated, and in all cases the sections have been resized, bigger or smaller for best fit.

Now I don't for a second think somebody at TSR did something like that.  I expect the process was a lot more free form.  Gygax probably, sat down to sketch the new map with a copy of the C&C map close to hand and drew as he said in the quote above.  Certain areas, like the sea of dust and the Nyr Div, he copied pretty closely, while others, especially in the east, were more loosely inspired, and a whole lot of new geography was added, or redefined in between places - again especially on the eastern side of the new map.

Even so, there is much in the C&C map that is recognizable on the new Greyhawk maps we have now.

Here is the same map again, but this time I've ghosted the image so you can see what lies beneath and perhaps why the sections are where they are.

You can readily see, if you look closely, how mountains and coastlines follow together, and sometimes even rivers and forest.  The eastern three sections were the most difficult to place, but I think even there you can readily see how someone eyeballing a new map on a sketchpad is being guided by the C&C map outlines, at least in some places.  

Perhaps the NE section is most interesting.  That squiggly peninsula on the C&C map for all the world looks to have been followed on the Greyhawk map to form the line of The Frozen River, leaving the islands of Botulia and Maritz to be paved over by new land.

Here is another look.  This map has all the C&C sections removed but the place names left behind.  Placement for a lot of these labels was straightforward, but there were also a few that are more of a best guess, because they fall on the edge of a section that is separated from it's neighbors by a lot of space.  

There's some very interesting alignments and some possibilities for place names where our current Greyhawk map lacks detail.

Of the places listed, many have direct corollaries on the world of Greyhawk map.  Places like Urnst, Perrenland, Keoland, and Geoff have retained their names and the same general locations.  Some others seem to have simply changed names, while a few seem to be altogether novel.  For these new and usual names we have limited source information, the best source being Andre Norton's Quag Keep novel.  Norton was invited by Gygax to play D&D in his early Greyhawk campaign.  Her 1978 novel mentions several of the unusual place names seen on the various C&C maps, indicating she either had a copy of a similar Greyhawk map or, perhaps more likely given her unusual spellings, had jotted down some notes after having looked over Gygax' map.

Given that there are names in the list that we can identify in Quag Keep, but have been changed - for example Faraz/Furyondy - and that many of these can also be found in the older form in the pages of Andre Norton's Quag Keep, I would suggest that they are simply "old fashioned" or antique regional names, dating from the same period as the Quag Keep events.  Erik Mona, pegs this to CY 498, and I see no reason to argue otherwise.  That would of course also suggest that our "antique" C&C map represents some scholar's knowledge of the world at that time, much as al–Idrisi's world map reflected his knowledge of his time.

Leaving aside the familiar place names that are the same on both maps, we get the following list of new or changed places:

The Hold of Iron Hand - the location of the Hold of The Iron Hand on the coast north of the Paynims places this territory in the Greyhawk realms of Ekbir,  We can take Hold of the Iron Hand to be a nickname or older name for this collection of sheikdoms.  It is possible "Iron Hand" inspired "Stone Fists" but the Stone fists are nowhere near this location, so there's no good reason to take them as being the same, at least in game terms. 

March Slove  - Slove appears to be a small, otherwise unnamed area just north of the Yatil Mountains in an area dominated by lakes.

County of Hither Hills - The Hither Hills are mentioned in Quag Keep (p22) where it is described as a land of "Half Bloods", perhaps some kind of half elves or something else.  These Hills are one of the border areas on the map that are harder to place, but must fall between the Burneal Forest and the Land of Black Ice and appear to abut the Hold of the Iron Hand.

County of Celate - Celate appears in a mountain chain just NW of Blackmoor and west of the Egg of Coot.  While otherwise unknown in Greyhawk lore to my knowledge, Celate falls squarely on a place known only as "The Duchy of the Peaks" in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign.  This is fortunate, because it allows us to give a "real" name to a place otherwise known by an unimaginative nick-name.   

County of Stabilny - Stabilny is another location seemingly in between C&C map sections.  Best fit seems to be the NW shore of Quag lake. 

Neron March - The Neron March on the old maps falls very near to the "Gran March" on the Greyhawk, map and we can safely assume these are one and the same.  As a name, Neron March is preferable to me.  One of the quirks of both Greyhawk and Blackmoor is the ready use of English words for names (The Cold Marsh or the Firefrost channel for example), so it is nice to have a non-English alternative.

Kingdom of Faraz - Faraz or Faraaz in Quag Keep, is undoubtedly Furyonody.  In Andre Norton's 1978 novel, Quag Keep Faraaz gets mentioned a fair few times.  We learn a for example that it appears to be some kind of theocracy under the control of Holy Lords.

Yerocunby - Yerocunby covers several territories on the Greyhawk map, including Dyvers, Narwell, Verbobonc and possibly Devarnish and Greyhawk itself.  We can imagine this name may have covered a temporary alliance of nations or may represent an old name for the geographic area. Zach Howard of Zenopus Archives made the suggestion that the Kingdom of Furyondy derives from a combination of Faraz and Yeroconby.  That seems very likely to me, and so we can imagine that Faraaz expanded at some point after 500 CY to merge or absorb Yerocunby temporarily - perhaps through a royal wedding, resulting in the merged name Furyondy.  For some reason the area of Yerocunby later Balkanized, but Furyondy retained the name (and perhaps the territorial claim).   Interestingly, as the protagonists travel away from Greyhawk toward the Sea of Dust, Quag Keep also mentions Yerocunby in the same relation we see on the C&C map. "We shall have Yerocunby and Faraaz facing us at the border. But the river then will lead us straight into the mountains." p32

Duchy of Maritz - The island duchy of Maritz or Maritiz as it is spelled in Quag Keep, seems to have been entirely swallowed up by the new NE peninsula drawn on the World of Greyhawk map, possibly falling about where the Atmanship of Kelten lies.  We know nothing of these islands except the useless but colorful fact from Norton that they use half-moon coins with sea-serpents on them.

Botulia - another island paved over in Greyhawk by the added NW peninsula, falling about where the Atmanship of Amaran is now.  Other than being given a name and kingdom status on the old maps, this island was not mentioned anywhere else that I have found. 

Walworth - Walworth derives from the county of the same name in Wisconsin where Gygax lived, and in fact, Earl of Walworth was a title Gygax used in the C&C Society.  It's useful to remember that Gygax envisioned the C&C map as an alternate North America in a parallel  dimension.  Of course the map doesn't look like North America, but it does have the same climactic regions (cold to the north, tropics to the SW and mountains running up the mid west.)  In an article sent to Alarums & Excursions #15 (October, 1976), Gary tells us, "The game world is a parallel earth, but the continents are somewhat different.  Most of our campaign activity takes place on what corresponds to North America, on the eastern half of the continent.  The "Blackmoor" lands lie far up on the northeast coast.  "Greyhawk" is in the central portion."  Elsewhere Gygax specifies that he imagined the Free City of Greyhawk to be positioned similarly to Chicago.  On the Greyhawk map, Walworth falls directly on the Shield Lands.  This may be another case where a real name (Walworth) may be a preferable substitute for an English Language nick-name (Shield Lands).   

Kingdom of Catmelun - The last mystery name we have is the Kingdom of Catmelun, and it is another example of having a name on a map with no other details.  If my guess is right, Catmelun is none other than Sunndi.  Perhaps Catmelun was the name of a royal house who ruled the area around 498, or perhaps the name can be ignored altogether in your Greyhawk campaign. 

For more on Quag Keep people and places, have a look at This Post by Eric Mona.

The esteemed Paleologos has put up a couple very interesting posts on The Gnome Cache, an early Greyhawk story written by Gary Gygax and serialized in The Dragon magazine.  Have a LOOK.

Paleologos pointed out that the installments in issues 6 and 7 feature Blackmoor and reading his posts have prompted me to take a closer look at this portion of the tale. 

The protagonists are part of a merchant caravan heading north to a settlement called "Weal" in the north of Blackmoor to trade for furs.  They depart from "the walled town of Rheyton" where they exchanged their carts for pack animals because "the roads to
the frontier and beyond being little more than rough tracks".

Two ethnic groups seem to dominate this frontier.  Western, bow using plainsmen, some of whom are from a place known as the Vale of Kimbry (Wolf Nomads?) and other "Northerners" from the more immediate area of "Nehron"(Rovers of the Barrens?).  Nehron seems to be a regional term including Blackmoor and lands east to the sea.  Blackmoor is populated by Nehronlanders.  

The caravan reaches Blackmoor where it is taxed, and then journeys on toward Weal.  Here is the description:

"As they departed from the village of Blackmoor, the grim walls of the guardian castle frowned down upon their left,..."

"A few leagues journey brought them to the beginning of the great evergreen forests, and they entered into the heart of a foreign land. Each day’s travel brought them closer to the town of Weal.... beyond that place Nehron became a wilderness of forest and hills.... hostile barbarians dwelling there..."

"A large tree had been felled so as to completely bar the road where it passed between two very steep hills. The dense growth of trees on either hand made by-passing the track next to impossible"

These quotes tell us there is a road entering Blackmoor village from the south and another leaving to the east and heading north.  This road passes through an evergreen forest and between an area of steep hills before reaching Weal, beyond which is a rough wilderness.

We can find a near identical Blackmoor as that described above in this map:

When Arneson drew his original map of the Northern Marches and sent it off in a letter to Rob Kuntz in March of 1971, it is unclear what he intended.

"WOLF's HEAD PASS: This area lies some five miles to the North East of the Castle along the only road that leads to the Southern confines of the Egg of Coot. Beyond the pass there lies an extensive no man lands of some twenty miles before the southern reaches of that evil area are reached." p26

The road thus described can be easily seen on the sketch map:




When Arneson decided to publish the First Fantasy Campaign, he had little incentive to maintain the Greyhawk/Blackmoor connection and when Bob Bledsaw drew those excellent maps that came with the FFC, he went back to Arneson's original Northern Marches map.  The obvious differences in the bays and waterways were hand-waived as "Sinking Lands".  Blackmoor had gone back to it's roots, but in doing so the geographical context of those early games was significantly obscured.