Why does Bravo look the way it does?

Hey there Patrons!

Bravo is one of the main 3 Arcadian Islands (Arcadia, Bravo, and Caldonia). A core part of Arcadian lore is that the gods remade parts of the world at the end of the last age, and so all the land masses should have a "before" and "after" map. Which is a terrible idea if you're running a long D&D campaign, because you'll need twice as many map and you'll need to think about their before and after state when designing world lore, and it's just unnecessarily complicated. Boy, we sure do suffer the consequences of our past decision making, don't we.

What you see above are 3 maps of Bravo. The first one, the largest one, is Ancient Bravo in a Hex Map form. The 2nd one is modern Bravo in its hex map form. And the last map is modern Bravo in its normal form. Obviously I'm missing a normal version of ancient Bravo, and one day we're gonna have to map it, but oh-my-god, is doing 4 maps for 1 island a huge pain that I massively regret. 

Bravo, echoes of the past

The event that change the landscape of Bravo is known locally as "When the storms came, and the mountains rose" and if you look at these maps you can see why. Ancient Bravo was mostly a dry, open, plain with some hills and just a few mountains in the north. Modern Bravo is almost all mountains and jungles. Yet, we can still see elements from Ancient Bravo in the modern map. 

• The larger eastern peninsula is mostly the same, only the hilly area was thrust up into great mountains.
• The north eastern (elven) area is almost completely unchanged. It's forests turned to jungles (and bamboo forests), and its rivers lost, but otherwise very much intact.
• The western peninsula with a bay was sunken into a saltwater swamp, but its form stayed.

Ancient Bravo 

Why do gods make land masses the way they do? In this case the early map has specific topography designed to create well defined territorial borders. 

• Northwest Forest: The den of ogres. 
• Northeast Forest: The home of elves.
• Northern Coast: A narrow strip between mountains and sea covered with forests and rivers that connects the ogre lands to the elven lands. This strip is long and dangerous, allowing for contact and conflict between the two peoples, but making it difficult for either one to invade the other.
• Northern Valley: Similar to the border between ogres and elves, this is the border between ogres and the lesser races (humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc.). It is difficult for ogres to invade through this narry valley when their enemy can bring lanced calvary to the fight, but it's also difficult for the lesser races to advance into the ogre woods when they would be seen coming from miles away and have to fight through a narrow choke point.
• Southern Plains: An experimental region to "see what develops". There's little wood, only a few water sources, little rain, and lots of room. Such terrain is not favorable for cities and empires and encourages a more nomadic and low tech life style.
• Central Hills: are home to great mineral deposits and people that are inclined toward subterranean living. 
• Eastern Plain: This is the definition of filler space. Didn't want the elves to touch the dwarves or the eastern peninsula, so there's just some filler here. Nothing interesting to see, move on folks.
• Eastern Peninsula: Broken off from the rest of the map by an unpleasant swamp, this place is home to one of the great heroes of the ancient world: Divan the Divine. There's a whole Dicing with Death campaign about him. This peninsula is intentionally separated to create a culturally different area for humans. The terrain is rough, but there are resources available for those that can manage the logistics. There's a lot of potential on this little zone. For reference, this is about ½ the length of its inspiration: Peloponnese (that big, fat, southern, greek peninsula).

Modern Bravo

When The Storms Came And The Mountains Rose, the gods decided to rework Bravo and turn it into a jungle land. The southern plain was sunk into the sea, rain clouds gathered and never left, and big ol' mountains jutted up. Now most of Bravo is canyons and valleys thick with life and rife with monsters. It's almost inhospitable. The wetness and heat makes sure that everything decays quickly, keeping civilization in check. Paper and papyrus are pointless. Wooden houses won't last your lifetime, let alone multiple generations. There's little farmland to speak of, so there's no place for gentle civilized creatures.

Only those things made of stone, or built underground, can really last, but it's hard to get to metallurgy and industry in such conditions. Naturally attuned creatures (like goblins and elves) do very well here, as do the monsters of the world. The mountains are steep, rough, and home to the most powerful monsters of the area, so the people of the land must stick to the long and inconvenient routes around mountains. 

This place is designed to encourage a low-tech world forever. Not to mention the great sea beast that consumes ships, and keep the region isolated. Nor the nasty rocks out at sea that live just at sea level. Nor the ever present monsoons and high winds.

Modern Bravo is rich in resources that are very difficult to extract, and that's the way the gods like it. Only the elves and dwarves have managed to truly master their domains - domains that become prisons. Dwarves would never survive the jungles, and elves... well I like to keep all the elven lore real close to the chest. They're very long lived and don't like to share their secrets. 

The Fourth Map

So Ancient Bravo needs a normal, non-hex, map. Not that there are any campaigns planned for that region, but just for that "completeness" feeling. When will we do this map? Oh boy. idk. There's so much to be done, and it's pretty low priority right now. Lucky for us, huge swaths of it are open plain, and that is very easy to map out now that I have all my custom assets created.

Only time will tell.

That's it for now folks! As always, thank you so much for your patronage. Its viewers like you who make this all possible, and I cannot underscore enough how much I appreciate your support. ♥

gl hf
Neal