Ashtagon’s The Burnt Shires, 8 miles per hex
Emma returned to mapping in 2025 with this map: a “What if?” map of the Five Shires. She explained in a comment at The Piazza:
The Burnt Shires. A palette-shifted version of Mystara’s Five Shires, with a Dark Sun aesthetic. Made using Worldographer and an expanded version of Thorf’s hex art.
To make the map, she took her Five Shires map from two years before and swapped in appropriately desert-themed terrain. It worked out rather nicely, even though she mostly reused existing hex art. The dry lakes and river beds, as well as the sandy sea, are what really sells this map.
Fan-made Map by Emma Rome (January 2025)
This is an original map created by one of Mystara’s excellent fan cartographers. For more information on the cartographer, including a gallery of all their maps, see also Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara.
Sources
- GAZ8 The Five Shires (1988) (PDF at DriveThruRPG)
Fan Sources
- Musings on Map Symbols discussion thread at The Piazza (February 2022)
- Ashtagon’s GAZ8 The Five Shires, 8 miles per hex (October 2023)
- GAZ8: The Burnt Shires discussion thread at The Piazza (January 2025)
References
- All of Emma’s maps at the Atlas of Mystara
- Emma’s entry in Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara (upcoming)
- Emma’s author page at the Vaults of Pandius
Chronological Analysis
This is a fan-made map. It was published in January 2025. The updated Atlas version of this map is Five Shires, 8 miles per hex. See also Appendix C for annual chronological snapshots of the area. For the full context of this map in Mystara’s publication history, see the upcoming Let’s Map Mystara 2025.
The following lists are from the Let’s Map Mystara project. Additions are new features, introduced in this map. Revisions are changes to previously-introduced features. Hex Art & Fonts track design elements. Finally, Textual Additions are potential features found in the related text. In most cases, the Atlas adopts these textual additions into updated and chronological maps.
Under Construction! Please check back again soon for updates.
