Daggerford WIP

Okay, some small explanation is in order, for those of you who don't go to Candlekeep.Com - The town map itself was part of the project I did for Eric Boyd, and the labels on that go with his map key, which may or may not ever see the light of day. I decided to repurpose it here, to do this 'Daggerford Area' map (which I tried my hand at once before, four years ago, when I didn't have the skills to get it looking decent). The scale is different from any of the canon ones (they've varied even within editions). Eric & I had come up with one that made more sense (some of the buildings using the original scale were only a few feet wide!) because of population and other logic-discrepancies. On this one, I have 'split the difference' between the one I had done four years ago, and the newer one that Mike Schley did (still a beautiful map, but the scale is wack). The buildings are still very small, but still much better than the original.  The regional aspects were taken from several canon maps, most especially the one from pg. 13 of N5 (Under Illefarn), which Mike Schley had also used on his inset map. The bridge had to be moved from its original location because it didn't make much sense - Daggerford is supposed to be roughly at the same elevation as the river (those elevation lines are 20', so that puts most of the town at 40' above sea level, now).  According to many maps - including Mike Schley's most recent ones for this region - the entirety of the Shining Vale is sitting on a plateau roughly 100' above sea level (because most of the Sword Coast has those 100' cliffs). Thus, Daggerford must be sitting in a 'depression' in the surrounding landscape, otherwise it would be 100' above the river, which would make that 'beach' area an insanely bad slope (like more than 45º). This actually makes sense, since canonically Daggerford gets flooded from time to time (its sitting in a 'flood plain' - the first ring of the elevation marks - 20' - would end up underwater during the spring thaw and rainy months). However, it messed with the bridge, which now has to cross over a gorge, which the river MUST be flowing through (because rivers don't flow up diagonally height-wise; that's called a waterfall, or rapids, at best). Since we know Daggerford also gets ship traffic from the sea, I had to allow at least 100'  for ship masts passing under the bridge - with this map we had 140' to the waterline (which has more than enough depth to handle the draft of ANY sailing vessel). The river now has a deeper, dredged area to one side of the town, and a shallow, river-boat only side to the east, so that everything makes sense- sea-going vessels HAVE TO stop at Daggerford, or risk running aground. Lastly, 'Daggerfort' - that new, tiny little settlement across the river. I decide to go that route because some maps place Daggerford south of the river, including the Neverwinter Nights (VG) game expansion, 'Darkness over Daggerford', and that small settlement map is entirely based off the one in the VG, which is supposed to BE Daggerford (hence my calling it 'Daggerfort', purposely causing confusion). I have much more lore to go with it all; I hope to do a whole booklet and possibly adventure with this map for the DM's Guild, which would include a guide to all the things I added, and map key for the new 'outpost' across the river. This is also a WIP, BTW - its far from complete. Its just been taking me so long to finish that I wanted to show some folks what I've been working on (among other things - have at least five maps I am working on all at the same time). Cheers --- Mark