Author notes

Map of the neighboring continent of Roumarth.

bravo1102

on Sept. 26, 2018

Narthatheia is a group of islands a little larger than Iceland. There has to be more–
So I made a continent based on Europe. It was always intended that this world was our own from the very dawn of man around 35,000 years ago. Robert E. Howard would put Conan somewhat later after the fall of Atlantis.

Here, Aztlan is going strong but lies a treacherous two month voyage to the west. So Narthatheians mostly look east to Roumarth. The original shapes never quite seemed right so I found some Pleistocene maps of Europe and followed them. This is during one of the warm periods during the Ice Age where the ice receded a little in this hemisphere. The western hemisphere has far more extensive glaciation.

So this provides a Britain (Brythia) attached to mainland Europe (Roumarth) and with the Mediterranean an enclosed inland sea. The northern coasts of the Middle Sea are ruled by the fading Lundran Empire (created by a friend and used with his permission). Waltheia and Pentca on the western shore of the continent broke off the Lundran empire when it came under fierce attack by the armies of the Gomlar about a century ago. (There was a D&D campaign I participated in after college based just before that invasion. My character was an ancestor of Moagedei who was scouting out the weaknesses of the Lundrans. He was a steppe barbarian double specialized in horse archery. He could kill a medium sized blue dragon with a handful of arrows from his horse at full gallop. Historical Mongols could perform similar feats. The dungeon master and I wrote up the ensuing history that tied in with his previous character Halfdan who we agreed would come few hundred years later)

The mysterious lands to the south and east are from an un-played campaign and unwritten novel called The Voyages of Halfdan Bits were later used in a campaign I later ran that took place a generation or two after the events here in the time of Falkimir's grandchildren. Ptah and Suria also have their Narthatheian names; Great Riverland and Land of Two Rivers. Aerthistarn is a great dwarven empire that broke off the Lundran empire in ages past.

The Egyptian gods rule Ptah and the Sumerian gods rule Suria. There is trade and travel through Lundran intermediaries. Much is the same about the lands off the map to the south and those that lie to the west. If anything the only lands with most contact are those to the far east, the fabled nine kingdoms of Sinesia. The Gomlar maintain direct links to them and employ many Sinesians in their empire.