I have decided to start making an unofficial map of Gilbratha. My original hope was to make a map that I could use to follow along with S. as she adventures through the city. I think S. borrows a map from Oliver to learn the city at one point, and I thought it might be interesting to see Oliver’s or S.'s notes written on top. I am definitely not there yet since it turns out Gilbratha is big!
I wanted to be able to see building footprints, but due to the size I have zoomed out to more of a city block plan or street plan. I am not finished yet, since it will take hundreds (maybe over a thousand?) street names to get everything named/labelled, so I am still debating if I want to go that route, or if I should zoom out again to a more neighborhood scale. If anyone wants to help me come up with hundreds of street names, that would be great!
Both the Lillies and the University on the White Cliffs are cut off for now, but I will pretend that is because you would have to pay extra for maps of those!
To build the city I am going off a comment from chapter 54 that states the white cliffs are circular and have a diameter of about twelve kilometers. A part of the Mires is a trace of a map of Valencia from 1895, but it has been modified and expanded. The docks are a trace of the docks from an old map of Liverpool, with some adjustments. The rest I am trying to build from the descriptions in the story.
This is a gorgeous map. Need the Lilies to the map too!
Thanks! Yes, the problem is that the paper is not big enough! And if I zoom out then I can’t add any street labels because they will be too small to read. I will try putting a version zoomed out below though anyway, so you can see all the areas I have not done yet (like the University and the Lillies and all of the surroundings).
This so beautiful! Is Waterside market the blank spot in the rough middle? Or, are you thinking it’s a dense bunch of buildings?
Thanks! This is a good question. I think in this version Waterside is the area between the buildings and the small river/lake in the north. That area might get redone, since at first I thought there was a break in the White Cliffs for a river to pass through, but much later it appears that the river goes underground for a while before re-emerging. Since it is mentioned that S must cross a river to get to the University transport tubes, I assumed that was the river portion where Waterside would be. Now that I have cut the river with the cliffs, it feels a little awkward.
I love your docks too. Do you plan that little marina up at the top to be the place S stole the boat?
Thanks! Yes, it seemed like a good place for a Marina for S to steal a boat from and also worked well to have access from the Lillies. Unfortunately, it is still a little far from the White Cliffs (about 1850 feet), so I might move it closer.
Also if anyone has any ideas for neighborhoods or street names I would be delighted to swap them in. I think I only found about 2 street names in the whole story so far!
I know you are very far on, but you might want to build those canals (or streams) in the official map into your design. This reminds me of the swampy Washington DC of the 1800s, where streams and canals were scattered through the streets.
Also, “waterside market” is canonically in the dead middle of the city. I don’t know why its’s “waterside,” but its likely because of those canal structures.
One of my questions about the city design is how people get through circular walls that look like they were designed to keep Titans out. Your map has the city spilling out through a chunk of missing wall. Is there a canonical answer as to whether that is possible?
The difficulty of getting past those walls seems like a great explanation to me for why people didn’t settle there until Myrddin wanted to.
The south wall crumbled and the material was used for building the city. From the glossary:
Gilbratha is built within a gargantuan circle of white stone cliffs that have been drawn up from the ground in what is undoubtedly a legendary feat of magic. These cliffs are intact to the north, but have sunk, crumbled, and been demolished for other purposes toward the poorer south.
I’m not entirely sure which chapter I read it in, but there’s mention of homes in the Mires using stone from the walls for foundations. I always imagined the buildings mostly constructed from stone in the city, but parts are in danger of sinking over time (like Venice, or parts of Washington DC). I also imagine it packed densely, because people are discouraged (either by the wilds or by law) from building permanent structures outside the walls. Maybe not 1850s Barcelona bad (850 people per hectare) but dense.
Am I going to re-read the whole series just to catch more things I missed like this one? I want to convince myself that the answer is no, but I know it is yes…
I’m not entirely sure which chapter I read it in, but there’s mention of homes in the Mires using stone from the walls for foundations.
In case anyone cares I have in my notes from chapter 14:
With the obvious poverty, Siobhan was surprised to see that some of the shoddy buildings had foundations of stone, and sometimes walls, too. It became a little more common the further south they went. Where it was clean, it was almost white. ‘They must have taken stone from the sunken, broken southern area of the wall to build with. That probably had a lot to do with why it’s so deteriorated now.’ The Mires spilled well beyond what would have once been the confines of the city, with no more than a few scattered sections of what had once been white cliffs still remaining in their midst.
I think it is mentioned again later, but by then I got caught up in the story and was binging through so my notes are not as comprehensive.
I know you are very far on, but you might want to build those canals (or streams) in the official map into your design. This reminds me of the swampy Washington DC of the 1800s, where streams and canals were scattered through the streets.
Also, “waterside market” is canonically in the dead middle of the city. I don’t know why its’s “waterside,” but its likely because of those canal structures.
Ah, I have only read this online, so I don’t think I have access to the official map? I have just been building this from the text descriptions. I guess I should apologize to anyone who was expecting things to be in other locations. I am drawing it in a vector based program though, so moving things around should be relatively easy if I ever get a hold of more info.
I am not sure why I thought waterside market was near the University, but moving it is not a problem.
I have only read this online, so I don’t think I have access to the official map?
Good news! The map of the city is available if you view the sample on Amazon. Not that you shouldn’t buy the book, mind you. I’ve cropped a screen capture:
Ah thanks for posting that. Things are indeed a little different than I thought. My Gilbratha is thinner, but widening it may be a little to much at this point since I would have to rethink the whole layout. I may do a wider version after I finish with this one if I am feeling ambitious. Six parallel canals felt a little crowded with my thinner layout, so I compromised and added one more north-south oriented canal. I don’t have any canals leave through the south yet, but only because I am still deciding where to put them.
In the meantime I started adding labels (I am starting from the top). I am not the best at it, so do not be concerned if it is some time before I show another update.
After the labels, then the final step will be to add the handwritten notes of Oliver and S. on top of everything. I think the story only mentions the Morrows, Verdant Stag and Nightmare Pack (I am not counting the Architects of Kronos since I don’t think they ‘control’ any areas?), so if anyone has any ideas on who any other gangs are or where they might be located, I am interested to hear about it.
I’d like a few organizations farther out in the mires; maybe toward the edges there could be several? Monster Hunters aren’t likely to be much of a force, but perhaps some sort of merchant “protection” organization? I get the impression that Stags had a central area, but just around their HQ and some warehouses to the east. The nightmare pack a little farther north (there’s a park nearby?), and the Morrows were southern docks and mires, maybe even with the Stags more like an island in the Morrows territory. My story puts my detective likely at a northern end of early Stag territory, where the Morrows are quite close, and I imagined the Nightmare Pack on the far side. There ought to be some sort of Criminal organization toward the west wall beyond Harrow Hill? Obviously, you get far enough north and you end up close to the better part of town and places like the Silk Door, the nightmare pack’s fancy restaurant, and the Crown run pleasure houses. I feel like those should be more East, so that the wealthy from the Lillies can come and indulge a bit easier. There’s a sort-of middle class neighborhood that Percy lives in that’s Morrow territory.
I have finished adding names to all the streets (…okay, most of the streets, since I know I missed a few and skipped the alleys). I also started putting in landmarks that a city making a map would be interested in, like some temples, the Edictum Council Building, some parks, plazas, stables, a cemetery, etc. If anyone has any ideas for other landmarks, I could probably add those too.
This is all good stuff, I will keep it in mind.
My vision so far for how the city has developed is that the North-East part was settled first (University, North Beach, Hightown, Central, Capital Hill, Waterside, and Blackstone on the map). Everything to the South at this point was just a big swamp. After that the Western Works was added as a planned industrial zone. Once that filled out the non-Crown-but-still-rich population built up the Western Heights as a counter to the Lillies. Finally with nowhere left to expand the swamp was drained, and Fern Gulch, Meadowbrook and the Southern Docks were built up. Those buildups were not as successful, maybe things were still a little swampy. Another population center started outside the White Cliffs, but it was relatively poor and supported the quarrying of the cliffs, using the stone to build North into the city. After everything was filled in, some of the formerly nice housing (like the Nightmare Pack’s manor) was subsumed by the expanding mires.
I am realizing now that when I attached the map it lowers the resolution to the point where the smaller street names are not really legible. So I guess if anyone wants a higher resolution copy let me know and I will see if I can find a way to send it to you.
Also, I did not find any sky krakens, but I did find a spikey turtle in an old medical manuscript, which I traced over and added to the titleblock as a placeholder until I find a good sky kraken.
The next step will be adding the hand drawn notes of Oliver and maybe S.?
Thank you for trying to message me; i still see compression artifacts, so I think something is going on with the service. If you could host them somewhere that would likely solve the issue.
