Reikland Political Sketch (Patreon)

As promised in the Reikland Lore stream, here's an updated link for the map I made for my old blog back in 2020. Lemme transcribe the text from that for those who may be interested.

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Fans of WFRP4 may recognise the general shape of this map as it was the basis for the illustration adorning the inside sleeves of the core rulebook. It's also similar to the map lying inside the WFRP Starter Set.

But this map wasn't originally made for that purpose.

Well, back when I was playing WFRP3, it became apparent that politics were going to be front and centre in the campaign. We played through the Ubersreik adventures from that game, and one of the PCs, an Engineer and daughter of a local lord, ended up as heir to the newly reformed Duchy of Ubersreik (we played Graeme Davis's excellent Edge of Night, which we adapted to be the 'Lord of Ubersreik' in Rough Nights & Hard Days). Another of the Characters became Lord Protector of Hugeldal. A third was the body-double (and later replacement) of an influential member of House Bruner. The last was a Bright Wizard, who cared nothing for politics, or so he claimed...

Given the strong political basis there, I decided it was time to create a political map of the Reikland, the realm where we were playing, so I could pin down the entire Reikland Diet (see WFRP4 for more on that giant conclave of super-important nobles).

So, I made the map above. It shows all the Reikland Estates (again, these are explained in WFRP4), pulled from my Master Map of the entire Empire (the one based on every GW source evah!), and removed almost every unimportant detail (compare the details on the map above to the Ubersreik Duchy Map in the WFRP Starter Set to see how much was removed). As a map, it was meant for me, to help me structure my thoughts as I created all the noble NPCs that led each of the estates.

Yes, yes I am that guy. 

However, little did I realise it would prove to be useful later, too.

Two years back, the crunch to finish WFRP4 was on. I was asked to do a poster map of the Reikland to support the book, and do it fast. Now, as I'm sure you can imagine, doing a massive map of anywhere usually takes bloody ages. But, we didn't have time for bloody ages. I had, at best, a couple of weeks.

Normally I would prefer at least a month.

Or more.

So, I cheated. I went back to the map you see above and I stripped out all the Reikland Estates, removed any superfluous detail (such as potential spoilers like 'The Daemon's Bowl' -- which I renamed because the original name is very... old Warhammer), added any location the core book mentioned, and I was pretty much good to go. That gave me a sketch for GW to review in less than a couple of hours, rather than trying to build a new map from scratch over several days.

Winning.

Fortunately, GW liked what they saw, so it was time to get to work painting the actual map.

Here's me starting the paint job on my old PC two years ago, using the second screen to reference my master map.

Bluntly, I had nowhere near enough time to do the map justice and also do my normal day job (which, at that time, was trying to finish the core book). But, I got there. Sure there are many things I would have liked to add, such as glaciers and Easter Egg locations and the like, but perfect is the enemy of done.

Within two weeks (to the hour), we had a poster map.

However, as is always the case, there was a final twist. The map was liked so much that it wasn't initially used as a poster, as it was designed to be, but as the image adorning the internal leaves of the WFRP4 core book. Yay, I thought! Always nice to see such things happen. So, I had to resize the image a bit to fit a double-page spread, but that was cool, and soon the map was ready.

Of course, in practice, if I'd known the map was going to be used in that way, I might have made the labels bigger, but you can't have everything, right?

But, I can live with that.

Assuming my magnifying glass is close by.

When it first arrived, I was super excited! 

But, the details... so tiny!

So, that's the story of the Glorious Reikland.

If you have any questions, just holler.

Until next time...

Andy from 2020