Vikhelm and his kin were not welcomed to the land. Instead they fought for every inch of land they settled, building small fortresses and defensible homes to watch over their farmland and made sure to include gardens within their walls to be able to feed them at least minimally should the farmlands be taken.

The most visible of these fortified villages is Hrangveld, generally known to those who don’t live there as Vikhelm’s Outpost. A great house sits atop a sheer man-made hill looking down over a small walled village.

The entire village is surrounded by wooden walls and then a muddy shallow moat that was dug out from a swampy spring that bubbles up to the west of the great house. Bridges to the town itself and then up from the town to the great house are made of wood and designed to be easily taken down in times of conflict.

The majority of the farmland is undefended outside the village walls – although if the village grows more prosperous (and less prone to assault by the locals) additional fortified farm buildings will start to spring up to defend those fields as farmers start living outside the walls.

 

Today’s map is a classic motte-and-bailey castle built up on two man-made hills with a moat and palisades. I tried using the same style of hills that I used in a few recent regional maps (lines with triangles indicating the downhill direction) – it works for the most part but gets a bit confusing on the taller hill of the great house. I think I should have used much longer triangles there to indicate the greater height and angle.

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Because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make these maps free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”). For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:

Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.