Thoughts about Bywater
by Robinbtw I found these Illustrations from the Tainted Sword Novel decribing Bywater.
And although it is mostly just out of the scope or area of my map, it might be interesting to all other gamers/players/mappers.
It is clear from these the artist did mixup the Highreach/Volaga with the Castellan River, as where they meet, the continue as Volaga/Highreach River and NOT Castellan River. And thus it is no wonder most gamers misplaced the location, especially after Escape from Thunder Rift reusing this location.
Also here the compass orientation seems to be right, while 90degrees off in EfTR.
I especially like the image on the left, as it also displayes how the stronholds look like, and where bridges and other locations (approximately) should be. For example the Bridge at Krakatos or Rugalove were unknown to me before this book.
As to my opinion on EfTR map "the Chase"on page 20 it would deem indeed more logical to place Bywater on the Castellan river (thus north of the Volaga/Highreach and Castellan Juncture), for the weird hills/mountains seem to fit there better than anywhere. However, as the Novel is the oldest canon source and EfTR literally follows that book (except the location maps apparently) and looking at the adventure. I deem it best to ignore the EfTR map, and place the locations of that map on the Tainted Sword map.
For Location 1 I would set it just north of Sielo's Fort, Location 2, three to five miles further up north(instead about 20), and then Bywater(location 3) one to two miles further north, thus following the river till the juncture, rhere following upstream the Volaga/Highreach and place the locations 4 and 5 in the region of the hills there. Intotal that would place Bywater four to seven miles north of Sielo's Fort....almost as the artist intended. and it would remove the weird hills/mountains from the map.
And the EfTR map of page 24 is much smaller, misses many buildings, and the ruins have much diferent shapes, has the compass and riverflow direction wrong, and of course as stated above the river name. So It may look interesting, yet holds its inconsistencies and flaws. Mostly due variant artists or writes who also don't look good at the older canon sources (or just forget it at all.)
Just something to ponder on.
See also Escape from Thunder Rift: The area of The Chase.