Placing the Village of Kirkuk
by Andrew TheisenThe staging tips suggest that it should be placed ideally somewhere on a caravan track along the Altan Tepes, and that it should be located nearest to where the PCs first enter Ylaruam.
That said, the history of the village itself and the map of it seem to indicate the best location for it is somewhere in the Emirate of Dythestenia, along the northern side of the Altan Tepes there.
To wit: a)The map of Kirkuk places its major street and caravanserai on an East-West route. Given the scale of the map, that may not mean all that much, but it would nevertheless seem to me to be a better fit for that big road in the south than elsewhere.
b) The village's history has strong ties with Thyatis, which IMO would make it more likely to be located in the southern part of the country. It was a major enough village that the Thyatians decided to set up there and fortify it (indicating that it must be located along a major route- see point a) above). Additionally, the main Thyatian fort there was destroyed when Al-Kalim retook the village in 829 AC. Al-Kalim's campaigns had him retaking Jaboor from Alphatia in 827, then turning against the Thyatians in 828-830. Again, there is admittedly a lot of time during that period for him to have moved around the country a lot, and the exact campaigns have never been detailed all that much, but it would appear to me that Al-Kalim's tribes were in the southeastern part of the country during the period of 828-830, and thus Kirkuk is most likely somewhere therein.
I'd suggest east of Ctesiphon, perhaps south of Hedjazi (near enough to them both that access to the caverns of Barimoor is not too far distant, as that mage has interests in the village).
There is a southern road out from Kirkuk, and its interesting to speculate where that goes (perhaps a pass through the Altan Tepes to Thyatis- yet another reason why the village had strategic value to them, aside from the East-West route?)