Key
The known world of Arda covers one-sixth of the surface of the world. It stretches from Mungoda in the east to Bawa in the west and from Mercania in the south to Vien in the north. The great majority of the known lands are part of the continent of Arda: there are many islands off the shores of Arda, of which Mungoda in the only one large enough to be considered a continent in its own right.
Arda and Mungoda are both located in the southern hemisphere: only the northern portion of the peninsula of Minj crosses the equator. If there was a continent north of the equator, it sank below the Great Northern Ocean long ago in a cataclysm recorded in the oldest legends of the Kattar. Arda does not quite reach the Arctic Circle in the south, but Mercania does cross the Circle south of the mountains that border the arable northern fringe of that land.
The unnaturally cold conditions of Ambardyr, Land of the Snow Demons, in southwest Arda have generated a large sheet of permanent sea ice south of the Taimyr Sea that connects Ambardyr to Mercania. This sea ice, which makes the Taimyr Sea inaccessible during the winter months, prevents sea travel between Khitai and Selentia.
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Key
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| Dark Blue | Seas and Rivers | |
| Blue-Grey | Swamps and Marshes | |
| Brown | Mountains over 1000m high | |
| Dark Green | Heavy Forests and Jungles | |
| Light Green | Other Land | |
| Off-White | Tundra | |
| Light Blue | Winter Ice | |
| Grey | Permanent Ice | |
| Yellow | Deserts | |
| The full version of this map is available. | ||
The eastern portion of this map contains numerous elements from the map of Legend (copyright 1986) and is used with the permission of Russ Nicholson. The western and south-central portion of this map contains numerous elements from the map of Kara Tur (copyright 1987) and the Horse Lands (copyright 1990), and is used without permission. All the original elements of this map, including the elements that have been changed, are my own work.
