By 1983, TSR had hired Jeff Easley, Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, and Keith Parkinson, who would dominate D&D/AD&D artwork until Elmore and Parkinson departed in 1989. Timothy Truman, an indie comic artist, only freelanced with TSR for a relatively short period, but he managed to create notable artwork for N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God (cover and one interior), U2 Danger at Dunwater (some of the interior art), EX1 Dungeonland (most of the interior artw), X1 The Isle of Dread (the revised 1983 BECMI version), X5 Temple of Death, covers for solo modules M1 Blizzard pass and M2 Maze of the Riddling Minotaur, B7 Rahasia (some of the interior art), and even Polyhedron Magazine.
From a PDF version:
I could also try scanning my own, physical map from the Dawn of the Emperors box set I've owned for three decades.
you mean this page?
The blurriness is from my camera, the book is sharp. Looks fine to me although too reduced to be used extensively. Probably it was much bigger in the boxed set.
From a PDF version:
I could also try scanning my own, physical map from the Dawn of the Emperors box set I've owned for three decades.
That map always bothered me, the mainisland of Alphatia is bigger than the 15 or so kingdoms mentioned in the Rules Cyclopedia put together,and the main empire of Thyatis is so small compared to all the islands it has conquered.They should have made Alphatia smaller all just increased the sizes od all the other kingdoms.
I checked my 32-year-old physical copy, and that grayscale map was printed too darkly in the first place, rendering a readable unaltered scan impossible. Fortunately, it's never been a problem, since that map is only a de-colored version of the Sundsvall section of the color fold-out map, which is legible both in the original printing and as a scanned PDF.
From a PDF version:
I could also try scanning my own, physical map from the Dawn of the Emperors box set I've owned for three decades.
That map always bothered me, the mainisland of Alphatia is bigger than the 15 or so kingdoms mentioned in the Rules Cyclopedia put together,and the main empire of Thyatis is so small compared to all the islands it has conquered.They should have made Alphatia smaller all just increased the sizes od all the other kingdoms.
I see what you mean but there's historical precedents of empires like that. Think about Rome or the Japanese expansion, so small compared to its conquests. Persia or the Russian Empire on the contrary were huge nations which dominated its smaller neighbors. It's all plausible.
Well if you are up to date with events aphatia, the whole continent, was sunken , read the poor wizard's almanach .You are not nearly as much an autist than me, i am afraid, not nearly !From a PDF version:
I could also try scanning my own, physical map from the Dawn of the Emperors box set I've owned for three decades.
That map always bothered me, the mainisland of Alphatia is bigger than the 15 or so kingdoms mentioned in the Rules Cyclopedia put together,and the main empire of Thyatis is so small compared to all the islands it has conquered.They should have made Alphatia smaller all just increased the sizes od all the other kingdoms.
The defeat is very plausible , alphatia banned one of their emperor alphak , who survived in another plane and ascended to godhood . He has kind of a grudge and scheming since centuries to destroy alphatia , most of the champion and master modules are about that theme.
Well if you are up to date with events aphatia, the whole continent, was sunken , read the poor wizard's almanach .You are not nearly as much an autist than me, i am afraid, not nearly !From a PDF version:
I could also try scanning my own, physical map from the Dawn of the Emperors box set I've owned for three decades.
That map always bothered me, the mainisland of Alphatia is bigger than the 15 or so kingdoms mentioned in the Rules Cyclopedia put together,and the main empire of Thyatis is so small compared to all the islands it has conquered.They should have made Alphatia smaller all just increased the sizes od all the other kingdoms.
By the end of 1985, TSR had not only published the first 9 modules in the B basic series, but also 10 adventure modules in the X expert series starting with Isle of Dread in 1981, 6 modules in the CM companion series, and the first module in the M master series. In 1986, the same year B10 Night's Dark Terror appeared, TSR published another X module, another CM module, two more M modules, the first IM immortal module for the new super-advanced Immortals box set (the third end-game in BECMI D&D, after the Companion set's dominion rulership and the Master set's questing for immortality), and the first two DA modules, which were written in collaboration with Dave Arneson and placed Blackmoor in the distant past of the Known World setting. By this point, the territories covered by the modules had spread well beyond the original Known World in the south-eastern part of the continent, the rivalry between the empires of Thyatis and Alphatia had been established as a focus of higher-level play, the link to Blackmoor introduced aliens and advanced technologies, and published adventures featured gnomes building giant robots (CM4 in 1985), magic-users arriving in Glantri from a fantasy version of medieval France (X2 in 1981, inspired by Clark Ashton Smith and Roger Zelazny), et cetera. The Known World was "low-fantasy" only in its low-level adventures.
