I have just submitted
The Island of the Lizard King's map to my gallery.
It has been a nice small proyect: It has recalled nice memories for my late childhood, challenged some of my abilities, and entertained me in this days of isolation because of the COVID-19 (Damn it!).
Also, as geologist, I couldn't help trying to find geological sense to the main island's features, something quite risky and difficult in most of the fantasy maps, that are usually designed just for aesthetic purposes, forgetting all logic and laws of physics (
A wizard, or a god, did it, didn't he?)
I was going to expose my conclusions in the pictures description, but that would have made it too long, so, for all those interested in expeculative geology, here they are:
Fire Island is placed over a
hot spot, on a tectonic plate that moves roughly from east to west, on a tropical latitude, very similarly to the Canary Islands. So, the eastern parts of the island are the oldest, and the active volcano is placed on its weternmost end.
The island has suffered different important volcanic episodes in the past, resulting in several calderas: I can see three to four of them.
The oldest caldera remains are the northeastern bay, sunked down and flooded by sea water; on its volcano's south slope grows the oldest and most extensive patch of jungle, where a tribe of headhunter pygmies live.
The swamp reveals the second caldera's placement: It has started to sink and, though still surrounded by the remains of the volcanic cone, water has started to filter from underground, creating a round shaped brackish marsh.
The central jungle patch could be a third eroded volcano that, accumulating moisture inside, has allowed the tree vegetation to grow. The mine in its proximities makes perfect sense, as many metallic ores are related to volcanic activity.
Actual volcano is over the youngest and active caldera, surrounded by wide, growing, extensions of low rounded hills, composed of volcanic ashes and old lava flows. The prison and fortress is placed near the volcano posibly due to another metalliferous deposit related to it (another mine).
From a biological point of view, Fire Island is a young (considering geological timing) uneven isle, still evolving, and beginnig to be colonized by vegetal and animal lifeforms. Jungle is starting to colonize the most favorable areas, at the foot of sparsely vegetated hill ranges and lava fields. At this stage, most of its fauna should be composed by flying creatures, so it's difficult to know how most of the big terrestrial ones have arrived so soon (there's a bear in the text!), unless they had been brought by human settlers. The presence of other exotic creatures, like hill giants or ogres, are more difficult to explain: Can a hill giant swim?
In another vein,
the port doesn't appear in the book: I understand that, because of gaming and tale telling purposes, the fortress is inland, but it's absurd not to place such an important thing closer to the coast. So, as I wrote before, I suppose that it is there for an important purpose, probably another mine, and consider inevitable the existence of the harbor. Placed at the mouth of two rivers on the south coast, protected this way from the prevailing northwest
winds and waves, it can comunicate efficiently the fortress with the southern mine and the mainland.
That's, more or less, what can be inferred from the available cartography. To get more accurate conclusions, a scientific expedition would be necessary. But only after the Lizard King's reign of terror is definitely overdue...
For the rest... well, a wizard did it!