All of Bretonnia: how we'll expand the campaign map

Where the idea came from

On 23 September at 5:20 am, deep in a night of work, I told Claude: “in the future I'm planning extensions of this map further north, to get the whole of Bretonnia”. It suggested a “paper” map to sign off before building anything: regions, towns, rivers, forests, based on the lore. My answer: “yes please!!”

I saw the first version around 6:30 am. I already liked it, but it was missing the dwarf holds, the orcs and goblins between the Empire and Bretonnia, and the passes, with the fortress of Helmgart. In the afternoon, a Claude session dedicated to the map produced version 2, and my verdict was simple: “I love how it looks”. (My quotes are translated from French.)

Let's be clear: all of this is still a plan on paper. None of the expansion exists in game yet.

The brief

Before drawing anything, I set my conditions. They guide every choice on the map.

• True to the lore and joined to the Season: continuous rivers, valleys and passes that fit the current map.
• Playable: every region reachable, provinces of one to several towns, greenskins where the lore puts them.
• Buildable: nothing Warhammer III can't do.
• Sourced: every name has a source; without one, it's marked provisional.
• Independent of Warhammer III: no geometry taken from its campaign map.

The method in ten steps

1. Survey the Atlas of the Old World.
2. Align the atlas with our map.
3. Treat the east separately, where Warhammer I bent the lore.
4. Draw the relief and connect the rivers.
5. Grow the regions by least cost.
6. Add the seas, the isles and the splits.
7. Lay out the roads and open the passes.
8. Publish a sign-off page.
9. Prepare the new map.hex.
10. Rebuild everything in game.

The first eight are done, the ninth is defined on paper, and the tenth is still ahead. Here's the detail.

Step 1: survey the Atlas of the Old World

Our main source is the Atlas of the Old World, a non-commercial fan project by Todd Kozlowski, shared with attribution. It draws on Andy Law's maps, Émile Beguin's Bretonnia and Warhammer books such as Knights of the Grail. It covers places, relief, rivers, forests and roads.

Claude reads it in memory and keeps only derived data: 4,663 places for our area, river and forest masks, elevation bands. The official Old World map of Bretonnia, published by Warhammer Community, was only used to place the isles and the Dragon's Maw; its image is neither copied nor published.

Steps 2 and 3: align the atlas, and find out Warhammer I cheated

To lay the atlas over our map, we took 48 towns present on both and computed a flexible warp that matches them as closely as possible, known as moving least squares. Median gap: 16.4 hexes. Five places were left out of the fit.

Warhammer I had moved four of them by 110 to 130 hexes. Its mini-campaign isn't a faithful scale model of the lore: Athel Loren is enlarged, and the dwarf and orc block in the north-east sits where the lore puts the Reikland. Karak Ziflin, Montfort's neighbour in the lore, ends up far from it.

Hence two rules. In the north-west, the atlas is used as is. In the east, anchor points push the Empire back, blended over 40 hexes, and we follow the lore's topology, what touches what and through which pass, rather than a fit.

Step 4: relief and rivers

In the east, the stretched atlas didn't give a believable range. So Claude drew the Grey Mountains: ridges, foothills, and passes carved out as valleys, like the Imperial side of the Axe Bite Pass, the Grey Lady Pass or the valleys of Karak Norn and Grimhold. The expansion's relief is 80% this drawing and 20% atlas.

For rivers, one simple rule: keep only those that end in the sea, at the edge of the frame or on one of our rivers. None may enter the map only to vanish. A trap on the way: a one-pixel river that gets resampled breaks into pieces, so widen it first.

Step 5: grow the regions

Each region starts from a town named after the lore, with its source. It spreads over land by least cost, like an ink blot: high mountains cost eight times more, a river two and a half times. The result: borders that follow ridges and rivers, and regions in one piece.

Provinces group one to four regions. In the north come the missing dukedoms: Lyonesse, L'Anguille, Couronne and Artois, plus the Marches of Couronne and the Pale Sisters. In the east, Helmgart, Ubersreik, La Maisontaal and the dwarf holds of Karak Norn, Karak Azgaraz and Grimhold.

Step 6: seas, isles and splits

The expansion adds 11 seas, using CA's names where they exist, such as the Albion Channel or the Sea of Claws. Tor Martel, which The Old World gives to Aislinn, the High Elves' Sea Lord, as his fortress, goes to him along with Tor Soleil; the Silent Isle, emptied in a single night according to Knights of the Grail, stays a ruin to restore.

It also proposes 14 splits of large regions, such as Aquitaine, Ceren Field or the Burial Mound of Grudsnik. Eleven touch a map that's already built, three the new part: they get decided one by one.

Step 7: roads and passes

Roads follow the cheapest path between neighbouring towns: 54 new roads. Every town in the expansion is linked by land, except the two isles, linked by sea.

Classic trap: in the Impassable layer of CAIME (Campaign AI Map Editor), the Campaign Map Toolkit's editor, 1 means passable. And for the passes to lead somewhere, five breaches have to be opened in the impassable edge of the current map, 43 hexes in all: the Imperial side of the Axe Bite Pass, the Grung Zint Valley, the Blackstone Trail, the Pine Crags and the Crookedhoodz Breach.

Steps 8 and 9: the sign-off page and the new frame

It all comes together in the interactive map on this site: layers, region cards, a before-and-after view. A “For modders” box shows the proposed keys and hex coordinates. Along the way we fixed a bug in the first version: contour simplification erased every closed loop, and the map had no borders left at all.

The frame grows from 400 × 440 to 560 × 575 hexes. The new map.hex starts 120 hexes further west: add 120 to every x, and y stays the same.

• Regions with a settlement: 57 → 89 (+32)
• Provinces: 26 → 41 (+15)
• Seas: 2 → 13 (+11)
• Playable land: +51%
• Starting factions: 28 → 36 (+8)

Step 10: what's left to do in game

This is the heavy part, and it hasn't started. The CAIME layers have to be redone in the new frame, then everything else shifted: the Terry project and its layers, the startpos, character positions, script cameras.

The new regions also need their start tables and their terrain. Warhammer I's mini-campaign has no source for those areas: the relief will come from the atlas and the drawn range. I'm not giving a date.

How to take part

This is when the map gets decided, and I want your ideas. On the map, tap “Suggest an idea”, then the spot you mean: a pin goes in and the page records the region, province and coordinates. Pick a topic and write your idea, in one sentence or ten.

Every published idea shows up on the map for everyone. Back the ones you like, turn down the others: the best-backed go into the plan.

Seven questions are still open, and your view can tip any of them. Share it by suggesting an idea at the spot in question:

• keep Helmgart and Ubersreik, or stop the map at the ridge;
• give the lore's greenskin tribes factions of their own, or use existing ones;
• L'Anguille to Couronne or to Mousillon, Lyonesse to CA's faction or to Repanse;
• the elven isles as free ruins, or a High Elf presence from the start;
• which splits to keep;
• whether to open the five passes;
• confirming the names that have no source.

I make the final call, but I read everything. If a name rings false or a tribe is missing, say so: that's exactly what the map needs. The story of the port is here, and the build method there.