The mapping of Shadow

Flower of the Great North Island Beyond the Night-Flickered Sea

IT is often said in Shadow that travelling is like a slice of stolen purple carrot cake: delicious while it lasts, but bound to end in varying degrees of death or (at the best) severe injury should you be seen in the wrong places.

Now don't be disheartened! Plenty of people have travelled Shadow and lived to tell the tale - the saying came, in fact, from a muse famous for two things. One, being the only person ever to produce a reliable map of Shadow, for which we will always remember him (should we ever find him). Two, for his legendary phobia of the outdoors. Why Gregoire of the Perilous Navigation of Unknown Seas did in fact set out to map all Shadow with such a crippling limitation we will never know for sure. Some say he took a dare from his brother, himself famous for his failed attempts at inventing a one-wheeled cart. Some say he was under orders from the king. Still others say he was stirred by the very navigators to whom he provided such inspiration in charting the medieval world of Dream, to conquer his fear and map his own mysterious world. Who can say? All we know for sure is that the map arrived by messenger (a Bloomin Fairy whom he apparently paid for the service with the tooth of a fire-breathing shark) but Gregoire himself was never seen again.

Following is the original map, reproduced in full, as found in our seminal collection of the myths, legend, lore and anthropology of Shadow, The Big Book of Bearflies, with the names he gave to the places he travelled to intact - largely owing to the fact that this map has discouraged muses from travelling for so long, that nobody has in fact revisited some of the more exotic locations (such as the shores of the Never Going to Cross it Ever Ocean) to find out why he named it thus, or if a more appropriate appendage could be found.

Happy travelling!

-Flower of the Great North Island Beyond the Night-Flickered Sea.