Many people more competent with these tools than me have suggested ideas, but none that I’ve seen have done it the way that I think it should be, so I did it myself with Smithbox. So, the principles I worked on:

  • The scale of the game maps is not accurate. The general form of the lands and the relative positions of landmarks is accurate, but the Lands Between are obviously meant to be bigger than a couple dozen castles that you can run between in less than an hour

  • The Suppressing Pillar’s inscription, "The very centre of the Lands Between", is accurate

  • The centre that the Suppressing Pillar refers to is the centre of the hexagon inscribed by the Lands Between’s six Divine Towers

  • The Erdtree and the Scadutree were once a single thing, the Scadutree being the “shadow of the Erdtree”. As such, they should be in the same place.

So the plan, then, was to rotate and re-scale the Realm of Shadow until it fits the other principles. That gives us this map, which I have annotated here

In Smithbox, that looks like this. The Lands Between are reduced to 75% of their normal height, and the Realm of Shadow is reduced to 75% of its height and 55% in the other dimensions

To check that the Suppressing Pillar is where it is supposed to be, here it is lined up with the Limgrave and East Altus towers and then the Caelid and West Altus towers

With this positioning, Jagged Peak meets the Dragonbarrow and matches well to Gurranq’s Sanctum. I presume that this is where Farum Azula used to be due to a) all of the dragons, and b) the Farum Greatbridge.

Here are the two trees rising from the same point. This also means that Shadow Keep is at the foot of Leyndell, an ideal place for the Crusade to begin.

There is a bit of a gap between the Divine Tower of West Altus and Rauh, but the surroundings of the tower suggest to me that the land that was there has substantially collapsed. If that is the case, it would have connected to Rauh. This is relevant because it is a reasonable location for the broken Divine Bridge running from Leyndell, which currently goes nowhere, to head towards Rauh.. Rauh is, of course, where we access Enir-Ilim and therefore the Divine Gate. It would make sense for Marika to set up infrastructure to access this gate without having to cross the entire Realm of Shadow and go through Belurat.

And one final thing that’s just kind of a fun coincidence, there is a very narrow strait between Caelid Colosseum and the Fissure. That means that there is close proximity between the Fissure, which is just packed with death, and the area with the colossal jar full of corpses and all of the giant skeletons embedded in the cliffs. It also means that St Trina was abandoned very close to Mohg’s palace.

I now leave it to cleverer people than me to tell me why I’m probably wrong

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
    8·
    17 days ago

    None of the games are perfectly logical when it comes to size and distance. Just look at what you can see from Majula in DS2 and how far or close a lot of the other areas are. Heide’s Tower is much closer than it appears to be (literally just a short hallway away). There’s also part of the Forest of Giants that sits just a few feet below one of the cliffs, but you can’t see it because they hide it with the skybox.

    I wouldn’t take much from this in terms of worldbuilding/lore stuff. It’s 100% video game performance optimization shenanigans.

    • Skua@kbin.earthOP
      5·
      17 days ago

      Absolutely! I think that Elden Ring being open world as it is just leans me towards it being less abstracted even if it isn’t entirely realistic (hence my position that scale is as flexible as I choose it to be here). After all, in ER, they don’t hide stuff with skyboxes. You can see the Forge of the Giants right as you first step into Limgrave and it’s the actual real Forge of the Giants. Even the Haligtree is visible from a few places on the mainland. Between that and the connecting thread of the Suppressing Pillar’s inscription, I think it’s at least intended to be plausible that it was once part of the Lands Between, even if I don’t necessarily think that From actually placed everything with the intent of being able to line the models up like I have

    • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3·
      17 days ago

      some of the geographic surrealism in ds2 kind of characterizes the narrative though. Vendric had subsumed quantities of souls that were allowing him to bend reality and manipulate life, even the new game plus cycle is diagetic his narrative. Lothrorian itself exists in the underside shadow of another world.

      I think sometimes in these games the disproportioniality of the world reflects what that world is. Scadeauview also exists in the shadow of another world and seems unreal with how it connects to itself even though it is all there. Skua might be on to something, even if not technically then at least thematically. I didn’t realize resizing the geography was an option but what if plateau was like a LOT smaller in the center of the lands between? or possibly mirrored?

      • Skua@kbin.earthOP
        2·
        17 days ago

        what if plateau was like a LOT smaller in the center of the lands between? or possibly mirrored?

        I would quite like, at some point, to make a Lands Between map that includes a bunch of minor towns and cities and such that are not represented in the game map. Like “what if the Lands Between was a realistic size”

        • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          3·
          17 days ago

          this is a really awesome undertaking, Skua. a month ago didn’t you say you didn’t have the chops for modding? Smithbox is already out of my depth

          • Skua@kbin.earthOP
            1·
            17 days ago

            Oh, to be clear, I mean a map image like that, I am 100% not making an overhaul of the in-game Lands Between

            I am alright at modding games! I’ve done a few in different games, particularly Paradox’s strategy games. I could probably figure out some stuff in ER, but it would take me a long time because it’s a long way out of what I’m familiar with, and I know jack shit about animation so that would be functionally off-limits

            • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              2·
              17 days ago

              oh for sure, I meant I could not even get the thing running. AND you’ve found something new to look at. Runebear is easier by comparison, it’s not unlike Skyrim if you ever messed with that. anyway, I’ll save this post in case you find anything new. thanks for sharing your tinkering with us!

              • Skua@kbin.earthOP
                1·
                17 days ago

                Oooh, I have not heard of that, I will investigate! I have indeed messed around with Skyrim a bit, though never to do anything serious. I did put the maximised fus ro dah effect on to a hammer as an enchantment once so that I could launch bandits into the stratosphere by hitting them

                • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                  1·
                  17 days ago

                  basically the same kind of forms. every item in game has a bunch of records, one of them is enchantments, projectiles, etc. you could swap out a straightsword’s on-hit effect with something like sleep. or radahns meteor explosion.