Doctor Toxic

So I had been on the hunt for a Thedas map that actually had any distances calculated on it for years. There's some fan maps, but none were official.

Well, imagine my shock when I opened my dragon age ttrpg book to find a map at the back that DOES include official distances!! If you have the book, check the back, it's glued in there.

I found no one had uploaded this map online, though. So I took a photo, lined it up as best as I could with a map I found online of the same style, and then pasted in the distance calculator in the corner. I then added a grid on top. I couldn't find a better way of doing it than 5 squares for every 70 miles, which means each square is about 14 miles. I thought that'd be easier to calculate than trying to break a 70 mile chunk down.

Then I realized by looking at the map that trying to calculate longer distances using that map will suck cause they're such tiny squares... so I added another grid on top to make it so the large grid is 70 miles. I included both versions of the map for anyone to use.

According to this map and some online calculators, Varric was wrong that it took Hawke 2 weeks to get to Kirkwall from Gwaren. it should have taken closer to 20 days. But eh, not too big an error and 2 weeks sounds neater. Plus, we know he's an unreliable narrator.

The funny thing is, it takes nearly (edit: MORE than) 2 weeks to get across Ferelden. On horseback. Warden was walking. Warden... how far did you walk... How many miles did you cover...

- This is one of the "official" scales, there are actually about four or five depending on how you want to decide “official”. This scaling contradicts about 8 canon time travel points.

Dao’s scaling - where it is a week to travel from Orzammar’s entrance to the circle one way - Two weeks round trip.

One of the more common ones that OP probably saw was based off Varric’s statements of travel times at the start of DA2. This person did a wonderful round up of distances that if you want to use the scale in this post you can convert.

Asunder asserts it takes a month to get to Adamant from the White Spire.

Last Flight’s assertion that on horseback it takes 2 weeks to cross the Anderfels from Weisshaupt to the Wandering Hills. Which contradicts all scaling lol

Dai’s scaling that says you can traverse all of Southern Thedas in a year. Which is 3 1/2x the size of Ferelden which is also traversal in a year (barely).

Dai also asserts it take a week for a letter (and Barris) to get from the Free Marches to Skyhold.

The official cookbook that says you can travel the entirety of Thedas in a year by carriage/on-foot. Which contradicts both dao and dai, as well as Varric's statement of travel times and all the novel travel times.

- This interactive map uses the scaling of a couple theories based on canon travel times. Which I think is neat and could be helpful for any map shenanigans you all may have.

- The printer map is about a half inch off from if you were to print out the WoT map (a version of the map op put the grid on, though that might vary depending on the image source. When making my consolidated map of Thedas there seems to be about a 1/2 to 3 inch wobble across any official map that can be found online or supplied through digital copies of the books. This is where my lamenting of the scaling variations comes from lol)

- Officially it is stated that Ferelden is the size of England. The ttrpg contradicts that. Which I saw somewhere in the reblogs that this scale puts it on par with Poland, which is about 2.35x bigger than England. 312,696km (poland) vs 132,932km (england)