#map-making games

The university is established to the northeast of Our lands, and we hope it will bring us prestige and prosperous visitors. Outside our borders are Them, the previous feudal rulers of this section of land, who are perhaps a bit miffed about having their domain carved up by the high lord's decree.

On the birthday of the high lord, we host a celebration and send out two riders - the Map-Maker General, and their Lieutenant Cartographer - to survey the boundaries of Our land, bringing back the updated maps and census as the Surveyor's Gift, a ceremony confirming our holdings and reach. The first Map-Maker General, year 0 of our university, is the royal lawyer Morgan, here to oversee this as an official process - along with an unofficial, but unavoidable, dragon escort. In the years before she leaves, we enlist the dragon's help to construct a blast furnace and use this to help construct better printing presses for scholastic materials.

Year 6: The community keeps its focus on the dragon, the border fort, the fishing shallows, and the sea temple. A nameless numbered priestess, #64, campaigns to be chosen as the new Map-Maker General and is successful. The Rector's Hill is marked on our maps, where the Lord Rector lives as head of the university, confirmed by the electors of the colleges. The priestess's sea magics have been used to ride out and claim the island to the north.

Year 8: The community focuses on the sea temple, the swamps, the dragon of the Old School, and the rector's hill. To everyone's surprise, the swamp witch Rosary Spite is chosen to replace the previous Map-Maker General by unanimous vote. Industrial improvements continue, as a papermill is built along the banks of the river where fish used to be caught - the swamp witch shows great interest, especially as the mill chemicals leak into the river. Border contract, due to a lack of swamp-related points of interest.

Year 10: The community focuses on the papermill (which seems to be drawing the swamp nearer, or maybe that's the witch), the giant tree, the Old School with its dragon, and the sea temple. After the swamp-witch's retirement to the mill life, the dragon Wulfrum is chosen as Map-Maker General - no one wants to tell a dragon he can't participate. We clear a festival grounds among the forest beyond the swamp, and hold viewing parties of the silver leaves that grow on the giant tree. Unfortunately for the scheming, the silver of the leaves decays back into wet vegetable matter over time, but there is a steady scam of minting this into coins to trick unsuspecting visitors. The dragon's flight has reclaimed the island to the north of the university for us.

Year 14: The community focuses on the mobile swamp, the silver tree, the sea temple, and the rector's hill. A legacy law student named Eulalie is chosen as the Map-Maker general, to reaffirm the university's control of situations. Unfortunately, They choose this time to pick a fight with us, and hire a wizard to break our border fort with lightning and seize it from Us, along with the south river territory. We draw borders with a nominal claim to the island we no longer have in reach, and abandoning southern claims.

Year 17: The community focuses on the still river-seeking swamp, the dragon Wulfrum of the Old School, the sea temple, and the now-lost border fort. The new Map-Maker General is another priestess, #52, who has made inroads with the college of Theology and wants to increase the prominence of her religion. Meanwhile, They have continued to bedevil us, charming a giant horse-dog and sending it into one of the villages that pays taxes and fealty to the university. While the beast is not particularly destructive, the community cedes control of the village, and also the forest and swamps which the sea temple has never particularly cared for.

We pause, after a generation, to consider how Hillcleft sees itself. The University is proud and growing, but They have secret and unrevealed magical powers that continue to vex us. To counter this, we will add an armed presence to the Surveyor's Gift as they ride our borders.

Year 23: The community considers the swamp-ridden papermill, the sea temple, the giant horse-dog, and the Rector's hill. Cameo the Elder, a professor of Medicine, is chosen as the new Map-Maker General; this ancient, balding martial-arts master leads groups of students out of the university to study the lands of Hillcleft and engage the world. In exchange for our care, study, and hard work, the land and the university can become inseparable. In the decade that Cameo leads these expeditions, borders are reworked into a reduced but stable situation; eventually, the professor retires by bricking themself up within their study to 'contemplate the universe.'

Year 34: The community focuses on Wulfrum the dragon, the sea temple, the silver tree, and the dog-horse that lives in our divided village. The Lord Rector hires a mercenary captain, Bolster Edelwyss of the Yellow Company, to see about reclaiming the lands of our original grant, and they are elected as Map-Maker General. They set about utilizing the peace and hard work of the community to construct defensive fortifications - a wall along our (as yet) uncontested western border, and a house to pacify the dog-horse. Then Bolster begins pushing our borders, reclaiming the north island and retaking the lands around the border fort (but not the fort itself, still infested by wizards) as well as our name-sake cleft hill to the south.

Year 40: The community focuses on the dog-horse and its house, the defensive walls built to the west and around the border tower, the wizards within the tower, and the silver tree. A new Map-Maker General has yet to be chosen....