Complete Map of Archanea With Chapter Images (plus Valentia)

[Jotari]

Just discovered in the Marth's Unjustified Invasion Thread that Port Warren was put in the completely wrong place in Shadow Dragon. Seriously. They completely misplaced it in comparison to all previous incarnations. This made me go back to the map I made in this thread to fix it.

I also needed to finish said map as I never did the Anri's way portions and Wyvern's Dale due to the site I was using omitting them for some reason. So I decided to finish it off and while I was at it I lined up the Archanea portions of the map featured in Shadows of Valentia and blended them together. This is the result.

A number of creative liberties were taken with the size and orientation of the chapters. It's no Jugdral, but a lot of the chapters do fit into each other and fit on to the world map better than you might expect. Largely I tried to place to seize point on the same location shown in the chapter opening graphic in Shadow Dragon and Mystery of The Emblem (except for the aforementioned Port Warren which I've moved down to its proper, though now technically noncanon, location beside Pyrathi).

What might lie as interest and might answer the question of why didn't Gharnef discover Grima is that the part of Thabes we explore in Shadows of Valentia is not the part we see in Shadow Dragon. The ruins of Thabes is freaking massive. As you can see, because I blended it, the headlands of east Archanea line up pretty well between Shadow Dragon and Shadows of Valentia. Thabes in both DS games is also nestled south of a mountainous area and east of a forest area. Thabes in Shadows of Valentia is situated quite a bit of distance to the west of that on the other side of the moountain and near the coast. I guess that sort of makes sense when you take a second to think about it, as Thabes is obviously near the coast on the 3DS while it's surrounded by desert on the DS. The only answer is that the ruins of this once magitechnialogically advance civilization is huge (and Duma in his prime took it down within days!).

Can I do the same thing to Valentia for completeness sake? Eh, I'm guessing probably not. The world map is pretty densely packed so the chapter images would be tiny. I also can't think of many, if any examples of it having any chapters that fit the map as they usually stray away from coast lines. The fact that there's so many maps and that they even reuse them also means that they're probably more appoximations of areas then closer direct representation of landmarks.

If anyone has any questions about any decisions I decided to make on them feel free to ask.

[Acacia Sgt]

What do you mean "technically non-canon". It can be a mistake of the game, not a retcon. After all, Malledus's dialogue of fleeing to Pyrathi only makes sense if Warren and the nearby castle were still in the place that it has always been: a relative short walk away from Pyrathi. Besides, where would they get the ships, if they left Warren in the first place?

Also, something I just noticed, Shadow Dragon also misplaced Lefcandith. It should be southwest from where you placed it on that map. It's said to be the entryway to the Archanea Palace, yet how can that be if it's instead the entryway of the peninsula-within-the-peninsula that Galder Harbor is also in as Shadow Dragon placed it? It doesn't lead to the palace, as Shadow Dragon itself describes it so. The game's contradicting itself there.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Acacia Sgt

[Jotari]

46 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

What do you mean "technically non-canon". It can be a mistake of the game, not a retcon. After all, Malledus's dialogue of fleeing to Pyrathi only makes sense if Warren and the nearby castle were still in the place that it has always been: a relative short walk away from Pyrathi. Besides, where would they get the ships, if they left Warren in the first place?

Also, something I just noticed, Shadow Dragon also misplaced Lefcandith. It should be southwest from where you placed it on that map. It's said to be the entryway to the Archanea Palace, yet how can that be if it's instead the entryway of the peninsula-within-the-peninsula that Galder Harbor is also in as Shadow Dragon placed it? It doesn't lead to the palace, as Shadow Dragon itself describes it so. The game's contradicting itself there.

That would make more sense. Looking at Mystery of the Emblem, it does pan the camera ruffly over there, but it doesn't show any castle in the area so it could still be indicating the Shadow Dragon position. One also has to ask themselves if they reached Archanea proper after Lefcandith, how did they get to Port Warren without running by Pales?

Putting Lefcandith in the pass to the larger peninsula would also have it overlapping with the mountain pass chapter from late game Mystery. Although it could be the same area, I sort of feel as if they might have identified it as such  (though it could be placed a bit further north).

Then again, then again, looking back at the NES map, which is basically Archanea with all of the fat trimmed off showing only the gameplay locations, places a castle in the location you're suggesting. And that's probably the best thing to go on. It looks like Shadow Dragon was really sloppy when it came to some of its map graphics. Then again there's this image

Which has a castle in that pass put has the text of Lefcandy to the east, where I've put it. That text could be denoting the castl to the left of it....but most text is a bit closer. Then again if it's not Lefcandith then what else could that castle be? Hell if I know. I'll place it in the more sensible valley as the Shadow Dragon map makers have proven they don't know what they're doing, though I am very much questioning how Marth managed to traverse through the entirety of enemy occupied land for what amounted to a vacation. My assumption before is the the Galdar Harbour area is part of Archanea (as I think some maps which make the borders clearer show) and they took a ship. Now it would involve them going through a very fortified pass, and then taking a ship to get to Warren. Maybe the relocating of these two locations wasn't a mistake and was instead an intentional attempt to make Marth's route make more sense.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Jotari

[Acacia Sgt]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That would make more sense. Looking at Mystery of the Emblem, it does pan the camera ruffly over there, but it doesn't show any castle in the area so it could still be indicating the Shadow Dragon position. One also has to ask themselves if they reached Archanea proper after Lefcandith, how did they get to Port Warren without running by Pales?

Putting Lefcandith in the pass to the larger peninsula would also have it overlapping with the mountain pass chapter from late game Mystery. Although it could be the same area, I sort of feel as if they might have identified it as such  (though it could be placed a bit further north).

Then again, then again, looking back at the NES map, which is basically Archanea with all of the fat trimmed off showing only the gameplay locations, places a castle in the location you're suggesting. And that's probably the best thing to go on. It looks like Shadow Dragon was really sloppy when it came to some of its map graphics. Then again there's this image

Which has a castle in that pass put has the text of Lefcandy to the east where I've put it. That text could be denoting the castl to the left of it....but most text is a bit closer. Then again if it's not Lefcandith then what else could that castle be? Hell if I know.

Not every place is depicted on the map. There isn't anything for Lefcandith either. It zooms on the place that is marked as Lefcandith in other maps, but in-game there isn't anything there either. It's the same for places like Adrah Pass. Why they didn't reach the Millennium Court right afterwards isn't said. Maybe the big Grustian force Malledus fears was coming was stationed there? It looks like after Lefcandith, Marth and his army hugged the coast until they reached Warren. Alternatively, if we look at the in-game map for Knorda and the Millennium Court, it does show it walled off to the north by mountains. Maybe there is no road connecting the northern coastline with it, so anyone entering Archanea from Lefcandith must go around?

Well, nothing says there can't be more than one mountain pass. In his first game, Marth took Lefcandith Valley. In his second, it was Adrah Pass. Mystery of the Emblem shows they are two different places. Adrah Pass is west of Lefcandith.

It looks like the text was placed there out of convenience. Otherwise it would look cramped if put between the Archanea, Gra, and Dohluna labels. Every other text is next to a building on the map. So Lefcandith's can only be the one in the mountain pass... or the other building which we do know is Galder. So it has to be the one between Archanea and Aurelis.

 

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Not every place is depicted on the map. There isn't anything for Lefcandith either. It zooms on the place that is marked as Lefcandith in other maps, but in-game there isn't anything there either. It's the same for places like Adrah Pass. Why they didn't reach the Millennium Court right afterwards isn't said. Maybe the big Grustian force Malledus fears was coming was stationed there? It looks like after Lefcandith, Marth and his army hugged the coast until they reached Warren. Alternatively, if we look at the in-game map for Knorda and the Millennium Court, it does show it walled off to the north by mountains. Maybe there is no road connecting the northern coastline with it, so anyone entering Archanea from Lefcandith must go around?

Well, nothing says there can't be more than one mountain pass. In his first game, Marth took Lefcandith Valley. In his second, it was Adrah Pass. Mystery of the Emblem shows they are two different places. Adrah Pass is west of Lefcandith.

It looks like the text was placed there out of convenience. Otherwise it would look cramped if put between the Archanea, Gra, and Dohluna labels. Every other text is next to a building on the map. So Lefcandith's can only be the one in the mountain pass... or the other building which we do know is Galder. So it has to be the one between Archanea and Aurelis.

 

This map more solidly shows it's meant to be Lefcandith.

The people who made the first map posted there did make it far too ambigious having the text equal distance from two castles.

Two passes is probably the answer, but in the interest of being more complete (and being strictly accurate to where the mountain pass is shown on the map in New Mystery) I've put Lefcandith as leading into the New Mystery Mountain Pass. The way I've angled the mountain pass map also has one of the crossroads leading North East (the direction Marth doesn't have to go to size) which suggests there is something in that direction, possibly originally it's meant to be a path to Orelans, but with my orientation it becomes the coastal path we can imagine Marth took to get to Port Warren, because the more direct route he takes in Mystery of the Emblem is too heavily fortified.

[Acacia Sgt]

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Two passes is probably the answer, but in the interest of being more complete (and being strictly accurate to where the mountain pass is shown on the map in New Mystery) I've put Lefcandith as leading into the New Mystery Mountain Pass. The way I've angled the mountain pass map also has one of the crossroads leading North East (the direction Marth doesn't have to go to size) which suggests there is something in that direction, possibly originally it's meant to be a path to Orelans, but with my orientation it becomes the coastal path we can imagine Marth took to get to Port Warren, because the more direct route he takes in Mystery of the Emblem is too heavily fortified.

Well, assuming they also didn't messed up map locations for New Mystery, one way I could rationalize both maps is that Lefcandith Valley leads to the north route of Adrah Pass. Makes sense, since that's where the Wolfguard comes from, and they were coming from Aurelis. The west route was where Marth and his army came from. They departed from Gra to the west, so makes sense. The east route is what leads to Archanea country proper.

Although, in light of you rotating some maps... that's a good point. How do we know every map is truly aligned with the cardinal directions or not?