The Cartographer Comes to Skyrim

In case you just crawled out from under a rock or something, there's this little game that came out a few years back called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and it's not bad. Not bad at all. So not bad, as a matter of fact, that I've sunk something like 300 hours into it with absolutely no regrets.

And without a doubt the best thing about Skyrim is, well, Skyrim itself: a gorgeously realized wilderness of icy beauty just waiting for every nook and cranny to be explored. I mean, sure, the dragons are returning and all of that good stuff, but who cares when you can just go climb the nearest snowy peak or find a river and follow it upstream as far as possible? The world Bethesda has created is simply wonderful, and being something of a geography nut, I soon found myself wanting to draw this enormous map. I got a good start on it and still work at it from time to time...even if by the time it's done, Skyrim will be about as cutting-edge a game as Super Mario Bros 2 is today.

The official map is nice enough...but hardly the masterpiece of videogame cartography Skyrim deserves!

In the meantime, though, a unique spell has been discovered (the magic of console commands) that allows its caster to immediately know exactly where in Skyrim he is. Armed with this new knowledge, the Imperial Surveyors' Guild has sent one of its dignitaries, the enigmatic wanderer known only as Magnus the Cartographer, northwards into the land of the Nords. He is to measure everything he can possibly think of in Skyrim: road distances, altitudes, building heights, cave depths, whatever comes to mind. Perhaps the Empire feels that this knowledge will help in the Civil War or something, I don't know, use your imagination, people!

Magnus' first assignment is a simple one: measure the length of the short road that leads from the gate of the city of Whiterun down to the intersection with the main road...