Up to Riverwood (and Plans for Beyond)

Magnus' orders from the Emperor are, first and foremost, to get an idea of the road distances in Skyrim - how far apart the cities are from each other. To that end, he sets off - first eastward past the Honningbrew Meadery to the four-way junction next to the White River bridge, then southward up the winding road that runs parallel to the cascading river. His destination? The sleepy, tranquil logging village of Riverwood.

Dragon's eye view of the junction

Things go pretty smoothly at first - the main road runs pretty much due east-west and Magnus only needs to stop and take six measurements before he arrives at the junction at the White River - a distance of 245.6m. What's more, the negligible differences in altitude means he can largely ignore the getpos z values, simplifying the calculations considerably.

This was a particularly troublesome spot.

It gets a bit trickier once he turns right and begins to climb up to Riverwood. For one thing, those z values stop being quite so negligible. But the bigger problem is that all that gained altitude causes the road to run in serpentines. Those curves are a bit of a headache because of how often they force our poor Cartographer - who can only walk in straight lines, remember - to take his readings. But he signed up for this job, after all, and by the Divines he's going to do it right! Eighteen readings later, he stands at the T-junction in the middle of Riverwood. The distance between there and the White River junction is 575.05m. Now we can add those two sections of road together, along with the previously-measured road up to Whiterun, and find the total distance from Whiterun to Riverwood: 1048.23m. Or, to put it a bit more cleanly, 1.05km.

Downtown Riverwood, bustling as usual.

All right, so maybe one kilometer doesn't sound like much. It sounds more like the distance to the nearest subway stop or grocery store than the distance between two towns in a remote and sparsely populated land such as Skyrim. But you know what? I'm still impressed. Bethesda packs so much detail and eye candy into its world that even such a brief journey (and Whiterun to Riverwood is, even by Skyrim standards, a brief journey) becomes a gorgeous hike through a scenic wilderness. Magnus really enjoys his work; he hopes that reducing Skyrim to a bunch of figures and distances on a map doesn't take the land's indescribable magic away for anybody, because he certainly doesn't feel that way. If anything, it's the opposite.

Magnus pulls out the very basic map of Skyrim the Surveyors' Guild issued him with back in the Imperial City and notes the distances upon it:

That bottom value is 0.58. Yeah, Magnus shouldn't have used a red pen.

To the Cartographer's irritation, this map shows only Skyrim's paved roads, not the dirt paths that nevertheless form an important part of the land's transportation network. Ivarstead, for instance, appears not to have any road connections at all! Magnus makes a mental note to find himself a better map of the land to use when he publishes the full version of his distance map. Until then, this one will suffice to take notes upon...and it should make a decent handkerchief or oilcloth afterwards.