The Observatory of Deochan

Yesterday I completed an atlas entry that’s been waiting to escape the confines of my mind for quite some years. I’m busy adding labels and the key to the map of Korachan and Hoamm that is a test for the Atlas Elyden finally added the Observatory of Deochan.

Why the fuss? It all has something to do with the so-called Prime Meridian.

Um, no... wrong Prime

In a nutshell the prime meridian is the longitude known as having a property of 0o. In the real world this happens to be Greenwich and is ultimately an arbitrary number. In Elyden 0o longitude passes through the Observatory of Deochan. Originally, when icreated the first map of Korachan some 5-year ago the prime meridian passed right through the city of Deochan, though in digital iterations of the map the graticules got somehow shifted a bit, leaving the prime meridian about  7-miles west of the city. Even though it's an arbitrarily assigned value i wanted the point to be marked by something pertinent soi decided to create a college of cartography and astronomy on the point of the prime meridian.

And so was born the Observatory of Deochan. It's nice to have something that you've been wanting to include in the world finally appear somewhere. I can imagine it as a place of higher learning where the sons (and possibly daughters) of patricians and others (perhaps wealthy journeymen and their children) can come to learn their trade, specifically cartography and astronomy. So it's home to explorers and scientists. I imagine buildings not dissimilar to Oxford university - with Oxford limestone and verdigris-encrusted domes dotting the campus.

minus the bikes... perhaps

 #elyden #fantasycartography #deochan #primemeridian