Cosmere Geography

[theboltholt]

Hi Everybody, I'm new the the Cosmere but have been running a Sanderson Marathon for the past 2 months through Audiobook. Powering through one after another and loving each book! One thing i'm having a hard time figuring out is the geography of a lot of these places. Unless i've missed it, this website doesn't have a forum or section for maps specifically so I wanted to see if ya'll could help me out! My hope is that this thread grows from legitimate maps of all the worlds in the Cosmere to include all the fan art as well! Right now, i'm specifically looking for a good map to reference while I listen to Elantris. 

 

Maybe I'm dreaming here? I don't know what all is out there but I hope we can compile a helpful collection for everyone! If you have an image that you use to reference while reading any Sanderson books, please feel free to post it below! (Also someone let me know if i'm just missing the right thread and kindly point me in the right direction). Here are 2 maps I've used so far. One for the Final Empire and one sub-par map for Elantris. Thanks!

[Honorless he/him]

All the maps are available on the Coppermind

But here you go:

That's the old map you got. These up there came with the 10th Anniversary Edition

 

Some Mistborn maps:

The large green area in 5th Octant is the Village

Some maps of the Shattered Plains you'd have missed if you're listening to the audiobooks:

Other maps of Roshar:

Here's a map of T'Telir, the Hallandren capital: 

Edited June 14, 2020 by R J

[theboltholt]

Well how about that...Thanks! I was hesitant to check the Coppermind for fear of spoilers.

[Fezzik]

Brandon Sanderson's website contains all the maps from the books, and with far fewer spoilers than the coppermind.

[Elegy he/him]

There's also these from Stormlight:

 

And the White Sand map:

If you count constellation/solar system maps, that opens up a whole other can of worms ... But those aren't of much use for reference while reading the books, so I'll leave it at that!

[BlueMythril]

Thanks to everyone for collating all the maps. One thing that has niggled at me (as an archaeologist and historian) since reading The Emperor's Soul is the geography and cultural connections between the North and South continents. 

 

The Rose Empire is familiar with Jindo and the red armoured "southerner" emissaries. Yet little mention is made of Teod or Arelon. Looking at the map, it would have made more sense to have JinDo up on the NE peninsular where Svorden is. You could logically imagine a situation where the Rose Empire ignored Teod beyond the mountains, but had perhaps engaged with Southern cultures via the eastern coast (which seems more accessible, though hard to tell with the map title covering that region). If Jindo were there, that could plausibly explain the spheres of connection we get hints at in The Emperor's Soul, while also explaining the radical cultural difference of Jindo to everyone around it (which is currently super weird, like they developed in a vacuum separated from all neighbours)

[Treamayne]

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4 hours ago, BlueMythril said:

One thing that has niggled at me (as an archaeologist and historian) since reading The Emperor's Soul is the geography and cultural connections between the North and South continents. 

Here are WoBs explaining that:

Spoiler

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Questioner

Was the Rose Empire ever under threat from Shu-Dereth? And can you speak a little bit on fitting The Emperor's Soul into a world you'd already created?

Brandon Sanderson

So was the Rose Empire ever in danger from Shu-Dereth and could I speak a little about fitting The Emperor's Soul into a world I'd already written. So when I designed Elantris, I knew where I was going, and I knew a lot about the world. This is how I am in building. So when I wanted to do The Emperor's Soul I already knew where I was going to place it, I knew which magic system I was working toward, and things like that. So it wasn't terribly hard since I already knew what was over there.

The fun about that is that you should go look at the map commissioned, the one Isaac drew, that's done by the Derethi and see how they view the Rose Empire and where they put it on their map. And then you'll eventually get a map of the whole world, and let's just say they don't have a really accurate representation of the world and their place in it. As was very common for a lot of early societies, early European maps are hilarious.

Footnote: The map Brandon is referring can be found on his website here.
Bands of Mourning release party (Jan. 25, 2016)

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Chaos

How accurate would you say the northern continent on the Sycla map is? Is it horribly inaccurate?

Isaac Stewart

This map has severe deficiencies, especially in the northwest.

Chaos

Is there any reason why the cities seem to be on the borders?

Isaac Stewart

Seem to be where?

Chaos

On the borders, or coastline, like literally all of them.

Isaac Stewart

So Brandon can tell me if I'm wrong on this, but normally at the level of technology we're at in this world you've got to have cities near water. That's really what it is. Early cities are almost always near a source of water.

Chaos

And so the rivers are just the borders?

Isaac Stewart

Yeah. I mean we have the rivers that come in through the border in some places but rivers also are just a great border between places. Especially when there is-- when you're not building bridges over all of them. I will tell you... I won't answer what's going on up here.

Chaos

Is it really this enclosed though? Like it's pretty enclosed?

Isaac Stewart

It's pretty enclosed. This right here is pretty distorted, I will tell you that. And I made it look bigger than it is...

Eric, we will eventually release a more correct map.

Shadows of Self release party (Oct. 5, 2015)

From the Arcanum Unbounded Sel Essay:

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Planet of Sel—home to multiple empires that, uniquely, have remained somewhat ignorant of one another. It is a willful kind of ignorance, with each of the three great domains pretending that the others are mere blips on the map, barely worth notice.

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Nimrod Rappaport

In Arcanum Unbounded you mentioned that Sel is one of the biggest planets. You also mentioned that there are three empires on that planet. In Elantris 2 two will we get... You also mentioned that they are largely ignorant of each other, will we get a book in which those empires interact? Maybe in Elantris 2? 

Also, can you please specify on their nature and maybe some inspirations you got when writing and thinking about them?

Brandon Sanderson

So, sure. Sel wears its inspirations quite blatantly on its sleeve, right? It's not that obvious for instance in Stormlight that the Alethi are based off of Mongolians, because there's so much more in the mix there, that it's not quite as obvious. But in Sel, it's a little more obvious. You know, basically the idea came to me that what if the vikings had united behind a very hierarchical religion like Catholicism, and we had Catholic vikings, conquering the world. What would the world look like and that is where the entire religion came from.

Actually the truth is it's like, there was this priest, right, and one group became Buddhist and the other became Catholic vikings and, you know, Buddhist Renaissance... Italians is kind of where we got there and of course, the Rose Empire the inspirations are a little bit more Eastern and Middle Eastern. For instance, the Grands are based on Babylonian influences and I'm kind of looking at a lot of Babylonian, a little bit of Syrian. But of course Shai is very very clearly based on East Asian cultures and specifically China.

So, the empires and things like that... for there you might have noticed that we've got a Europe centered one, and an Asia/Eastern centered one, so you might be able to theorize where the third empire's inspirations might be or at least a list of possible candidates.

ICon 2019 (Oct. 17, 2019)

 

 

 

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Thanks to everyone for collating all the maps.

On the Coppermind, simply search <book title>/Interior Art (e. g. Elantris (book)/Interior art) and the page will have all official artwork, but no spoiler text other than the name of the image. As shown, disambiguation may be needed when a book title is also an in-world term. 

Hope that helps