Map A.11 - West Greenland

Incomplete map. Labels are a convenience until further design is applied.

Arctic region stretching from 82.34°N south to 72.51°N, encompassing the frigid waters and icebound islands between Ellesmere Island and western Greenland. This vast expanse consists of towering glaciers, drifting pack ice, and a labyrinthine network of fjords and frozen islets. Entirely undiscovered by European civilisation, yet numerous Inuit settlements exist in the 17th century.

Hexes are 20 miles in diameter. Total area depicted equals 366,450 sq.m.

Features

The Greenland ice sheet, known to natives as Sermersuaq — "the Great Ice" — is separated from Umingmak Nuna — "Land of Muskoxen" — by a narrow basin and sound called Pikialasorsuaq, which translates as "the great upwelling."

Sermersuaq

This unbroken glacial world of pale blue and white stretches beyond the horizon in every direction. Rising from the fjord-riven coast in sheer walls of ice, it climbs ever higher into a frozen plateau where the sky and land blur into a vast, featureless emptiness. Here, the wind howls ceaselessly, scouring the surface into sharp ridges and wind-hardened snowfields that stretch for endless miles. Crevasses yawn in the depths where the ice fractures, their walls descending into a shadowed, frozen abyss where no light reaches.

At its edges, Sermersuaq meets the sea in great glacial cliffs, jagged and broken, where frozen masses calve with the sound of thunder, sending icebergs adrift into the dark waters. The ice here moves like a slow, grinding tide, inching toward the coast in deep, imperceptible currents that carry the weight of centuries within them. Ancient air, trapped within its depths, lies compressed beneath countless layers of snowfall, each marking a season long since passed.

In the far north, the ice thickens and grows ever more desolate, a realm of endless white where nothing stirs. The cold here is absolute, the air so sharp it steals breath from the lungs, and the sky above is a pale, empty dome, shifting between the deep blues of twilight and the blinding glare of the sun on ice. There are no landmarks, only the undulating rise and fall of the frozen land, shaped by wind and time.

Yet Sermersuaq is alive. It cracks, it groans, it shifts with an unseen force, a thing older than memory, older than the first footstep upon its surface. It moves with the slow, inevitable motion of the world itself, and in its depths, where ice has lain untouched for untold ages, there is a silence so deep it seems as though the land itself is holding its breath.

Umingmak Nuna

This is a land of wind-scoured tundra, where the cold grips the earth so tightly that it rarely yields to warmth, even in the brief summers when the sun circles endlessly above the horizon. The terrain stretches in rolling expanses of barren rock and frost-shattered ridges, broken by jagged cliffs that rise from the frozen sea. Ancient glaciers crawl toward the coast, their surfaces a mosaic of deep crevasses and towering seracs, while the ice-clad fjords carve deep into the land, their waters dark and restless beneath the weight of floating ice.

Across the vast plains, patches of hardy moss and lichen cling to life in the shallow depressions where meltwater gathers, their muted greens and reds the only contrast against the grey stone and wind-packed snow. The land is restless in its silence, shaped by forces unseen — rivers of ice grinding against the rock, the slow heave of permafrost as it shifts beneath the surface, the wind carving strange shapes into the cliffs like the marks of some long-forgotten hand.

The musk-ox, from which the island takes its name, wanders these lonely plains, moving in small herds that vanish into the distance like shadows against the snow. Their thick coats ripple in the wind as they search for the sparse vegetation hidden beneath the frost. White wolves follow in their wake, ghosts on the tundra, their presence known only by the sudden stillness of the herds or the distant echoes of their howls carried on the wind.

To the north, Umingmak Nuna fades into a world of ice and shadow, where the land grows harsher and the sea is locked in an endless embrace of frozen ridges and towering pressure ridges. Here, the silence is absolute, broken only by the creaking groan of shifting ice or the sudden crash of a calving glacier. The land is ancient, untouched by time, a place where the cold has stripped away all but the barest remnants of life, leaving only rock, ice and the wind.

Pikialasorsuaq

Pikialasorsuaq is a realm of shifting ice and open water, a vast polynya where the sea refuses to freeze even in the deepest cold of winter. Here, in the heart of the High Arctic, great floes drift apart like broken puzzle pieces, revealing black water that steams faintly against the frigid air. The ice moves constantly, cracking, refreezing and shifting in unseen currents that thread beneath the surface, keeping the polynya alive even when the surrounding world is locked in unyielding ice.

The air is thick with the cries of seabirds, their wings cutting against the wind as they wheel over the dark water. Thousands nest along the jagged cliffs that rise from the frozen shore, their colonies clustering where the land meets the open sea. In the water below, seals bob in the swells, surfacing through narrow leads in the ice, their breath curling in mist before they vanish again beneath the surface. Further out, great shadows glide beneath the waves — narwhals and bowhead whales, drawn to the polynya's open waters, their migrations etched into the shifting ice and the rhythms of the deep.

The ice surrounding Pikialasorsuaq is never still. It heaves and groans, ridges rising like frozen mountains where pressure forces the floes against one another, then splitting apart again to reveal stretches of thin, fragile ice where a man might fall through in an instant. The Inuit, who have long navigated these waters, know the pathways through this frozen labyrinth, reading the ice as a hunter reads the tracks of his prey.

The land and water are one here — part of an ancient balance where the sea gives life even in the heart of the cold. It's a place of motion, where no path is the same from one season to the next, and where the restless ice guards secrets older than memory.

Baffin Bay

Entered for the first time by William Baffin, along with his pilot Robert Bylot, during their 1616 expedition. They sailed north through Davis Strait, exploring the waters between Greenland and Baffin Island and reaching what is now Smith Sound, the northernmost exit of the bay. Their records confirmed that Baffin Bay was a dead end, rather than a navigable passage to the Pacific, and the region was largely ignored by Europeans for the next two centuries. Called Saknirutiak Imanga by the Inuit, these dark waters are filled with icebergs, some as large as islands, drift southward from the great glaciers, groaning as they turn in the water. The sea, when it is visible at all, appears as a restless black void between the shifting pack ice, its surface so cold that the very mist above it seems to freeze.

The land at the bay’s edges is stark and wind-scoured. Even in the deepest winter, the ice is never truly still. Ridges of pressure ice rise like frozen mountain chains, sculpted by the wind into jagged pinnacles that grind against each other with a sound like distant thunder. Where the floes part, narrow leads of black water appear, steaming faintly against the frozen air before freezing over again in the night. In the far north, that part shown, the waters remain open even in the heart of winter. Here, the sea breathes, exhaling mist as the tides shift, and the ice moves in great, grinding sheets that splinter and reform with each passing storm.

The wind sweeps across the bay in an unbroken current, carving the ice into strange and delicate shapes, lifting veils of frost and scattering them like ghosts over the frozen sea. Snow drifts in fine, twisting eddies, clinging to the rough ice where it settles, shaping the ridges and valleys of this endless frozen plain. In the night, the sky burns with light, the aurora flickering over the ice in shifting waves of green and violet, reflected in the black mirror of the open leads. Saknirutiak Imanga is neither land nor sea but something between, a frozen and fluid expanse where the boundaries are ever-changing.

Habitations

In the time of the game world, Etah is a remote Inuit encampment on the far northwestern coast of this great ice-bound land, set along the shores of Foulke Fjord near the entrance to Smith Sound. It is not a permanent settlement, but a seasonal hunting camp used by the Inughuit, the northernmost people of the Arctic, who follow the migrations of the animals that sustain them. No Europeans have ever set foot here, nor do the people know of any world beyond the ice and the sea. Their lives are shaped by the shifting pack ice, the endless wind, and the great expanse of open water that persists beyond the frozen sea.

The Inughuit move with the seasons, following the trails of caribou inland in the warmer months, then returning to the coast as the darkness of winter sets in. In summer, they live in tupiqs, skin tents that they carry as they travel the tundra. But now, as the ice thickens and the days grow short, they have built sod houses along the fjord's edge, sheltering within their thick earthen walls against the long, unrelenting cold. These dwellings are strong, built low against the wind, their frames supported by driftwood and whalebone, their doorways sealed with blocks of ice.

Adjacent Maps

A10: Bathurst	A11: West Greenland		A12: High Greenland
B15: Baffin		B16: Nuuk Coast

See Sheet Maps