Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Piltover and Zaun's Geography

Seppo·1/4/2020, 4:00:28 AM·8 votes·10,221 views
https://am-a.akamaihd.net/image?f=https%3A%2F%2Funiverse-meeps.leagueoflegends.com%2Fv1%2Fassets%2Fimages%2Fpiltover_environment_04.jpg&resize=:1200

I am utterly confused. I have been working on mapping out the cities of Runeterra for a project and when it comes to Piltover and Zaun I am absolutely lost. The story goes that after Zaun tried to bomb a canal between Piltover and itself it resulted in a failure, Zaun sunk down and then Piltover created the sun gates above Zaun which act as the original Zaunites intended, a safe passageway through western and eastern Valoran. That being said, in no depiction of Piltover ANYWHERE that I could find (if there is please link it, I'm desperate), Zaun is nowhere near the water or the coast. The link posted shows that there is clearly no city below the large dam classified as the sun gates. Even in images like this one or this other one there is no room or depiction of Zaun at all. Even on an image like this one, could the right side of the picture be of where Zaun is? If thats the case then how did piltover build the sungates over them when those same sungates are on the left side of the image?
My main problem is that, given the knowledge and depictions of Zaun to Piltover, Zaun is more like a crack in the earth, like a large slab fell into the ground of piltover(which is kind of what happened), but if Zaun is in the middle of Piltover where is the water that should have flood into Zaun constantly from the ocean? If I am completely wrong in my assessment of the sun gates please let me know, because all the images of the sun gates show absolutely no trace of a possible city and most depictions of Zaun show them fully immersed into the city of piltover. Now, I understand that this may just be me messing something up somewhere, or a miscommunication with concept artists (coordinating all this information is really hard, no blame :)). Can someone try and explain how the city is laid out? What I have so far is conglomerated through the images I have linked beforehand and this one. What it looks like is that judging by the world map, the sun gates have to be facing North to South. Thus, the majority of piltover will be located on the landmasses between the sungates and on the water in between which is seen. The sun gates are a dam that changes the waterlevel severely on the eastern(?) side which is kept very high, compared to the western(?) side which is low due to the explosion that Zaun created. Since Zaun fell, piltover built NOT the sun gates but just more of the city above using bridges to navigate between the split terrain while Zaun slowly excavated and did a similar thing lower into the ground creating their buildings and architecture. The sun gates are then created further north, (closer to the Valoran side) to profit off of the possible trade and market values that Zaun had seen beforehand.
Yes, I know I edited the story to have it make logical sense based on my description of the city, but I honestly just want a clear map or mental image of what a map of the city would look like. One that isn't inconsistent based on the source images.

15 Comments

RiotBioluminescence1/4/2020, 4:22:57 AM11 votes

Hello, fellow cartographer!

I was tasked, a while ago, to map out Piltover and Zaun, so I absolutely know and understand your pain. Not sure how much I can get away with saying here, today, but heck - everyone's asleep so let's map-chat!

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One of the biggest challenges was dealing with the two 'sea level' heights - one one side of the Sun Gates, the water level is clearly very much higher than on the other. Now, while it's tempting to use a dam or something, for Piltover and Zaun, they are both of them open water. Piltover and Zaun are on an isthmus between the two continents, with the lower ocean on the SE side, and access to the higher seas between Valoran and Shurima on the NW side. While it might initially seem a bit nutty to have different sea levels, this is actually something that does happen in the real world due to the rotation of the planet, the movement of the moon, and the geometry of coastlines and oceans. Earth doesn't have anything quite as extreme as this, but it's a matter of scale, not of possibility.

Next, and I'm not sure you even mentioned it in your post, is the River Pilt. Having a river flow onto an isthmus is challenging, but not impossible. I recommend just tweaking the heights/contour lines until you get it working pretty well. I had it dumping out into the lower sea. However, it dropped very suddenly to do so, resulting in quite a few stepped waterfalls. At least, it used to. Until the explosions.

Then, the caves and reinforced edges of what was Zaun on the waterfall collapsed into what are effectively long sinkholes - creating several chasms at or near the lower sea level, with the River Pilt crashing down into the first one and making its way through what is effectively mineral Swiss cheese of crevices, underwater caves, and the like, until dumping out in a very polluted fashion on the SE side. These chasms are approximately perpendicular to the Sun Gates to the NE. When the chasms opened, the riverbed drained, revealing new prime building space (New Town style) for what would be called Piltover.

Gotta go before the lore-police finds me. Hope you enjoy and I salute you fellow map nerd!

KestrelGirl1/4/2020, 4:03:18 AM4 votes

Far as I can tell, the Sun Gates or other water management systems are what's keeping Zaun from being flooded despite it being underground.

Zaun is also probably a bit further inland because it was the original city and Piltover came later.

Whyte Lyon1/4/2020, 11:11:37 AM1 votes

I mean, good friggin luck on attempting to map out all the famous cities of Runeterra. You say you're lost on Piltover and Zaun, but I'm doubting the other cities/capitals will be any easier.

There isnt enough playerfacing lore nor anatomic-like descriptions of infrastructure, and most artworks depicting cities are from the facade point of view.