Hello everyone! Two years ago (ye gods, has it been two years already?) I posted a series of “Dragonne Magazine” articles detailing the Baklunish lands, covering the Baklunish pantheon, monsters, and other things including a map and expansion of the Gold Box Guide.
Well, I’m at it again, this time doing a deep dive into that fabled land beyond the Sea of Dust, Zihindia. Download the first article here!
In terms of canon, we know next to nothing about Zihindia except its location, and that from the much-hated Dragon Annual #1 map (the article was written by Skip Williams, and the map by Dave Sutherland). On that map, the name is given as Zindia, which is also much-hated as it’s lack of imaginativeness is self-evident. Fortunately the accompanying text says that the names might not be entirely accurate (as it’s presented as an “in-universe” map), and I’ve added a little bit to the name to make it hopefully a tad better. The description of the land in the article is completely perfunctory:
Zindia: A tropical land where rich cities rise from steaming jungles.
One other source of information, also unfortunately very scant, is Gary Gygax’s novel Sea of Death (which I reviewed here). That gives little more than the names of a few nations on the southern and western borders of the Sea of Dust, including Chomur, Jahind, and Mulwar. Those three nations, along with others, make up the various kingdoms that collectively are known as Zihindia. There are other nations named in the novel, but because of the names, I’m using them as part of the China-analogue region to the west, which will be covered in due course.
You can download the first in what will be a series of articles here. This includes a full expansion of the Guide to the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting, plus a poster map that can be printed out and used to extend the Darlene map from the original Gold Box. It should also fit with the poster map included with the Baklunish articles. Future articles in the series will cover the Zihindian pantheon, new monsters, new classes and spells, magic items, and the like. I look at these articles as akin to those that were originally published in Dragon, prior to the publication of Unearthed Arcana. The thief-acrobat, cavalier, etc. were all previewed as articles before being gathered together in a book, and I could see a similar strategy being used in the alternate universe in which the original creator of Greyhawk kept up the work in the pages of Dragonne magazine…
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EDIT 12/22/20 6 PM ET: A new version has been uploaded that corrects an omission on p. 6.
Whoaaaaaaaa! Merry Christmas Greyhawk fans. This is nicely done, Joe!
Wow, this is perfect! Excellent work.
Very cool. Is the Amedio Jungle just to the right of the map over the mountains or is it the land of Sunela, that was an online resource? Or do envision Sunela as being the Suel name for Zahindi?
Sunela is fan-created (as is this, for that matter), and this work would replace it completely.