The Imperial Webway stuff shoe-horned into the background by the CCG? Yeah, its pretty bad. Ah well...

Ok, well I re-read the Lightning Tower descriptions again. The Karnali delta doesn't actually appear to be part of the Brahnaputra Plateau, but an alternative approach to the Palace... just as well, as in real life the Karnali river is miles away from the Brahnaputra. So, areas it mentions that are outside the Palace -
Brahnaputra Plateau - Overlooked by the Lions Gate, location of the Lions Gate spaceport
Karnali Delta - potential approack to the palace
Gangetic Plain
This map shows the real life locations of the areas mentioned. Note the Gangetic Plain to the South of Nepal, the Brahnapurna river to the North (I assume seing as it refers to the Brahnapurna Plateau it means the part of the river that flows through the Mountains, rather than where it joins the Ganges in the Lowlands) the Dhualagiri and Annapurna Mountains to the North West of Kathmandau, and of course Kathmandau itself. So, I had a very rough attempt at working out the Palace layout....

Heres the thinking behind it...
I went for 4 main gates, just for simplicity.
The Kath Mandau precinct is part of the Inner Palace, so I placed the Inner Palace roughly centered there.
The Annapurna Gate was placed where the corresponding mountain is.
The Lions Gate was placed as another Northern gate of the palace. This enables it to overlook the Brahnapurna Plateau area. Dorn also runs a simulation where Lions Gate falls to a Traitor attack from the North, so it can't be one of the Southern gates.
Which leaves Primus Gate and Eternity Gate as southern gates to the palace. I placed Eternity Gate to the South East... the Traitor landings concentrate on Lions Gate and Eternity Wall spaceports, and going by common sense it makes sense to mass your attack while assaulting a Stronghold. So I assumed that the main Traitor attack was from the East of the Palace, which would mean Eternity Gate should be on the East side. Which leaves Primus Gate to the South West. I then stuck the Spaceports down near the corresponding gates... I put Damocles as the spaceport for Annapurna Gate because we have 4 gates mentioned and 4 spaceports, so rather than assume there was a Damocles Gate I just assigned the odd Spaceport name to the final gate that is mentioned already.

So, that would be my very rough interpretation as to where things are placed... very far from being exact, but at least it makes sure everywhere fits in somewhere without contradicting the background. The Southern border of the Palace is probably a little too far south given where the Gangetic Plain is in real life, and seeing as it extends well into the lowlands rather than being in the mountains themselves, the Outer Palace should probably be slightly smaller, and the Spaceports should probably be closer to the Palace. Still, hopefully could be useful to the more talented folks who are thinking of making proper campaign maps...

Heh, your rough layout of the palace corresponds to the Horus Heresy boardgame map Only Space Port Damocles and Eternity Wall Space Port are switched.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/129038

This site could be of interest
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Terra

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Red Sorceror, nice work!!  Remember the terrain can be changed and probably has been engineered to meet the desires of the Imperium.  Make whatever changes to the river or elevation that you think would help.  In the Horus Heresy books, they talk about how the Adeptus Mechanicus literally leveled a mountainous area and made it perfectly flat so that the Emperor could meet with X number of Legions in formation at the same time.

E&C, thanks for finding that picture.  At least I know I am not going crazy.  WALLS! GATES!  I KNEW IT!

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Ok, heres my first go at this.  this is a simple sketch over a DEM of the area plus country outlines.  the outerwall is the size of Nepal and teh space ports are bigger than bangladesh- That big enough for ya Chris?   .  

The concept is that the palace uses the main rise of the Himalayas as its primary line of defence- So eternity wall refers to the great wall embedded across the mountains.

The main palace is built over the Kathmandu plain- so it rises up something like Minas Tirith.

Let me know thoughts on what needs to change, whats in teh wrond place etc.

PS- thanks for the map RS, it was really helpful starting point But looking at my map Ive put the Primus and Annpurna gates too far west... OK, ill sort that later

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J0k3r, I'm really liking that so far. Using the line of the mountains as a 'first line of defence' fits in really well with the background we have. The location of the Lions Gate & spaceport looks spot on to me, and the fact the location of the Southern wall matches beginning of the mountains fits with the mention of the Gangetic Plain in the background as well.

One potential problem is I think the West wall needs to move a bit more to the East... where it is it means it looks like nearly all the Karnali river is within the Palace, which doesn't work with the description of traitor forces approaching the Palace along the Karnali Delta. It also means the Annapurna Gate is a considerable distance away from where the mountain of the same name is. Obviously it doesn't need to be exactly in the same place, but I do feel it should be closer than it is at present.

The Lexicanum link was interesting, particularly the fact it mentions that the Eternity Gate is a gate into the Inner Palace which contradicts the idea of having it as part of the Outer defences. Funnily enough, it also mentions it as the place Sanguinus fought the bloodthirster, wheras both old and new background has this as happening at the Ultimate Gate. Could be a mistake I suppose, or a retcon.

I don't have a scanner but has anyone tried to superimpose the Horus Heresy boardgame map over the Himalaya and "morph" the Palace, Spaceports, etc to match the Real Earth positions describet in The Lightning Tower?

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Nice work on the map J0k3r.  I have always been keen on stuffing around and creating some science fiction maps at some point.  It would be interesting to create up some maps using GIS software so you can actually zoom in and out creating different scale maps with more detailed elements showing as you moved in and out..

You could also do a whole bunch of neat things like adding in a point dataset for anti-air defenses etc.  You could place them on the map with different sized buffers depending on the range of the weapon and possibly different colors based on the strength of the weapon.

There are a bunch of free programs around that could be used to develop something like this aimed at environmental studies.

If you were keen on getting involved in a project like that I would be happy to help.  I produce maps for a living so I have a couple of ideas about making cool ones.

One option that would be possible for this is if someone feels inspired to map some stuff like this out using one of the free GIS programs I could use that data to create some really spiffy maps at the end with some professional cartography/GIS software.

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Boring point about the bottom right spaceport. Thats in Bangladesh, you would need massive reduction in water on the earth to ensure that area wasn't under water in 30,000 years time. It naturally drops a cm a year as the Himalayas go up and with sea level rise the most conservative estimate has a massive swath of the country under water in 50 years time (displacing an estimated 30 million people incidentally), to the extent industry is pulling back into the interior where it can.

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True, but much of the background suggests that Terra in 30K has much less water than it does today, and some sources support it having no oceans whatsoever. And given the supposed terraforming abilities of the Imperium at this point they should have little trouble 'reclaiming' an area the size of Bangladesh even if it were largely underwater.

Not a boring point at all- something im very interested in is how the world would look with far lower water levels.  Im looking for maps of the world at the late glacial maximum to get an idea of what the 30k world might look like with a lot of the water evaporated off...  Its one way to explain why the continents are unrecognisable as 30,000 years is nothing in geological terms.

But, yeah, ill probably shift the port somewhat to fit along the coast better too.  Maybe move it south and west.

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Thats a very interesting idea Mark, thanks for the offer.  Lets follow that up at a later date. Its great to find another GIS person on the forums too  

I use a combination of ArcGIS and Corel to do my maps, but if I did much of the digitisation in Arc itself then we would have georeferenced datasets to play with.  I would be really keen to get some KML's made as Google Earth is a technology i've yet to get to grips with.  There could be some nice 3d visualisation that could be done with sketchup too.

In fact I was going to produce some oblique shots of the GTOPO 30 data Ive used and ask some artists to draw defences and fortress walls in.

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Actually the oceans only boiled away as Horus bombarded the planet.
And i can see that mankind will be able to overbuild vast ares of the ocean. So noproblem if man made structures in M30 covers today earth oceans

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