# Fourth Wing — map and place research

Verified 2 October 2026. Scope: the standard first-book maps, with opening-era geography and no later plot outcomes.

## Published artwork

- [Piatkus / Hachette, Fourth Wing extract](https://www.hachette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Extract-from-Fourth-Wing-B_Jul25.pdf): school map on PDF page 5; continent spread on pages 6–7; chapter one on pages 9–31. Copyright page credits the interior school map to **Amy Acosta and Elizabeth Turner Stokes** and interior world map art to **Melanie Korte**.
- `published-basgiath.jpg` is the unmodified embedded school-map image extracted from that publisher PDF (1800 × 2700).
- `published-map.png` is the complete [890 × 677 standard printed-map scan](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/the-empyrean-rebecca-yarros/images/7/76/World_Map.png/revision/latest?cb=20230706003909), cross-checked against both halves of the publisher’s spread. Its original grey values, labels, frame and compass remain unchanged.
- These images appear at full zoom-out, with source credits, and fade into the 3D view. They are not AI-generated replicas. The school map is pictorial: its depicted footprints are reference silhouettes, not a surveyed orthographic city plan.

## Five Google Images comparisons

Search: **Fourth Wing published map Basgiath War College**, Google Images, 2 October 2026. Five previews were opened and visually examined; screenshots are retained with the project’s verification evidence. These are comparisons, not five independent official maps.

1. [The Empyrean Wiki — Basgiath War College](https://the-empyrean-series.fandom.com/wiki/Basgiath_War_College): the same published campus image; confirmed two separate building complexes, the river gorge, two crossings, circular rotunda and upper flight field.
2. [Basgiath Map All Wrong — reader schematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/fourthwing/comments/166un2e/basgiath_map_all_wrong/): a fan redraw with a different north-up presentation. Useful for noticing the orientation issue; not used as the published artwork or an authoritative floor plan.
3. [Claudia Carlucci — series world guide](https://byclaudiacarlucci.com/fourth-wing-series/): a colour-annotated, expanded continent map. Confirmed the broad kingdom and province relationships; later names and colour overlays were excluded from the first-book plate.
4. [The Book Feed — map location guide](https://thebookfeed.com/insights/fourth-wing-map/): a rendered campus interpretation. Confirmed the broad two-terrace/gorge composition, while showing how fan architectural detail differs from the original. Its textures and buildings were not copied.
5. [The Literary Lifestyle — Fourth Wing map explained](https://theliterarylifestyle.com/fourth-wing-map/): an ornamental published-map variant in a reading guide. Compared the silhouette, province relationship and cliffed plateau. The standard Piatkus plate remains the edition used here.

None of these sources establishes exact streets for every town. The atlas therefore makes no claim that an invented street is canonical.

## Coverage and evidence

All ten settlement diamonds on the standard continent plate are included: **Calldyr City, Basgiath War College, Montserrat, Chakir, Shepley, Sumerton, Ruel, Lewellen, Aretia and Draithus**. Their measured anchors are recorded in `registration.json`; measurement uncertainty is about 1.5 source pixels, rather than GPS precision.

The previously saved per-city research is in `docs/research/cities/fourth-wing.json`. The shipped `research.json` accounts for every selectable place (49), separating printed placement, text-based existence, and original design decisions. Fan-wiki chapter citations supplement the publisher excerpt; details outside the excerpt are not represented as independently checked quotations from the full novel.

- **Calldyr:** low inland western peninsula, two river traces to its northwest; palace grouping and slate-roofed streets are interpreted. It is not placed on an alpine summit or harbour.
- **Basgiath:** continent marker at the Iakobos headwaters; separate campus scene registered to the published plate. Main college, healer/infantry ranges, underground scribe entrance, administration, office and bell tower; higher riders’ citadel, academic range, dormitories, circular Dragon Rotunda, Gauntlet and flight field. Chapter one supports the ravine, narrow parapet, grassy fields and four approach roads. Facades, heights, lamp positions and student movement are original. North toward the bottom of the campus follows the main-college/southern-citadel relationship in chapter one, not an unprinted compass on the artwork.
- **Montserrat:** four-wall garrison with round corner turrets, one taller turret, barracks, yard and service ranges. Relative plan is interpreted from [chapter-indexed research](https://the-empyrean-series.fandom.com/wiki/Montserrat). Lower slopes remain green; the warmer climate is not replaced by blanket snow.
- **Chakir:** high border site; stone/slate, small sheltered town, nearby watchtower. The drawn marker and high-altitude setting do not supply a street survey.
- **Shepley:** printed location at a border/river junction; no independently verified building descriptions. Stone houses and terraces are deliberately labelled interpretation.
- **Sumerton:** Esben frontier town; stone terraces and storage are interpreted. No battle is recreated.
- **Ruel:** printed foothill location north of the plateau; timber-and-stone crossroads is an original design.
- **Lewellen:** open western plateau close to sea cliffs; compact low-roofed courts and summer grassland. Architecture is not established by the map alone.
- **Aretia:** inland plateau valley above the cliffs. Opening-era ruined stone shells; no active modern town, later rebuilding, thermal resort or plot reconstruction.
- **Draithus:** at the foot of the cliffs and Esben range, inland from the southern coast. Warm stone and terraced lanes are interpreted; no invented seaport or later-book tower is presented as first-book canon.
- **Athebyne and Resson:** additional text-only places, marked **approximate**. Proposed locations have roughly ±3% map-width uncertainty. Outpost over wooded valley; Resson’s market, circular wall and clock tower are based on the [chapter-indexed village research](https://the-empyrean-series.fandom.com/wiki/Resson). The miniature shows an intact village, without attack events. Exact streets are not known.

Later-book Samara, Cordyn, Chantara and the Onyx Storm isles are intentionally outside this first-book map. A named region is not converted into an invented city.

## Terrain and architecture

The coastline, northern inlet, printed rivers, central Navarrian belt, Tage–Esben chain and Tyrrendor rim are hand-registered to the source scan. Tyrrendor is raised land with a cliff edge, not a painted wall. The west is open plateau; eastern Tyrrendor has mountain terrain. Poromiel uses plains, grain-country and river corridors, consistent with the chapter-two setting summarised in the [Poromiel source index](https://the-empyrean-series.fandom.com/wiki/Poromiel). The Barrens are dry ground. Tree boundaries, colours and field parcels are illustrative. There is no claim that the monochrome plate supplies exact vegetation boundaries or heights.

A summer palette keeps lower valleys green and puts snow on high peaks. Automatic mountain spreading is restricted for this pack so it does not turn Calldyr’s lowlands or Lewellen’s open plateau into invented ranges. Distinct compact house families, rounded turrets, real courtyards, bounded moving students, warm windows and lamps use the existing shared renderer. House counts are rendering budgets, not population estimates.