Veritas

Veritas
A work by Reginald Routhwick
Type	Topographic map
Topics	Google+, QGIS, Islands, Mapmaking, Caribbean
Setting(s)	North Atlantic Ocean
In development since	May 2014

Veritas is a gift-map project by Reginald Routhwick, dedicated to his contacts on the now-closed public version of Google+.

Development

In May 2014, shortly after installing QGIS on his borrowed desktop system (during his Brass City days), Routhwick underwent his first attempt at a gift map dedicated to his Google+ contacts, whose names would end up in the then-unnamed locale's street gazetteer. Inkscape was also used to generate the coastline DXF. But soon after, his focus shifted towards remaking Rogatia (setting of The Sevton Saga), and the project was quietly tabled.

As Routhwick further stated in his Reddit commentary on the latest attempt, coded "VTS-320", well after settling in Florida:

Serious bouts at a revival began last November/December [2018], culminating in a 1:1,000 sneek peek by January 2019 which didn't go quite anywhere. Around the time the Plus closed its doors and I moved to Steem, the next round of trials ensued until March--only to be shelved because, to paraphrase myself, what I had wasn't dramatic enough (no cliffs or steep slopes to speak of).

Over time, I moved on to a revamp of Rogatia (the partial setting of my forthcoming Sevton Saga), and then Novissima (a small outpost south of governing Jamaica)...and then came this project's mention in an agenda on my Aground feed. Enough, along with Wilbur's Fractal Noise feature "Min" (for minimum height), to send me crazy, starving, experimenting, overtiming, and so to say, off my dependable platforms till this small-scale version's completion on the afternoon of Sunday, November 24. Told you 'twas a long story....

...Speaking of G+ contact names: Veritas is named after carto-enthusiast Vicky, who up and left the Plus for Twitter days before I could show my earlier attempt to her. Also, one of the offshore islets is named after Luke Wroblewski, who informed Plussers on the latest interface updates...before he abruptly left as well. As for the rest of the gang, you'll get to see them in street names as I venture into a large-scale counterpart in the next several weeks. (Many of the settlement names were sourced from articles randomly chosen by Wikipedia; a few I chose out of thin air.)

As I write, it's quite a shame that all talk of G+ has heavily dissipated since a while after its April closure, murmurs of spiritual successor Shoelace aside. (Shoelace is currently test-run in the New York market.) That its Help centre/Product Forum quietly closed by October 31 clearly has not helped.

The following year, Routhwick sent this version of Veritas to the cutting-room floor in favour of a retool, which took real-world bathymetry from NOAA into account. In recent months, increasing attention towards the Adanson Jukebox from Unspooled, plus worries about storage issues on his spare laptop, have since placed it on hold until further notice.

Description

This is based on the November 2019 commentary cited above, and details here are subject to change in the coming months.

Veritas is a West Indian island situated 300 miles northeast of Antigua and Barbuda. Its highest point, Ozymandias (at 842.1969 m [2,763.113189 ft] in height), is named after the king immortalised by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The capital (and largest city) is Camborne (IPA: /keɪm.bɔɹn/), and the Governor is Brandenn Bremmer.

Tidbits

• Veritas also has a town called Mehitabel, which gives way to a coincidence with Dana Simpson's Ozy and Millie: The main character, a grey fox, has his full name as Ozymandias, and Mehitabel happens to be the middle name of his best friend Millicent Mudd.
• The country's only (international) airport is named after children's book illustrator Leslie McGuire. She worked on the 1984 Rainbow Brite tie-in, The Big Color Mix-Up.