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“You crest the last hill and finally the complex comes into view. In stark contrast to the lush greenery of the hills lies a large sunken graveyard laid out in the shape of a cross. Rather than towering above the ground, the graves have settled into depressions, and the main mausoleum, a building of strange green stone, rests in the deepest depression some 40 feet below the ground on which you now stand. At the other end of the grave-filled hallow stands what appears to be a stone well. There are no gravestones near it. The normal sounds of wildlife are gone, and large carrion birds circle overhead. An ominous silence rests about the place. Each of you knows in your heart that you have found the legendary dungeon of Rappan Athuk. And though none dare speak it, you wonder if you will live to return to the warmth of hearth and home.”
These symbols are the “official” symbols used in maps for Star Frontiers adventures featured in White Dwarf, Ares, and Space Gamer magazines. These symbols were intended for marking maps within Frontier Sector space.
STAR FRONTIERS adventures take place in an area of space called the Frontier Sector, or simply the Frontier. The Frontier contains 17 inhabited star systems, with a total of 23 colonized planets. Some of these planets have been claimed and settled by only one of the four races, while others were set up in cooperation and have mixed populations.
Besides these settled areas, the sector contains 21 unexplored star systems that could have habitable (or inhabited) planets. There are many moons, asteroid belts and uninhabited planets that are largely ignored in the day-to-day business of earning a living in the Frontier.
Since a map is a reduced representation of the real world, map symbols are used to represent real objects. Without symbols, we wouldn’t have maps. Both shapes and colors can be used for symbols on maps. A small circle may mean a point of interest, with a brown circle meaning recreation, red circle meaning services, and green circle meaning rest stop. Colors may cover larger areas of a map, such as green representing forested land and blue representing waterways. To ensure that a person can correctly read a map, a Map Legend is a key to all the symbols used on a map. It is like a dictionary so you can understand the meaning of what the map represents.
Children of the Ampersand 