Map

A map was a document displaying the layout of a region, such as a building, settlement, landscape, country, continent, or world. A similar but separate concept was that of the merchants' map, which outlined the trade and transport used in the mass-production of manufactured goods.

"The real romance lies in mapping lands untrodden by civilized men. Only rabble follow maps."

- Hamnet Hawklin

Manufacture & Design
Many of the maps available in the Realms were simplified copies of maps from the large collections of courts, temples, and private individuals. They were made by limners (painters or portrait drawers), court heralds, and scribes who had to pay an access fee, sometimes per map. This fee covered the time involved for someone to bring them the map and watch over them as they worked. This fee also tended to be roughly half or a third of the price that the scribe would charge their client for the finished copy. Alternatively, map-making kits allowed any layperson to attempt making their own maps.

Maps were often printed on scrolls that could be rolled up, and stored in a map tube or map case. Nautical maps—which were typically the most crude and inaccurate, yet most valuable of maps—were often drawn by sea captains themselves. This was done by using a candle or burning quill to singe markings into the cured, durable hide of a bull. Often they drew these while consulting the map of another captain, who watched over their work and charged them a stiff fee.

Just as there existed these charts for the oceans of Toril that ships relied upon, there existed starcharts that spelljammers relied upon. These were navigational charts for crystal spheres and the phlogiston and were considered necessary to have if one wished to navigate the skyways accurately.

Religious Sources

 * The House of the Moon, a temple of Selûne in the city of Waterdeep, had a grand Hall of Maps that held maps of nearly every known city and land in the continent of Faerûn. These were stored on crammed shelves lengthwise within unlabled, ornate tubes of bone and ivory. Among the collection there were even a few prized maps of Maztica, Kara-tur, and Zakhara. Though the collection lacked maps of Eltabbar, Evermeet, and Neverwinter. Merchants and ship captains often visited when planning new expeditions, while adventurers, hunters, and guides visited when seeking out lost trails through nigh-impassable obstacles.
 * Many temples of Oghma sold maps to support themselves.
 * Many of the Church of Shaundakul's priests made a living selling accurate-as-possible maps of trade routes, mountain passes, and even the layouts of castles and palaces with their (known) secret rooms and passages marked. They were also known to sell maps of short underground routes, such as sewer systems, catacombs, the cellars of ruins, and “merchants’ shortcuts” in the Underdark.

Uses
Maps helped people find their way between locations, whether in a wilderness environment or in a dungeon.

Maps were useful in warfare. In the Utter East during the Bloodforge Wars (648–657 DR), scroll maps surveying charts were sought after to reveal unexplored areas and dispel the "fog of war". Maps of Neverwinter were forbidden to be made in an effort to thwart Luskan spies.

In the tenday preceding the city holiday of Wintershield, sales of maps in Waterdeep would increase as many sought to consult them for discussions of politics and warfare. Additionally, it was widely considered good luck to own and examine a map on that day.

History
The first recognized map of Cormyr, the Dalelands, and Cormanthor was made by Cormyrian cartographers in the. Called "The Map of the Lands of the Inner Sea", it was commissioned by an ancestor of Aubayreer Mindosel to mark the year of their ennobling in Teshar.

In the, explorers from New Waterdeep created inland survey maps of Maztica.

Sometime after the War of the Silver Marches, several cloud giant nobles embarked on expeditions to remap the Sword Coast, hoping to uncover lost relics of their ancient kingdom Ostoria along the way.