Hyrule's Geography

It's probably safe to assume after OOT the Temples were sealed up to prevent another situation like Ganondorf's rise.

 

Is it possible that the Shadow Temple is actually in a different dimension? I know there's a physical entrance to the temple, but for all we know, there might be a portal that OoT Link goes through.

 

I don't know about that, it seems a little too farfetched with too little evidence.

 

There was a thread knocking around a while back saying that the Shadow temple was a path to the underworld, which in some ways it resembles. So i wouldn't be surprised if you could level kakariko and it's cemetary and not actually touch the core temple itself.

Though to be honest the Temple felt like it was a crypt built atop something else in any case.

I think geography wise you'd spend more time looking at the Forest, Death Mountain and Zora's Domain for relation and all that. Makes sense that the zora would migrate north and away from death mountain or they'd die under volcanic eruptions (and tp shows that in time Death Mountain becomes very active) I am curious to know though if Zant froze zora's domain of it happened au natural. I'd say at some point in the intervening years the forests of hyrules have expanded and retreated

 

Based on the speculation yesterday from @Spiritual Mask Salesman, then it's possible that the Death Mountain in TP is a new active volcano and the one from OoT dried out, but sitll, they call it Death Mountain, and not Death Volcano and we know that at some point the Eldin Volcano would have become Death Mountain in time, so from SS-OoT, possibly the same structure. The Fire Sanctuary would have undoubtedly become the Fire Temple, or something along those lines. All this is very fascinating but extremely confusing, I hope Nintendo releases material to explain all this.

 

I wouldn't say the mountain from SS is the same or remotely similar to OOTs Death Mountain for a few reasons, The fire temple itself is situated in the caldera, the heart of the volcano where as in SS the fire sanctuary isn't, it's reasonably close but it's not the heart of the temple which suggests that the temples are in fact for different species. At the heart of Eldin volcano is in fact Eldin himself the Guardian of the realm.

I'd say honestly that given the entire series seems to be oral legend that the Landmass known as Death Mountain either shifts about alot or is ascribed to a mountain range. Which we see in AoL and even in the first series. I'd say that the names of a location are generally given to a swathe of land or just as blanket names. We know Eldin volcano is a specific volcano but none other seems to get this name instead they are called "death mountain".

It's more annoying because of this, we have entire regions getting a generic name so make it hard to pinpoint locations. We can't use starmaps to determine location because the 2D games don't have the possibility of looking up and the 3D games (Theoretically) have radically different skies. Whats even more confusing is we COULD look to the sun and it's tracks across the land of hyrule but all that does is give us cardinal direction and not geological direction. Landmasses seem to up n moved they are in fact mobily geographical. Only a few places "appear" to be consistant locations but again they just up sticks and move about. Case in point the Master Sword. It's popped up in forest related locations quite a few times and others in a temple theme. In fact we are shown that the Master sword is a key to at least one dungeon and is classed a ship in which the rightful user can navigate times stream with, and it's resting place is curiously mobile. It's always enshrined but the question is. Is it just the one pedestal or are there multiple? We know theres at least two temple of times resting in hyrule as of TP anyway. And i guess you could argue theres two pedestals in WW if you can claim G-dorf's face as a pedestal.

 

I think you're onto something here. It's logical to say that the Fire Sanctuary and the Fire Temple are two distinct lcoations that serve different purposes to two different species, the Fire Sanctuary is the place of worship for Eldin, but the Fire Temple is perhaps devoted to the worship of Din by the Gorons who would no doubt consider her their patron goddess as they value strength above all else as evidenced in TP.

What is esepcially curious to me however is the location of a Temple of Time in Lanayru Desert in SS, but we see no such place in OoT in the Gerudo Desert so perhaps the Lanayru Desert and Gerudo Desert are in fact, distinct locations but we cannot be entirely certain of this as undoubtedly the Faron Woods in SS and TP would have remain unchanged, and it's possible the Earth Sanctuary and the Forest Temple are one and the same as there is a body of water inside the Forest Temple, but based on its architecture, it was theorized by fans that it would have been a former Hyrule Castle, or perhaps even a former Temple of Time.

Now, I forgot to mention this earlier but I also do agree with your speculation/opinion that such terms as Death Mountain are not insomuch landmark distinctions but placeholders, it's perhaps a name given to any mountain range that was formerly an active volcano, but based on TP's Death Mountain, it was undoubtedly an active volcano, and the geography of the Goron Mines means that it couldn't be a former Fire Temple but a new mining location ala Dogondo Cavern in OoT which likely served as a mining location for OoT's Gorons.

Of course, this does make things very annoying as we can't find a definitive focal point in Hylian geography to base any such consistency or stability, why, it's even theoretically likely that the Lost Woods shift around due to their ambiguous and supernatural premise, and could even morph around to change structures from within. Now we'd think that such locations as Castle Town, Hyrule Castle, Kakariko Village, Lake Hylia, Death Mountain, and Zora's Domain would remain geographically stable, but that's clearly not been true from OoT to TP.

Very confusing indeed.

 

Hmm i get the feeling the Fire Sanctuary is more a place of worship for Hylia, the Earth Temple on Eldin volcano strikes me as the location for Eldins worship. Not all Temples are places of worship, some temples are homes (a la Forest Temple and snowpeak) and possibly others act as jails for something so feared that they think not even death is enough of a hindrence. I speak of Volvagia the bane of the Gorons whose bones are kept within what looks like a pretty effect prison. The fire temple seems to be more of goron design than anything else so i can only assume that the gorons after the death of volvagia buit a temple not only as a monuement to their victory and the sacrifice of lives it took to slay it but also as a jail to stop it ever escaping (in fact it works pretty well keeping volvagia contained in the heart of Death mountain).

I've always had the feeling what we see of the overworld in OOT is nothing more than a slice of a larger world. More specifically in regards to both The north east and the south westerly directions. We sure as hell don't see much of the desert we in fact see the nearest outpost to hyrule in the gerudo settlement and we see a fraction of the so called wasteland between the actual desert and the gerudo settlement. We know that region was once a vast ocean that's desertificated ( a hell of an achievement) and we don't see it all regardless of game, we see a vast but empty tract in the 2nd half of SS and we see a small but detailed location showing mining in the first half, we can conclude that Time stones were being mined as a means of defense for Naryus Flame (a ship that runs on the power of time) a guardian flame of the land as it were.

In OOT we see an outpost of the gerudo culture but not the whole thing as it were, we know them to be thieves and a single gendered race but not all that much about their culture beyond "100 years a dudes born" we get to see more of their culture in BOTW where they've developed, but that's not here or there yet, the gerudos could either be a roving nation in the Desert Collosus or they are in fact a very tiny nation they could even be outlaws to their own people who knows. One thing we do know is that the past and the future merge at the Spirit Temple which on a map would be close to the Mining Facility a place where time stones were mined and possibly calibrated before being shipped out. Make of that as you will.

Now in the FAR future we have BOTW whose desert is fortuitously in a similar location to OOTs and SS' why is it we don't see any remnants of even OOTs desert here? We see what could be Arbiter's grounds but in that timeline only Ganondorf is alive so what do we make of it? In Botw the Gerudo have advanced sufficiently enough that they are able to find water in the desert and live there yet the further in we go the less we see. I'd would've thought some reference to the Spirit Temple would've been mentioned, even the goddess of the sands. But nope. So the people are unreliable geographical indicators for it.


Also i'd like to correct a messup i made earlier. Twilight Princess does not in fact have two pedestals for the sword to rest in. What we see is infact the Temple of Time from OOT in two stages. The past and the future, which shows that pre-TP a gate of time was still working if modified by a fewmiles.

 

So, the Sacred Grove was previously the Sacred Grounds? I can buy that, to some effect because the Sacred Grounds are next to Faron Woods, and we know that Faron Woods are vast, we could be seeing a different to them in TP versus SS.

 

The Temple of Time we see is a version of OOTs temple of time, but slightly further along the timeline as it were........ well unless they were breeding giant spiders back there this whole time.

Though i do think Sacred Grounds ends up becoming Castle Town from OOT, Sacred grounds is really the only central point in the entire series and we see that the ToT is in a similar location in both areas.

 

Yes, but how would we reconcile the fact that in OoT, Castle Town was nowhere near the woodlands, as it were? The Sacred Grove is in the woodlands of Hyrule in SS, I mena, it'd stand to reason that the Temple of Hylia aka Sacred Grounds became the Temple of Time, that makes sense. However, what wouldn't make sense is OoT's Castle Town far off proximity to Faron Woods much less the Kokiri Forest which would undoubtedly be in the Faron region.

 

Death Mountain makes for an unreliable point of reference. I've already posted a link in this thread to another thread explaining why.

As mentioned in that post, the only geographical region that has maintained a constant position across all games is the desert.

 

Deforestation would account for OOTs Market town, i'd imagine at the end of SS that the faron woods would be the only habitable place for skyloftians to live so they'd start up a community that'd would slowly and progressively grow and in the end form what ends up becoming hyrule field due to land management. After the Events of OOT i'd imagine that the town is abandoned because lets face it only the royal family know whats there in the Temple of time and as they say time heals all wounds and nature reclaims it's heritage.

 

This would make sense, there's nothing to deny that Hylians employ industrial engineering but that would seem something more along the lines of a Goron's expertise. So, the Temple of Hylia being converted into the Temple of Time from SS to OoT makes sense.

Deforestation would also mean that much of the woodland would have been chopped down to make houses, and over time, much of the Faron Woods would have been converted to a lush field with trails leading to and from settlements such as Kakariko Village, and Lon Lon Ranch. I think the shopowners of the Lumpy Pumpkin at Skyloft would have undoubtedly founded Ordon Village since Ordon is known for its pumpkins, but I also think that Ordona Province is distinct from Kokiri Forest which would likely be deeper into Faron Province, and thus likely not previously mapped out by Hylian jurisdiction. Of course, we know that in games such as SS and TP, Hylians are referred to as humans quite a number of times even though they appear to be a distinct race of humans separate from the likes of the Shiekah for instance. I also know this to be true because in TP, the character Ashei does not have pointy ears like a Hylian would, nor do the Ordononians for that matter. So... something is up with that.

I feel confident that the goddess Hylia would have personally created Hylians, since Hylians worship Hylia, which is self-evident by the name of the kingdom, Hyrule, the name of their race, and Lake Hylia. Of course, OoT implies that it was Farore who created life, which would include Hylians, so I'm not too sure about this.

 

Took me long enough. The Gamecube version has altered dialogue from the Wii version. If you go around Hyrule Castle Town as Wolf Link in the Wii version people will say Lake Hylia is in Eastern Hyrule. In the Gamecube version, however, the dialogue says it is in Western Hyrule. And since the game's map was orginally intended to be seen as it is in the Gamecube version, it is the geographical canon map.