dayuuqi:

There seems to be a lot of misinformation about Othard, geographically, among RPers right now, so a little PSA:  Othard has a lot of different areas, and most pointedly, Kugane and Doma are different places!

A wonderful lore person (Sounsyy) put together a translated map at some point on the RPC, and I think more people need to see it.   The full version can be seen here, but I’m going to ENHANCE and zoom in on the Othard part:

You’ll notice a few things here, or if you didn’t, let me colorfy to illustrate!

There in the right-hand box in red is a big ol’ island.  It’s labeled Koshu, which might be the region name (and therefore technically not Othard at all!), but we also know that at least part of this same area is called Hingashi, which is the name we’ve seen used in promotional material.  Think of it as the same way that Aldenard is also called Eorzea.

Anyway!  Hingashi is an island chain is to the east of Othard’s mainland to the left, separated by the Ruby Sea.  Hingashi is an isolationist area, and its only port open to outsiders is Kugane.   Kugane is NOT in Doma.  The new housing area is actually there in Hingashi, presumably tied to Kugane the way the other housing areas are adjacent to their city-states.

There’s apparently another major city on the other side of Hingashi called Bukyo.  I don’t know anything about it, sorry!  But it’s on the map.

Now, moving on to the blue area in the middle, which is…

This here, this is the Othard mainland, and where you’ll find the city-state of Doma, or whatever’s left of it since the Garleans put down the most recent uprising.  It’s in a region called Yanxia. 

And, if you were wondering where the Xaela are at…

That’s them, in the green region.  Interestingly, there’s two areas, one called the Azim Steppe and the other the Nhaama.   We don’t yet know what the significance is of having the regions named for the two gods of the Auri, and why they’re separated by a river, or if SE just thought it’d be cute or whatever.

ALSO:

There’s more of Othard, or even just the eastern half of this gigantic landmass, than is revealed on this map.   We know that the city-states of Rabinastre and Dalmasca, also Garlean-controlled, are SOMEWHERE out here in the unrevealed cloudy areas, though it doesn’t appear we’re going there this expansion. 

It’s also worth noting this map does reveal a lot of other places that we just don’t have lore on yet, but we will soon. 

I hope this post helped you if you are trying to work on backstories of characters that hail from this area of the world, and didn’t just confuse you instead.   

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Disclaimer:  I am not a lore expert or nothin, and I don’t know anything that hasn’t been pretty widely distributed.  Sounsyy did the good work on making this map or else I wouldn’t have known where to begin on this post.