[WIP] Elmsbrook Township
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 120 images Surveyor
Last month, I shared a map of a sewer system that I developed. @Lorelei recommended that I submit it to the Community Atlas...but I figured I couldn't submit a sewer system for a town without also creating the town to go with it. This one took a few weeks.
I have a hard time breaking out of orthogonal map-making. This very much looks like it was laid out on a grid, something I will have to focus on not doing next time. I was constrained, though, by the fact that the sewers were already designed and I had to make the rest of the city fit the sewers instead of the other way around.
I decided to design it in the Darklands City style. I had to include city cliffs (they're already in the sewers map, after all), and originally I considered using the City Cliffs like Ralf did in the second episode of his five episode Big City Project tutorial. Then I discovered that the rocky outcrops already in Darklands City make fantastic cliffs when stacked on one another, and there are even sheets already set up for the base, middle, and top cliffs. Honestly, the cliffs are probably my favorite part of the map. The waterfalls come from Forest Trail.
My town also has two other water features: irrigation canals to bring water to the nearby farms outside of town, and an aqueduct system to bring water from the river into the town. Of course, the aqueducts should be covered (to keep blown leaves, bird poop, etc. from contaminating the water supply), but the water looks so pretty. (I put the aqueduct water on another sheet to tone down some of the effects that wouldn't work with such a narrow band of water.) There's a mill on the water designed so that the paddles scoop up buckets of water to deposit into a reservoir that feeds the aqueducts. I couldn't find a mill symbol, so there's a big tower for the reservoir, and its roof extends enough to cover the paddle wheel. ;-)
The "downtown" area includes a market square (24), temple (20), city hall (21), city watch and jail (22), and courthouse (23). The buildings around it are all merchant shops, while farmers and other merchants set up stalls in the plaza on market days. Building #16 is the community baths, located by necessity along the aqueduct line.
The upper portion of the sewer system is also shown, including the "Great Maw" (the giant pit where refuse is thrown down to be devoured by a Black Pudding), and the runoff where cleaned water is returned to the sea.
If you recall, at the lowest level of the sewers, a tentacle creature has taken up residence. I decided to put a mage's home in the town above that area (27). Still undecided: did the mage move to the town to study the creature that lurks beneath it? Or is he responsible for the creature? Perhaps he conjured it one night, summoning from the Outer Planes, and it escaped into the sewers where it eventually grew too large to escape its new home. In any event, the mage has grown prosperous by selling some of the green waste that the creature produces (as evidenced by the valuable exotic trees in his garden that he was able to afford to import). Turns out, that green goo is a useful ingredient in a lot of potion recipes, and other wizards (or their apprentices) travel to the mage to buy his green goo. They often stay at the Black Cat Inn (26) -- the proprietor named it as a sort of tongue-in-cheek reference to a wizard's familiar.
Still to come: I want to make sure that every city is properly on the correct layer for the "All Buildings with Color" effect to work properly. (This style did not come with those layers, and for some reason the "Add city layers" command didn't work, so I added them manually.)
Thoughts? Recommendations?
Comments
It's beautiful :)
Would it be possible to give just a tiny Edge Fade Inner on that stone texture?
Good idea! I tried covering it in places with grass with an edge fade, but it would be a lot more efficient to do it on the stone sheet itself.
I played around with Edge Fade settings on the TERRAIN ROCK sheet and settled on an Edge Width of 4 units, an Inner Opacity of 100%, and an Outer Opacity of 25%. (In comparison, the grass, earth, and other textures have a width of 15 units, an Inner Opacity of 100%, and an Out Opacity of 0%.)
Here's how it looks full size, plus a few coastal zooms.
That looks better :)
Thank you! Your tips and suggestions are always so helpful. I really appreciate them.
If anyone is interested, I made a gallery of higher res versions. I am going to look into submitting this township and its sewers to the Community Atlas once I've written up a description.
Thank you! Your tips and suggestions are always so helpful. I really appreciate them.
You're welcome :)