Community Atlas: The Hall of the Seer, Glaciär Kristol, Ezrute

Wyvern

Somehow, I've seemed always to distract myself away from the primary focus of this sort-of Dungeon24 project, which was meant to be simply mapping small, underground complexes for the Atlas regularly and quickly (ha!) through the year. This latest item, the last of the four based on the random rolls from the "Explorer" dice set in the Inkwell Ideas Dungeonmorph Dice range, is a case in point. One little subterranean map has grown into three - a surface region, a settlement and the underground complex. Or "under-ice" complex as it became.

The latter does make it seasonal for northern hemisphere readers here, at least, strange in itself, given the location was determined almost a year ago now, quite randomly. That site was to be in the Glaciär Kristol region, the heart of Nibirum's small, frozen, southern continent of Ezrute:

When I checked the area map, I discovered quite a number of places had already been developed there, mostly towards its periphery. Examining those, none quite fitted what I had in mind for this small complex, which - in-keeping with the other "Explorer" dice-based maps - was to be tied-in with ideas from the Shadowdark RPG. One of the supplementary 'zines published by The Arcane Library for Shadowdark, "Cursed Scroll #3: Midnight Sun", deals with fantasy-Scandinavian-style sea-borne raiders, peoples and places, from which I took the concept of an oracular seer as the base theme for this Dungeonmorph map. And since everyone else had so kindly left the central area of the regional map unexplored, I picked a suitable spot by a crossroads there for this "Hall of the Seer" one:

I've reduced one of the effects on the roads in this image, since at the normal Forum resolution, the lesser trails especially simply vanished. That little orange square is six miles per side, and based on how other maps in this region had been tackled, I thought initially simply to place the dungeon map there with no others to zoom-in step by step. However, ideas had developed around this map by then which wouldn't let me alone, hence how I decided on an overland area map, with a small settlement by the underground complex as well.

Partly this development came from the region's location. The Hall map is at roughly 72°S latitude, which puts it well inside Nibirum's Antarctic zone, with constant daytime in midsummer, constant night at midwinter. When I checked the geomagnetic map for Nibirum, I realised this spot also lay almost directly under the midline of the southern polar auroral zone (I've highlighted central Ezrute with an orange ring here):

That means those winter nights aren't always so dark as might be thought, with frequent auroral events to brighten the landscape a little - and spread their magical influence over the surface too, of course.

Looking over the written notes for a couple of the existing maps in this area that had them suggested the possibility of more unusual elements at play nearby, which fed into the base-map designs for all three in my small group, where ideas sparked by one map bounced into the others.

For the first map, covering that six-mile square, there was a mild complication, since I wanted to continue the black-and-white hex-map style I'd used previously in these "Explorer"-design-inspired map sets. Only being hexes, that meant the area was best-served by a map six by seven one-mile hexes in size... Random rolls on tables from "Into the Wild - Omnibus Edition" by Third Kingdom Games, as used previously in the Barrows of the Ferine Magi maps, coupled with some from Shadowdark and Cursed Scroll #3 followed, in setting up the contents for hexes within the area, after which the mapping could proceed:

This time, I decided to let the terrain spill out for another couple of miles beyond the hex-mapped zone, to allow for better context, and also to make the labelling clearer, without cluttering the centrally-mapped part. Could not quite believe the random rolls had generated two ley lines in such a small place, as they're not that common to roll-up. They did fit perfectly with what I had in mind from the extra-magical auroral effects hereabouts, however.

The map description notes have details on what's where, although I deliberately scaled-back on the significance and size of many features, to better suit this little area. There's an old temple with guarded treasures that nobody here knows about in hex 001, minor terrain oddities sprinkled here and there (including a sheltered vale where the mammoths like to hunker-down when the weather turns bad - hex 104 - and where arctic smilodons come a-hunting!), a small frost giant homestead in hex 101, and Seer's Hall Village in hex 204, which enjoys a milder microclimate thanks to being in the fringes of the small Redwoods forest, on whose northern side is the great 200 ft (60 m) ice tree Ylvabrand (hex 302). There are some ancient, worn statues along the Skorra Road in hex 502, commemorating an ancient battle nobody now recalls (which weirdly ended-up randomly in the very spot the road and ley line almost converge), Ice Kraken Hill, where the ley line nexus is (yes, that's a living, albino kraken in an ice hill right there; favoured as a deity by a secretive cult, naturally 😉), a crevasse in hex 605 in whose depths the temperature somehow holds-up around 20°C (70°F) year-round, shunned by the locals because a group of buried Dwarfs there have become undead Ice Zombies or Draugr, who can swim through frozen ground and rock as if it were water (luckily, they can't abide the ley lines), and what seems to be an oval ring of granite menhirs on the line of one ley line in hex 606, that are really upstanding pieces of granite from a ring-shaped surface outcrop in actuality, all of which seemed suitably odd.

Fun times! Village map next.

Wyvern

As I mentioned last time, this little trio of maps all grew up together, and not altogether in the neat order presented here. Realising early on that the underground complex was set to have a pair of entrances, reminded me that one of the still-to-come dice-design maps also had a couple of cave mouths in a cliff. Although that was from one of the "Ruins" dice, those designs also feature on the "Cities" dice set, die 6R from that (6R* in the Ruins set), without the ruined buildings, fallen trees, and so forth. So rather than use the Shadowdark settlement design rules to create the settlement, I simply reused that Cities dice layout, with a few tweaks, instead, to create Seer's Hall Village:

The mapping style was chosen a while ago for the ten small settlements in the Whispering Wastes of Peredur, which was reused here, with a variant design for the roads and paths, to give them their rough stone-edged, gravelly look, as distinct from the ice and snow elsewhere (one advantage of a B&W style!). I made the chimneys more prominent, given the high-southerly latitude, and adjusted the property sizes a little, as the inhabitants here are primarily Ice Dwarfs, a cold-immune, stocky folk, able to change into small animals and back when they wish (based on the Dverg from the Cursed Scroll #3 zine, writ larger, given the Dvergs are essentially arctic gnomes). In addition, the folk here also have pet Arctic Mastiffs, for a little more colour (cold-immune dogs, basically).

Part of the Village contents were determined from the Shadowdark rules, as before in Peredur, with some tweaks to fit the established setting here, given the whole place is only where it is because of the Hall of the Seer inside the large ice hill to the settlement's north. That cliff-line, with its entrances and stairway, and the two pylons on the hilltop were all from the dice design, like the placement of the buildings and the road layout, again with some adjustments to fit how the road was on the Plain map, as illustrated previously. Indeed, this map was changed partway through to accommodate elements of what the Plain map showed, including the Ley Line.

I tried fitting the existing cliff symbols from this style for the Great Ice Cliff, but ran into the same problem with these as previously in Peredur, where the lines won't fit to a suitable concave form. So I just drew the cliff as a polygon - well, actually two lines, mirror-copied to give a symmetrical four, and then added a shaded polygon by hand-tracing the lines. Dot-shading gravel symbols and fractal lines were then added to give it more of a "cliff" feel. The cave mouth was mirror-copied too, to look more or less identical, while the stairs reused a symbol and railing lines already drawn for the underground map, just copied across from that. The hilltop platform was an addition though, to give some purpose for the pylons and stairs, a place where the locals hold ceremonies at midwinter, midsummer, first sunrise, last sunset, and whenever the aurora is particularly strong overhead. Ceremony Hall has the feasting tables for such events, to be set up at the northern end of Pylon Way.

Next time, into Seer's Hill.

Wyvern

Third map in this group, for the Hall of the Seer, was actually drafted first, using the same style and look as established for all four underground maps in this "Explorer" dice batch, using the two dice designs involved for the layouts of the above-ground and subterranean segments, as mentioned last time. It was really this map though that led to establishing the "gritty" look of the stone-edged roads and paths outside, largely to help give a better contrast between the outside and inside of this little complex. Originally, I did think of just using gravel-filled polygons for the roads, but that appeared confusing with the similar dot-shading to represent the solid interior of the hill lying adjacent to the entrances. Ultimately, I did use the polygon drawing tool for both, altered by the stone edging outside, which with the trees, buildings and blank ground surface seemed to provide sufficient contrast.

For the internal layout, this was largely what the dice designs provided, omitting the geomorphic connectors in places beyond this layout, and adding one secret door between rooms 9 and 12, as I wanted to provide an inner sanctum as the private domain of the Seer herself. This was chiefly because (and there are hints in the label descriptions) that the Seer had been randomly determined as a Frost Dragon from Shadowdark, modified here to be also an ancient, prophetic creature, able to shapechange to various forms under the local magical influences. There are also three "ordinary" Ice Dwarf Oracles as well (lesser, humanoid seers, in effect), who live in the Village, and provide aid and prophecies here too, when required. I decided to really push the legendary significance, importance and reliability of the Seer - who has the randomly-determined name of Leminsiskiel - to help enhance the significance of this little site overall. After all, there needs to be a serious reason for folks to traipse across the vast, frozen wastes of the surrounding larger region to get here!

As ever, there's more detail in the accompanying notes for the Atlas as to how the set-up here works, as it's not really intended as the traditional kill-the-monsters-and-steal-their-treasure dungeon, more a living place of importance for the lands around - and perhaps even further afield.

Next time, I'm heading off to map somewhere a little more tropical, a site in the Demosthenes Swamp of central-southern Artemisia, according to the random rolls...