There's probably all different kinds of cross sections and sizes. For this style I'm likeing the idea of a basically round pipe form with benched walkways and inspection chambers.
Don't forget the advanced plumbing of the Minoans - they had flushing toilets, not reinvented till the 19th century. Don't know about their sewer system, but it would have been fairly advanced I think.
Misread that initially, and thought you'd typed "violet minotaur" - the colour scheme, as we've explored above, is everything! (Could be your purple patch in this case, Sue 😉.)
Ok, so I got a bit side tracked over Christmas, but I did make a connecting symbol. This is a smaller sewer of a fixed 10ft width between the insides of the walls.
Looks a bit boring, but I've got a whole lot of ideas about debris and creatures on the way.
The larger sewer is still in progress, so don't worry. You won't be stuck drawing everything in 10 ft tubes.
Here's one I made several years ago. Mostly SS2A. Made this before I started using lighting. Kobolds live in the sewer and are charges with taking care of it.
I've just got the small drain or central channel connecting symbol working properly, but you've reminded me I need a bridge as well as various planks etc.
Sue, I love how this shows layers or levels of the sewers descending. I'm really excited for this one. I usually buy the annuals long after the year is over once I decide if I have stuff I want, but I'm already convinced on this one. I will be signing up for the 2024 annual today.
I posted my comment above prematurely! I was the person on FB who asked if Gelatinous Cubes would be included, so now I'm really sold on this. I'd love to be able to include skeletons, bones, or other metal rubbish in the cubes, but I suspect that could be done by putting the debris on another layer with a semi-transparency effect.
Well actually that was an accident, but there's no reason why you can't use it that way. I was testing it to see if I could break it just after I finished setting it up.
Oh so the cubes are your fault are they? LOL!
That do-it-yourself approach to the contents is an idea. I might leave one of them empty for that purpose.
I've enjoyed reading this thread, as I had a job once inspecting sewers for damage with a mechanical dog. Can confirm there was no green water, but y'all beat me to that. Everything's looking good, Sue. You're a great artist.
I know about the green water, but the truth is if you look at all those other sewer maps out there, for some reason everyone seems to think it's green. Never mind. I've a range of colours.
I suspect green became the default sewer-water option as an easy way to differentiate it from the blue "ordinary" water which didn't involve anything too "realistic" (given blue as normal water isn't realistic either, of course).
LOL! I know! The terrible sad truth is that I didn't even think of that until I already posted it.
I'm a really dozy artist.
It's like the time I bellowed out of the window at two drunken yobs sitting on a bench talking at the tops of their voices at 3am. "Do you mind! Some of us are trying to get some sleep around here!"
The next morning I mentioned that I was astonished at how quickly these yobs vanished without any backchat or anything offensive being said and was puzzled by the way my housemates started falling about laughing.
It didn't occur to me until it was actually pointed out that we were sharing a house at the gate of a graveyard, and the bench was inside the graveyard.
Sewers are supposed to be icky and creepy, and green is an icky and creepy color, especially glowing. Accurate brown would be boring, and accurate black wouldn't look like water.
(As for blue, sometimes, water is just that color. When I was in Iceland, the fjords were bluer than the sky, and the sky was a blue as I've ever seen it. But here in southern California, the ocean is a sickly greenish gray - and not glowing.)
The Atlantic Ocean is green-ish or dark blue, depending on time of year. The Caribbean Sea is blue, and at night it glows from the phytoplankton when a ship moves through the water. I sort of miss that. Not the storms out at sea though.
We've been thinking of colors for sewers that are used for their traditional use. But if we start to think of the reasons why a necromancer might need a sewer-type system beneath their lair, or a demon lord, or an archfey, or even dwarves creating subterranean aqueduct, then all sorts of colors make sense: bright water, glowing green goo, rivers of blood, lava...the possibilities are endless.
I think there is also another reason that green is used rather than brown. I've got to the point where I need to start adding the... lumpy bits. Where I was starting down the path of making everything a nice brown I realised that the lumpy bits might be a bit offensive in their actual colour. Maybe that is why most artists head for green.
I also modified the cubes after reading a lot of comments here and in the FB Group about how they are practically invisible. I can't make them invisible, but I hope this is an improved representation of them.
I don't know what it is about the green either. The images given by @Shessar and @Wyvern very early in the discussion look like sewers to me, even though I have never in my life seen sewers that actually look like those.
Well that's another thing. Most sewers are quite small. There really aren't that many you can just take a casual stroll down. And they tend to be tube shaped because that's the most economic structure to use for a volume of liquid.
Modern sewers tend to be too small to even crawl in, rather more than foot in diameter, except for the largest trunks in large metropolitan areas. (Storm drains are another matter. Some areas, like Los Vegas, have storm drains large enough for people to live in - and they do, with frequent tragedies when the occasional rain storm happens.)
Medieval and ancient sewers (where such existed) were more expansive, I suspect because they were built by hand, and thus had to be large enough to walk in. Pliny the Elder described the early Cloaca Maxima (in Rome) as "large enough to allow the passage of a wagon loaded with hay," and it's now a tourist attraction (as are a number of other major sewers around the world).
I will note that in the ancient world, sewers tended to also be storm drains, which partly accounts for their size. (All of Rome's aqueducts drained excess water into Cloaca Maxima, for instance.)
One MMO I played had extensive sewers under the city with areas of metal mesh to walk on, with bridges connecting them here and there. With various beetles that liked attacking anyone exploring in there.
Your creativity astounds me. I look forward to following your development. Not 'dirty' sewers, but the sewers in Lex Luthor's domain of the first Christopher Reeves Superman Movie are an interesting take off of a pleasent life underneath the streets of NYC.
I would suggest adding some sort of treasure items, e.g. sword, gems, etc. to the gelatinous cube. This always provides a reason for someone to try to snatch something from the cube.
If the gelatinous cube symbol is actually partly transparent anyway (given you can see the texture of the floor below it), items don't all need adding to the cube. As long as the items exist as symbols, they can simply be put "below" the cube by the map's creator.
On the size element, the "you can drive a cart along them" argument is partly why I suggested seeing the sewers in "The Third Man" movie, because that's where the climactic chase happens, with large numbers of police and soldiers, where there are multiple levels stacked over one another, and nobody has any problems for headroom, and places are up to river-cavern wide in parts. Somewhat like the early London Underground "tubes" (and I'd assume others built around the same time, later 19th century), some of these would have been dug out as trenches, had their surfaces coated with mud/bricks/concrete, etc., and then covered over later where necessary.
Comments
There's probably all different kinds of cross sections and sizes. For this style I'm likeing the idea of a basically round pipe form with benched walkways and inspection chambers.
Don't forget the advanced plumbing of the Minoans - they had flushing toilets, not reinvented till the 19th century. Don't know about their sewer system, but it would have been fairly advanced I think.
Well their labyrinths were pretty advanced and also had a violent minotaur in them.
Misread that initially, and thought you'd typed "violet minotaur" - the colour scheme, as we've explored above, is everything! (Could be your purple patch in this case, Sue 😉.)
Ok, so I got a bit side tracked over Christmas, but I did make a connecting symbol. This is a smaller sewer of a fixed 10ft width between the insides of the walls.
Looks a bit boring, but I've got a whole lot of ideas about debris and creatures on the way.
The larger sewer is still in progress, so don't worry. You won't be stuck drawing everything in 10 ft tubes.
Here's one I made several years ago. Mostly SS2A. Made this before I started using lighting. Kobolds live in the sewer and are charges with taking care of it.
Thanks Ede. That's a really neat map :)
I've just got the small drain or central channel connecting symbol working properly, but you've reminded me I need a bridge as well as various planks etc.
Gelatinous cubes anyone?
What would you like to see in them?
Sue, I love how this shows layers or levels of the sewers descending. I'm really excited for this one. I usually buy the annuals long after the year is over once I decide if I have stuff I want, but I'm already convinced on this one. I will be signing up for the 2024 annual today.
I posted my comment above prematurely! I was the person on FB who asked if Gelatinous Cubes would be included, so now I'm really sold on this. I'd love to be able to include skeletons, bones, or other metal rubbish in the cubes, but I suspect that could be done by putting the debris on another layer with a semi-transparency effect.
Well actually that was an accident, but there's no reason why you can't use it that way. I was testing it to see if I could break it just after I finished setting it up.
Oh so the cubes are your fault are they? LOL!
That do-it-yourself approach to the contents is an idea. I might leave one of them empty for that purpose.
The Carthaginians had flushing toilets as well, but obviously later than the Minoans. I didn't know the Minoans had it too.
I've enjoyed reading this thread, as I had a job once inspecting sewers for damage with a mechanical dog. Can confirm there was no green water, but y'all beat me to that. Everything's looking good, Sue. You're a great artist.
Thanks Autumn! :)
I know about the green water, but the truth is if you look at all those other sewer maps out there, for some reason everyone seems to think it's green. Never mind. I've a range of colours.
I suspect green became the default sewer-water option as an easy way to differentiate it from the blue "ordinary" water which didn't involve anything too "realistic" (given blue as normal water isn't realistic either, of course).
And are we calling these the Sue-ers now 😉😁!
LOL! I know! The terrible sad truth is that I didn't even think of that until I already posted it.
I'm a really dozy artist.
It's like the time I bellowed out of the window at two drunken yobs sitting on a bench talking at the tops of their voices at 3am. "Do you mind! Some of us are trying to get some sleep around here!"
The next morning I mentioned that I was astonished at how quickly these yobs vanished without any backchat or anything offensive being said and was puzzled by the way my housemates started falling about laughing.
It didn't occur to me until it was actually pointed out that we were sharing a house at the gate of a graveyard, and the bench was inside the graveyard.
Sewers are supposed to be icky and creepy, and green is an icky and creepy color, especially glowing. Accurate brown would be boring, and accurate black wouldn't look like water.
(As for blue, sometimes, water is just that color. When I was in Iceland, the fjords were bluer than the sky, and the sky was a blue as I've ever seen it. But here in southern California, the ocean is a sickly greenish gray - and not glowing.)
The Atlantic Ocean is green-ish or dark blue, depending on time of year. The Caribbean Sea is blue, and at night it glows from the phytoplankton when a ship moves through the water. I sort of miss that. Not the storms out at sea though.
We've been thinking of colors for sewers that are used for their traditional use. But if we start to think of the reasons why a necromancer might need a sewer-type system beneath their lair, or a demon lord, or an archfey, or even dwarves creating subterranean aqueduct, then all sorts of colors make sense: bright water, glowing green goo, rivers of blood, lava...the possibilities are endless.
Well, yes.
I think there is also another reason that green is used rather than brown. I've got to the point where I need to start adding the... lumpy bits. Where I was starting down the path of making everything a nice brown I realised that the lumpy bits might be a bit offensive in their actual colour. Maybe that is why most artists head for green.
I also modified the cubes after reading a lot of comments here and in the FB Group about how they are practically invisible. I can't make them invisible, but I hope this is an improved representation of them.
Well that's another thing. Most sewers are quite small. There really aren't that many you can just take a casual stroll down. And they tend to be tube shaped because that's the most economic structure to use for a volume of liquid.
Modern sewers tend to be too small to even crawl in, rather more than foot in diameter, except for the largest trunks in large metropolitan areas. (Storm drains are another matter. Some areas, like Los Vegas, have storm drains large enough for people to live in - and they do, with frequent tragedies when the occasional rain storm happens.)
Medieval and ancient sewers (where such existed) were more expansive, I suspect because they were built by hand, and thus had to be large enough to walk in. Pliny the Elder described the early Cloaca Maxima (in Rome) as "large enough to allow the passage of a wagon loaded with hay," and it's now a tourist attraction (as are a number of other major sewers around the world).
I will note that in the ancient world, sewers tended to also be storm drains, which partly accounts for their size. (All of Rome's aqueducts drained excess water into Cloaca Maxima, for instance.)
That's very interesting information. Thanks taustinoc :)
I feel better now about the fact that the central channel (that connecting symbol I've made) is already 10ft wide.
The main walls may not be curved in at the bottom like the channel is. We'll see what I have time to do once I've done most of the symbols of the set.
One MMO I played had extensive sewers under the city with areas of metal mesh to walk on, with bridges connecting them here and there. With various beetles that liked attacking anyone exploring in there.
Whatever you come up with, it won't be hard to find real world examples to make it plausible.
Your creativity astounds me. I look forward to following your development. Not 'dirty' sewers, but the sewers in Lex Luthor's domain of the first Christopher Reeves Superman Movie are an interesting take off of a pleasent life underneath the streets of NYC.
I would suggest adding some sort of treasure items, e.g. sword, gems, etc. to the gelatinous cube. This always provides a reason for someone to try to snatch something from the cube.
If the gelatinous cube symbol is actually partly transparent anyway (given you can see the texture of the floor below it), items don't all need adding to the cube. As long as the items exist as symbols, they can simply be put "below" the cube by the map's creator.
On the size element, the "you can drive a cart along them" argument is partly why I suggested seeing the sewers in "The Third Man" movie, because that's where the climactic chase happens, with large numbers of police and soldiers, where there are multiple levels stacked over one another, and nobody has any problems for headroom, and places are up to river-cavern wide in parts. Somewhat like the early London Underground "tubes" (and I'd assume others built around the same time, later 19th century), some of these would have been dug out as trenches, had their surfaces coated with mud/bricks/concrete, etc., and then covered over later where necessary.
You're correct, Wyvern. I forgot to mention that the DD3 skeletons in the last shot were on a separate sheet underneath the cubes.