[WIP] Map of Northwestern Tanaris
Hello everybody,
this time I want to share my current map with you at a quite early stage, because I do some things I’ve never tried before and I hope your comments make it easier for me to sail through these cliffs.
Again it’s a regional map from Tanaris, the world of Ruf des Warlock. I make this map of north-western Tanaris, as most of the adventures we played, esp. in the 90’s, happened there – so it’s a kind of nostalgic thing doing this map for the friends of my RPG group and me.
The part of the original map that I rework now you can find here:
https://www.ruf-des-warlock.de/forum/index.php?autocom=gallery&req=si&img=68
I want to include the details from the original map plus the places that are described in the official sourcebooks. The ‘problem’ with this part of the world is, that several places are not described in detail but only with indications, what might be there. So it’s on the DM or (in this case) on me to interpret.
I started with the big mountain ranges (still need to add foothills), the landmass, the forests and the sea. Background colors (grassland etc.) will come later.
I already have some of the special places and some of them I will explain here later and say something about their background. At the moment I work on the Icelands (the mountains in the north) and on the Volcanos in the middle.
The narrative of this region is the war of the united four barbarian Kingdoms against the Empire of Tinor. The Barbarians have their Kingdoms in the western part of the map and the Empire of Tinor is in the eastern part. The Barbarians attacking Tinor and on the map are already some possible reasons, why the Barbarians are looking for a new lands…
A better resolution map you can find here:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ak-JjeRFvmSPrUmv9BY8_8WpR806
The region I work on at the moment is the Icelands. In the sourcebook is only written that this contains large mountains, ice-deserts and ice-steppe. The sourcebooks indicate that there is some danger in the icelands (I want to illustrate this with the volcanos-glaciers-floods etc.).
The only special place described in the sourcebooks is the ‘palace of the ice witch’. The description says this is an old and very powerful witch who got depressed by the death of her lover and settled down in the icelands. From the highest tower in her palace one can see what is at the edge of the world and while seeing this, one will understand the nothingness of himself. From this background story I got the inspiration to put her palace on an ‘interesting’ looking plateau. Who knows what this might be…
I would like to ask you for your suggestions for the part of the Icelands I work on at the moment, the volcanic eruption nearby the glaciers, melting the ice, producing a large lake which breaks over the lowest parts of the mountains and coming over the lands as a huge flood. I had the idea of doing something like this to show the danger lurking in the north and to bring a bit of dramatic element to the map. I think it’s going into the right direction but I am not quite 100% satisfied. Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks in advance, Jensen
this time I want to share my current map with you at a quite early stage, because I do some things I’ve never tried before and I hope your comments make it easier for me to sail through these cliffs.
Again it’s a regional map from Tanaris, the world of Ruf des Warlock. I make this map of north-western Tanaris, as most of the adventures we played, esp. in the 90’s, happened there – so it’s a kind of nostalgic thing doing this map for the friends of my RPG group and me.
The part of the original map that I rework now you can find here:
https://www.ruf-des-warlock.de/forum/index.php?autocom=gallery&req=si&img=68
I want to include the details from the original map plus the places that are described in the official sourcebooks. The ‘problem’ with this part of the world is, that several places are not described in detail but only with indications, what might be there. So it’s on the DM or (in this case) on me to interpret.
I started with the big mountain ranges (still need to add foothills), the landmass, the forests and the sea. Background colors (grassland etc.) will come later.
I already have some of the special places and some of them I will explain here later and say something about their background. At the moment I work on the Icelands (the mountains in the north) and on the Volcanos in the middle.
The narrative of this region is the war of the united four barbarian Kingdoms against the Empire of Tinor. The Barbarians have their Kingdoms in the western part of the map and the Empire of Tinor is in the eastern part. The Barbarians attacking Tinor and on the map are already some possible reasons, why the Barbarians are looking for a new lands…
A better resolution map you can find here:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ak-JjeRFvmSPrUmv9BY8_8WpR806
The region I work on at the moment is the Icelands. In the sourcebook is only written that this contains large mountains, ice-deserts and ice-steppe. The sourcebooks indicate that there is some danger in the icelands (I want to illustrate this with the volcanos-glaciers-floods etc.).
The only special place described in the sourcebooks is the ‘palace of the ice witch’. The description says this is an old and very powerful witch who got depressed by the death of her lover and settled down in the icelands. From the highest tower in her palace one can see what is at the edge of the world and while seeing this, one will understand the nothingness of himself. From this background story I got the inspiration to put her palace on an ‘interesting’ looking plateau. Who knows what this might be…
I would like to ask you for your suggestions for the part of the Icelands I work on at the moment, the volcanic eruption nearby the glaciers, melting the ice, producing a large lake which breaks over the lowest parts of the mountains and coming over the lands as a huge flood. I had the idea of doing something like this to show the danger lurking in the north and to bring a bit of dramatic element to the map. I think it’s going into the right direction but I am not quite 100% satisfied. Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks in advance, Jensen
Comments
One thing you can do to hint as danger is have a mist that covers the ground. You could use a light gray, almost white, fill with a high transparency. Not sure how it would look, just something that crossed my mind. I plan to do something similar in a narrow, mountain, river valley on my Elandia map remake.
Very imaginative
As to your question, I think the information is already there as far as a map is concerned, but if you want to make it more dramatic maybe make that cloud of steam by adding small circles of white and a pretty large blur effect so the cloud looks a bit more bubbly?
Regarding the style set, I don't use a specific style. I started the map in Jon Roberts style but the first thing I did was to delete all sheets. I checked through the annuals and wanted the TJ Vandell mountains (issues 81, 84, 106. 107, 119 & 120). So I added these issues to the mountains & natural symbol buttons.
When I need a fill, e.g. for the lava, I search the Profantasy folder in windows, pick the bmp I like most and create a new fill style in the way I have in mind. Then I create a new sheet for it with the sheet effects I like.
Same with the symbols. I wanted hollywood-like volcanic eruptions, so I searched the Profantasy folder in windows for blast, fire, explosion etc. The southern volcano eruption on the map is a starship blast from Cosmographer, the one above is a trap blast from Dungeon Designer. Both were not made for volcanos, but they work for my purposes :-)
Whenever I find no symbols, like the hurricane in the Southeast, I need to 'paint' it for myself. I drawed just white lines and added an edge fade, inner effect. To come to this result I needed 16 sheets. It was the first time I did a hurricane, but I think it's OK. By the way, in the hurricane is a culture called 'Arden, the children of the western winds'. It's a swimming town of more than 200 ships, all connected with runnways, in the middle a huge ship with their government. They swim in the eye of a massive eternal hurricane, created by the god Thyron to protect his people. Things like this I really like at Ruf des Warlock :-)
edit: great, I will try your suggestions! Thanks!
I like it already the way it is anyway
I like your hurricane. It is very convincing. A couple ways to create the mist effect would be a symbol in a paint program using a spray gun type brush. You could also take your map into a painting program after rendering and add it in a post production phase. One product I like using that is totally free for download is Autodesk SketchBook. There are a load of brushes you can download for it, too. I think it is much quicker and more user friendly than Photoshop for drawing. It makes a great companion program for CC3+ in my opinion.
As always, some fascinating places already on your map. Wondering already about Big Guy's Hollow to the northeast...
For other glacial hazards, it may be worth thinking of adding features like giant crevasses to any ice sheets, and maybe areas of soft ice too (like quicksand, but made of poorly-compressed snow and ice instead, so forming low-lying areas, perhaps with a dimpled surface).
Periglacial regions can show distinctive patterned surfaces, including hexagons, that can look a bit like lizard skin, but on a gigantic scale (where each hexagon might be a kilometre or more across sometimes). Maybe it could be from a real, gigantic, frozen lizard here though.
There are also features such as pingos (rounded hills which seem unusual because they can be quite symmetrical) and kettles (or kettle-holes), oddly circular lakes and ponds, which can appear unsettling, but are actually natural ice-created (or freeze-thaw created) structures.
Given the magical nature of the land, maybe some weird solidified ice forms might be of interest too, say a frozen ice-tornado, for example. Given your idea for a huge flood, if the outer edges of that froze suddenly, those could give strange frozen-water-in-action shapes as well.
Worth remembering that volcanoes will add salts to the water, aside from providing heat, which in turn will lower the freezing point of water, so it may flow further than you might expect.
Love the hurricane, of course, and the thinking behind it. Look forward to learning more of the other strange places already delimited!
Well, thats a bit too much, I would say: They like my maps (don't expect too much enthusiasm, we are Germans :-)) I learned that the fanzine is still alive, got into contact with the team and offered them to do maps. Let's see if something will follow, the fanzine was focused on new classes, spells etc. - but if they need a mapper in the future, here I am :-)
Thank you very much for all your ideas on the icelands. Each idea is great and worthwile to get tested (if I can make it). Thanks man! I much appreciate that! As soon as I am done with castle Ravormos in the Ravormos swamps I will come back to the icelands. I'ver never did detailed ice landscapes, so I am looking much forward to learn about it and get mapping experience for it.
If you want to see another strange place, i would like to come up with the Krater von Ghorm (Crater of Ghorm): According to the sourcebook, this once was the huge ‘Mountain of Ghorm’, which overnight disappeared leaving the ‘Crater of Ghorm’. The Crater contains a lava lake, but expeditions found out that the lava is just 10 cm thick and under this lava layer is normal air and temperature. During the night strange sounds and screams come out of the crater. The sourcebook speculates that the crater will become a major threat for the whole region and some barbarians believe, the god Halphas is behind this. The only way to get the whole picture would be to find brave heros…
To not just make a boring Crater on the map I had a demon in mind, who grew up in the Crater like in an egg and now – that he is strong enough – breaks through the lava layer. The demon is from Character Artist.
In the meanwhile I want to tell you about two other places. The first place is the ‘Sign of the Times’:
In the beginning of the world of Tanaris the 8 gods didn’t interfere into the things of the humans, elves etc. But one day the god Thongmor started playing around in the world and the other gods had to react. As they didn’t want to follow Thongmors action personally, they created the Warlock. This is a person with godlike abilities, immortal and invulnerable, his task was to fight against Thongmor. Over the years, with changing warlocks and with the beginning of the war of the gods, the initial task of the warlock was forgotten and now he is an independent entity.
But as the gods didn’t want to create another god, they gave him one ‘weakness’. They created the swordmasters, a group of people with outstanding abilities in swordfighting, who always know where the warlock is, they always hear the ‘call of the warlock’. If one of them fights the warlock and defeats him (this is the only situation where a warlock can die), the winning swordmaster will become the next warlock.
The swordmaster is a Player Class, which means a player can become warlock. Unfortunately the requirements for playing a swordmaster are so hard (while creating a character you have to role dice epic…), no one in my group ever played one.
The home of the warlock is the castle ‘Sign of the times’, which is based on a mountain range beneath the ‘black lake of buried hopes’ (in the night you can hear the screams of the dead souls of all the swordmasters who lost their fight against the warlock). The feature with this castle, mountains and lakes is, that the warlock can teleport this ensemble anywhere he likes. When the map is done I will see where I will place it.
I know this maybe is the most strange story of this game, but this is 80’s high fantasy.
What do you think?
I like the bug-headed demon rising from the crater. Difficult to achieve, but I wonder if the lava might look more convincing if it was more opaque away from the demon? It looks a little like soup presently, but maybe it just needs some wisps of smoke to set it off as hot lava instead?
Impishly, I thought of "The Times" London-based newspaper when I saw the "Sign Of The Times" map label. The black lake would then be printer's ink... The teleporting castle, terrain and lake seem perfectly reasonable in context. If somebody this powerful couldn't do that, it would devalue the game, I'd suggest. Can you continue as a player if you become the new Warlock? Or does that mean you have to start a new character? I know some RPGs shy away from allowing such epically heroic characters to continue being run by players, but RdW seems different to those in some ways.
The fingerprint looks good to me, much as you'd expect it to if real. Does the clarity and darkness of the print affect the power of the magical storms the area becomes subject to? Presumably you'll be moving the struck castle and storm clouds closer to the centre of the fingerprint for the final version?
The warlock is a regular, playable Character Class for a swordmaster who defetated the old Warlock. Completely elaborated with 5 pages of unique spells (from which I took the one with the fingerprint & the storm). For the DM this is great (as long it is an NPC), as he can use the Warlock very intensively.
A Warlock has - besides the normal level system - three special Warlock levels. The first is the initial one after killing his predecessor, the next two are even for a warlock very hard to get. But if ever a Warlock reached the third level, he gets a spell to call the 8 gods together and he can apply to become the ninth god. If this happens, the rulebook says that the player should write a letter to the authors who invite him to play this off with him ('you have to take the travel costs, we take board and lodging' :-)).
The clarity and darkness of the fingerprint has no effect on the spell (the storm is always deadly devastating), but the spell description has another restriction: The Warlock may not paint the map himself, he is dependent on existing maps - which obviously influences the effected area (scale of the map) :-)
May’la, the flying town of the Dragonlords: A long time ago the Dragonlords ruled over eastern Tanaris, living in their flying town May’la. An alliance under leadership of the dwarves fighted them and May’la turned to the West. The allied army followed the town and the final battle happened where nowadays the city of Tellur is. The dwarven King himself killed the Dragonking while sitting on his back and as a last action the overall burning Dragonking casted a spell and opened a gate to Underearth, followed by the other Dragons (and taking the dwarven King with him). The Dwarves founded the City of Tellur where the gate to Underearth was created to make sure the Dragons won’t come back. Unfortunately the entry about this in the sourcebook stops when it comes to the point what happened with the flying town. The sourcebook says, this story is to long…
Clouds are from the Alyssa Fayden issue (issue 95), Dragons are from CASUAC
The forests and the iceland zone are looking awesome aswell. I understand you painted those iceland glaciers over the mountain?
Way to go!
I think it must be possible to create things like the hurricane in a separate CC instance, create a symbol and place it. But as I started with the hurricane I had no idea if it will work and so i just made it in the map.
I did not expect that so many people like it, as it is basically just polygons with an edge fade, inner effect. Quenten already asked me for a tutorial, I can do that when this map is done.
Magical flying places have the option of crashing, or to keep flying - usually randomly, and maybe landing from time to time too - when control of them is lost. In RPG terms, whichever seems the more interesting at the time, in general!
Maybe move the green dragon a little to make it clearer it is a dragon, as it seems slightly too concealed by the clouds just now, and might seem like a tree or a small forest when viewed at the full-map distance.
As I sent him my first draft of the ‚Sign of the Times‘ ensemble i got a bunch of heavy criticism back (‚nooo, nooooo!!!! the lake is not beneath the mountain, it‘s in front of the mountain, IN FRONT, in FRO-HOOOONTT!! Just check the sourcebook!! It says, regardless of the direction you come to the Castle, magically the lake is always in the front. Could you please put him in the front? If you don‘t get Sign of the Times precise i‘m disappointed. And by the way the lake is to small, the castle symbol not good and the mountains look different to the mountains in the picture in the book. And could you do mist on the lake?‘).
Well I spent two evenings just on this dam*** st**** castle to get him satisfied. The point is: He was right and the castle after this effort much better than bevor. You are much more polite than he his, but you both have the same eagle eyes. So please continue searching with eagle-eyes, I much appreciate that!
No mincing words there, then! :P
At least my friend didn‘t lie.
:-)
The Tear of Desperation: A long time ago was an intensive war between the two gods Halphas and Thongmor. The armies of Halphas made it to destroy the five major strongholds of Thongmor and killed even one of his disciples.
As Thongmor saw this, he cried five tears - one for each stronghold. As these tears reached the ground, they became five highly powerful creatures, the five ‘Vampyrs’, created to take revenge for Thongmors losses. Since these days they move over Tanaris to fulfill their bloody task. They are known as the five tears of Thongmor: the Tear of Anger, the Tear of Hate, the Tear of Frustration, the Tear of Perfidy and the Tear of Desperation.
From time to time they need some years for rest and recreation, drinking the blood of the living. Caleb, the Tear of Desperation, chose a Villa in the Land of Ghorm for his ‘sabatical’. While he is resting, his home is protected by an extreme powerful magic shield. Rumors say that since some years people disappear in the land of Ghorm…
One of the original campaign books is about this scenario. For a player it is an unforgettable experience when your character wakes up at a place that he doesn’t know and while exploring the house and the garden you find yourself trapped behind this invisible shield. And then you find the book, with the legend of the five tears and the explanation of the shield: That it is only on, when the Tear of Desperation is at home.
Temple towers of Tinor: These four ‘multicolored pulsating towers’ are a religious center of Tanaris (in some views THE most important center). In the town of Tinor is armed truce between the gods and their believers, thousands of people come each year for a pilgrimage.
Each tower is dedicated to two of the eight gods. Everybody may once in his live put his hands on one of the towers and this will change his live. Maybe he gets a gift from his god or a vision or a mission or a special ability – only the DM knows it. If someone is doing this twice, he immediately dies, becoming a burning flame.
One of my Characters took his hands one of these towers and our DM took it very seriously, it was great fun.
I struggled a bit with the description of the sourcebook that these towers are ‘multicolored pulsating’. It took me several attempts to get something plausible. Ideas for making them better are welcome. Also I’m still elaborating on how to best incorporate the eight symbols for the gods and the label ‘Tempeltürme von Tinor’.
Interesting to know the story behind your creation of the Sign of the Times image. From what you've mentioned previously, I'd guess it's quite unusual to have so much description - even an image of the castle - for a site like this in the original sourcebooks. Of course, that just makes things trickier when you have to try to recreate it in miniature...
I like the misty force dome for the Ghorm Villa. Was this done with a series of white arcs and a transparency effect applied? Or something more complex?
Fascinating effect with the pulsating towers of Tinor; very striking! The only real suggestion would be to wonder if particular colours should be associated with specific deities, but I'm not sure that would really improve things, as they already look good to me.
For the hurricane effect, it might be interesting to add the steps needed to make the CC3+ drawing into an actual symbol to your tutorial, perhaps.
Very cool
Thanks for the comment on the towers, it's just polygons in different colors and a blur effect. The gods have no specific colors, but I will think in this direction, thanks.
I do a WIP for this map for the blog, where I write down the detailed steps of making this map. The hurrciane of course will get all steps you need to redo it. I am already on a good way in writing, but it takes some time :-)