(I just noticed that this looks vaguely like the Starship Enterprise.)

In Level 5, purified water from Level 4 hits at a high spot that slopes both to the west and to the east. Water that flows to the west will reach the end of the canal and be deposited into water pipes that take it out to sea. Water that flows east will end up in a supersized drainage canal to help carry refuse from the bottom of the Great Maw.

The Great Maw ends at this level. All manner of waste digestible by the Black Pudding is tossed in here, including unusable metal and wooden objects, as well as any bones picked clean by the Gelatinous Cubes in Level 3. Here, the Black Pudding is munching on a great bell that has been thrown away, as well as some broken furniture. (Yeah, townfolk would probably chop up the broken furniture for firewood, but I wanted to show the Pudding eating metal and wood.) Left untouched for daring adventurers: a ceramic urn and a stone statue that are indigestible, along with some glass bottles. There’s also a staff, book, and scroll case that should be edible…unless they’re magical.

An extra large canal brings any remaining wastewater to the sea. Here, a Voracious Sullage has stretched itself across the canal, holding on to two side pillars as it scoops up anything edible remaining in the water.

A portion of the Great Maw’s wall has broken down, revealing a few caverns that are home to a strange tentacle aberration.

If adventurers survive the Black Pudding, the tentacle aberration, and the carnivorous plants down the passageway, they might find an escape route through the southern passage. But they might not be home free: something got the last adventurers who rested here (though that something might have been carbon monoxide poisoning if they lit a campfire in this poorly ventilated space).

I tweaked it to change the effluent on Level 3 to Effluent o3, then changed it after the first Gelatinous Cube in the Waste Filtration Path to clear water with decreasing amounts of scum as it gets purified. Added some clear water near the cubes in the Filtration Auditoriums to show that they ate some of the contaminants as they were traveling through. Also added some floor stains.

I think this makes it a bit clearer that the Gelatinous Cubes are consuming the waste and purifying the water. I will go through add more scum to the floors and the effluent in Levels 2 and 3.

Ooops, I posted an older version of floor three. Here's the correct one.

Here's the inside of the temple. The floor uses white marble tiles that come from DD3, I believe.

The reflections, as with my original temple, are custom-made symbols that are meant to be reflections from the glow of mosaics made from luminescent crystals. I need to remember to remove them when I share the FCW.

The pillars use Mike Schley's ornate columns. Zoomed out, they look a almost "smudged," and the plain columns look sleeker. But zoomed in, the details of the columns' base is nice, and probably more like what a fancy temple would have.

Here's a version with a darker red:

And here's a version where I tried lighter text on a darker background. (The white ones at the end are the only ones that really work.) For this one, I moved the text to a different sheet so I could turn off the white glow that just made it look bolded in a way that made it harder to read.

A few months ago, I posted the Temple of Fah, a ziggurat I created to play with the CA209 Stairs and Steps annual. At long last, I have finally designed the interior.

I know this map is ridiculous. Egyptian pyramids only had a handful of rooms for the tombs of a pharaoh and their treasure. Sumerian ziggurats also only had a handful of interior chambers. But I decided to go whole hog and create a sprawling interior complex reminiscent of the classic dungeon crawls I first experienced with D&D in the early 80s. (My first introduction to the game was December of 1979.)

Here’s a side view of the exterior to give you a sense of the entrances:

There are two landings before reaching the very top of the ziggurat. The first is on level 7, standing on the roof of level 6, and the second is on level 13, on the roof of level 12. The entrances on each landing are to the left and right of the exterior stairs continuing up. The 10 feet wide doors are designed to be concealed for aesthetic purposes, blending in with the side of the ziggurat when shut, but they aren’t exactly hidden or secret.

The landings divide the ziggurat into three sections. The top-most section is primarily used by priests and religious leaders. The middle section has chapels and shrines that the royal family, wealthy nobles, and elite government workers are invited to for private religious celebrations, including weddings and coronations. The general public is never invited inside. Instead, religious leaders stand on the first landing of the temple to lead the masses gathered before the temple in their religious ceremonies. The lowest section contains the tombs of great pharaohs and powerful religious leaders.

I decided to design the interior rooms and passageways using the color key knockout effect that @amerigoV describes in this thread. The walls are granite from the CA149 Beaumaris Castle annual. Most of the other fills and symbols come from the CA150 Ancient Tombs annual.

Here’s an example of a level with the effects turned off:

Each level of the ziggurat is 10 feet above the level below. The rooms and passageways inside are mostly 8 feet high, leaving two feet of stone for the ceiling (or the floor for the level above).

Let’s go inside!

I've been playing around with Wyvern's great suggestions.

I tried to give the ziggurat a more weathered look by using the FRACTALIZE command. The default settings were way off but I played with it enough to think that with time, I could get it to look right. The problem was that I tried it on a single layer of the temple, and even with just that single layer, it added so many nodes that it slowed everything way down -- and that was just the first of eighteen levels of the temple! So I think my temple won't look weathered after all. Maybe the gods are preserving it. ;-)

Then I hid the desert symbols so that I could play with the different textures and effects to create the illusion of dunes. The Dungeons of Schley style has five sand fills (with 1 being the lightest) and five corresponding partially transparent textures to overlay. The main background in my map was the middle one, Sand 3_SS4. Over the entire map, I also added the Sand 2 T_SS4 texture on a sheet called SAND TEXTURE 1 BASE, which has an inner edge fade to soften it. I then added another sheet called SAND TEXTURE 2 PATCHES, where I drew patches of the textures 1, 4, and 5 (2 already applied to everything, and 3 being the same as the main sand).

For the dunes, I added another sheet, SAND TEXTURE 3 DUNES. It has three effects: Edge Fade, Inner; Bevel, Lighted; and Blur. I then added dunes, trying with first the Solid 10 fill and then some of the sand ones -- but actually, I kinda think the Sand 3 blends in best.

Here's how it looks:

Here's my Bevel settings:

And here's the FCW:

Thoughts? More dunes? More sand patches? More anything else?

As an aside, learning these desert techniques is very helpful. Last November, one of the first maps I attempted was a Blue Dragon's desert lair. I abandoned it, but I've learned so much in the last six months -- time to revisit it!

Let’s climb up to the second landing, where we are standing on the roof of level 12 facing the side of level 13. There are eight entrances, one on either side of the four exterior stairs. The entrances in the northwest and southeast quadrants go straight ahead into level 13, while the entrances on the southwest and northeast quadrants immediately descend down 10-foot side stairs to level 12.

Level 13

No one actually lives in the temple. There are no kitchens or similar facilities. Even so, occasionally people are allowed to spend the night there. High ranking priests may sleep there after a late-night religious rites, or the night before an early morning religious service. Pharaohs sleep there the night before their coronations, and sometimes on other occasions. Level 13 has four bedrooms set up. Towards the center, there are interior stairs ascending to Level 14 and descending to Level 12.

Let’s go up, and then we will make our way back down.

Level 14

This level has three more bedrooms, plus a fourth room with a strange design carved into the floor tiles. (Is it a summoning circle? A teleportation portal?) Stairs in the center ascend to 15 and descend to 13.

Level 15

This level has three treasure chambers, all connected through a central room where guards are stationed. Stairs ascend to Level 16 and descend to Level 14.

Level 16

This level has a large 30x30 foot chapel in the center of the level. Three side rooms are dressing chambers for the priests. They are sparsely furnished, but have chests containing the priests’ vestments.

The chapel is 20 feet high, cutting into Level 17. A crude representation of the sun (looking more like a bullseye target) is painted on the floor in gold leaf. There are no stairs going up, because there is nothing above this level except for the upper half of this chapel. Here’s what it looks like from Level 17:

There is nothing on Level 18. It’s just solid stonework.

Let’s make our way back down to Level 13 and use the interior stairs to descend to Level 12.

Making progress on the symbols from Forest Trail. Cliff and river bank symbols have been swapped out for their snowy counterparts. Same with the ruins symbols, and the wooden bridge. Changed the trail on the western side of the wooden bridge to use the Forest Trail effects. Added breaks in the ice for the Spruce River, and as it continues down the Whispering Pines River.

For the ruins, there wasn't a snow-covered version that I saw. I thought about covering it entirely with a hill of snow, but discovered that I could make frosty patches using the "Terrain Default Cliffs Drifts" drawing tool, which I will also use (on separate sheets) to add a little snow to the rocky outcrops. This is how it looks on the ruins close-up:

Not sure I like the frost on the upper part of Whispering Pines River. Not sure if I should expand it, so it covers more of the iced-over part, or reduce/eliminate it.

Still need to swap out the trees and add snow to the outcrops.

And here are some of the Mike Schley style: