Inspired by today's Live tutorial, here's my quickie dungeon map, old school style. I decided to add gridlines and remove the transparency effect from the grid sheet so the grid would stand out prominently, as if I drew the map on graph paper.

Some goblins have set up an outpost in some caves located near the ruins of an ancient temple for a long-forgotten civilization. Unfortunately, the goblins seem to have accidentally poked their way into a forgotten crypt, disturbing a long-slumbering occupant who isn't particularly happy with its new neighbors.

Went in to change the outside landscaping in the second floor file and noticed that I forgot some of the windows, especially on the main entrance side. @Don Anderson Jr., does this achieve what you recommending with the landscaping for the higher floors: keep the fence but eliminate the foliage? I kept the fence and added a Solid 20 fill (which I could change to Solid 10 if it looks too strong).

Been out of commission with the flu the last few days, but on the mend now. I wanted to submit the Spring, Autumn, and Winter versions of my village of Arbor Hollow in case Remy finds it easier to process them at the same time as the Summer version, which was submitted as part of the Atlas contest.

Here are images, followed by the FCW files. The description is the same for each, but I will provide again here anyway.

Before attempting to do my entire campaign world in the new Fractal Parchment Worlds style, I wanted to try it out with a familiar spot: the Republic of Lumadair.

For this one, I exported Lumadair from Fractal Terrains in the Fractal Parchment Worlds style that Ralf demonstrated in today's Live session. But I also exported a contour map of the same view, and then copied a few of the elevation contours over, then used the Draw Like tool to convert them to the proper contour appearance.

I decided I didn't want to redo the entire tower, so I did some stairs ascending around it from the courtyard as a proof of concept. I do like the idea of stairs winding around a tower. Wonder if I can make it go around multiple times? I have some thoughts on how to do that, but I will save them for another map.

In the meantime, here's how it turned out:

(It's subtle, but beneath the railing there are railing posts, which you can't really see but they cast a subtle shadow.)

Anyway, I'm rushing out the door, but I will make any tweaks when I return and then re-export the maps that show the tower.

These are the sewers for Elmsbrook, a town in the human kingdom of Powys in my campaign world. They’re intended to be fairly representative on the sewer systems in my kingdom – smaller villages might have a simpler system, but larger cities will have the same basic layout, but with more extensive canals.

I was hoping to get this done the same month that Sinister Sewers was released, and I barely did it. I still have work to do, and advice to collect, but thought I would post where this stands.

By the way, Sue: it worked putting everything for each level on its own layer, making it easy to display or hide different levels as needed.

In addition to using the symbols and fills from Sinister Sewers, this also uses a few things from Marine Dungeons (particularly the stairs and the bell at the bottom of the pit), and a few things from Forest Trails (leaves, the trees along the beach, and maybe some of the fills) and Creepy Crypts. Also: Sue spent a lot of time helping me come up with a technique to show clear water, but it really worked best close-up. At this scale, it made it look like black water. I ended up using a water fill from Creepy Crypts, but on its own water sheet with a 50% transparency effect added.

In my campaign world, fastidious elves have long understood at a high level the correlation between hygiene, sanitation, and the spread of diseases. (Even if they don’t have the tools to study microbiology and virology, they can study commonalities in infected populations to identify vectors of disease.) Dwarves first developed aqueducts and sewer technology. And it is said that orcs pioneered the use of flesh-eating oozes for waste management.

Oozes are amorphous creatures with an intelligence no greater than an ordinary garden slug, flowing through subterranean lairs to devour any creature or object they can dissolve while shunning things that provoke their flight reflex, like bright lights and extreme temperatures. I have made a few tweaks to oozes in my campaign world to make them better suited for deploying in sewers. I added immunity to poison and diseases. I also added a weakness: sunlight hypersensitivity where, like vampires, they can be damaged by exposure to sunlight. (This is why they avoid bright lights: a bright lantern won’t harm them, but it still triggers their flight reflex.) Sunlight can kill an ooze, causing their acids to neutralize and their bodily remains to collapse into a nutrient-rich goo that farmers often use to fertilize their crops.

Some items of note about specific oozes used in sanitation systems. Gelatinous Cubes can dissolve nonmagical soft tissue and vegetation, leaving behind undissolved bones, metal, glass, stone, and magical items of any sort, along with excess water stripped of anything edible. They cannot climb but can move up slopes with a grade of 25 degrees or less. Moving up a slope with a grade of 10 degrees or more requires the Cube to expel any indigestible materials or excess water. Black Puddings are far more dangerous. In addition to dissolving soft tissue and vegetation, they can also dissolve nonmagical bones, metal, but cannot dissolve glass, stone, or magical items. They can also climb any surface, even upside down. Sanitation workers employ bright lights to keep Black Puddings from escaping (and an ample food supply keeps them from seeking to escape). And finally, I created a new ooze called a Voracious Sullage. It’s a slow-moving, weaker version of the Gelatinous Cube, unable to maintain a cubic shape. It tends to stretch itself across small waterways so that anything edible flows to it (and anything it can’t eat gets expelled on the other side).

Here's a quick summary of how the sanitation system works. More specifics for each level of the sewer system will follow in the comments.

Surface (not shown): Storm drains at the intersections of major streets, with a manhole cover at one of the corners than allows maintenance workers to descend using rungs. There is also a large Waste Management Facility where residents can dispose of large objects that cannot be repaired or repurposed (such as items that cannot be chopped up for kindling). Maintenance workers throw these items into a giant pit nicknamed the Great Maw that is about 140 feet in diameter. The surface of this pit is in a building that is covered at night but open to the sky during the day. Bright luminescent crystals are placed near the mouth of the pit to frighten away the Black Pudding at the bottom of the pit.

Level 1: This level is immediately below the surface. Storm drains at major intersections deposit rainwater (along with other debris) here, where they run off to chutes that bring wastewater to Level 2.

Level 2: Wastewater from Level 1 is deposited here, where it helps push through human waste from outhouses and latrines that are connected to the sewer system. This sewage flows through chutes down to Level 3.

Level 3: Waste brought in from Levels 1 and 2 are treated here in two great chambers called Auditoriums. Numerous Gelatinous Cubes gobble up the waste, leaving behind items they cannot digest, and now-clean water stripped of contaminants. This purified water drops through chutes to Level 4.

Level 4: Primarily a passthrough level, and the lowest level that maintenance workers normally go.

Level 5: A Black Pudding lives at the base on the Great Maw, devouring any waste thrown into the pit. It can eat nonmagical flesh, vegetation, and metal, but cannot digest stone, glass, or magical objects of any sort. Water purified in Level 3 descends to this level, where some passes directly to the sea and the rest is used to flush out anything the Black Pudding cannot digest.

More details for each level in the comments.

Oh, here's a version of Enia with the political borders shown:

Probably won't have a chance to finish this by the end of Halloween, as I had planned, but that's okay. Here's the second floor. It has a few guest bedrooms and some common space for the family: an office, a library, and a solarium or sun room. The ballroom extends into this level, as it has high ceilings, but it is from this level that the family and VIP guests can make grand entrances into the ballroom from the stairway.

Not really sure why my roads outside now have a visible white line down the center. I tried changing the color to brown, but that didn't work.

Just noticed that in addition to failing to furnish the office, I also neglected to put in a doorway!

Still to come: floor 3 (bedrooms), the top floor of the tower, Basement 1 (kitchens, wine cellar, staff quarters, etc.), a secret Basement 2, and the sewers that connect everything together.

Remy said two things about the 1000th map contest that I have taken to heart:

1. We can submit more than one map, but will only be able to win one prize; and
2. We can make our own local map anywhere in the world to create a place for a village we want to design (but only the village map is eligible for the contest).

With that in mind, I have been working on this Gold Coast map as well as an area map for the Kingdom of Enia, an elvish kingdom on the northern side of the coast. I have two villages in Enia that I will submit. If this works best for you, @Monsen, I will create a thread for all of the non-contest Atlas submissions once they're finalized, and then the actual villages for the competition will be posted in the competition thread when they're ready to submit.

Gold Coast

Here is the Gold Coast region, first without and then with political borders (which can be toggled). I am writing up the description now.

Without Political Borders

With Political Borders

Thoughts?

And then here's a map of the Kingdom of Enia, with more smaller hamlets and other small details added, this time in the Mike Schley style:

When I was working on Fon'Anar, my elven farming village in Verinress'Arl on Artemisia, I had an idea for a different approach for an elven village that I wanted to try next.

This little village of Yréas Kóltyn is set in the Kingdom of Enía, a northern country in the Gold Coast region of Dóriant that I am submitting as parent (or great grandparent) map to the Atlas. It's a religious community overseen by an archdruid who oversees religious observances at a Great Henge located in the Firessi Woods. For context, it's located in the yellow box on this map:

I did the map using the Forest Trails annual, with heavy assist from the Darklands City annual. Here's the map in progress:

And here is a more battlemap-ready version of it with the trees (and treehouses) hidden, and just stumps and shadows shown:

The treetops and treehouses are all on a single layer to make it easier to toggle them on and off.

The idea of the village is that they've grown up in support of the temple in support of the elves who make pilgrimages there for the opportunity to experience religious services in one of the holiest places in the kingdom.

Here's the temple close up:

In my campaign world, the elves have seven gods, which is why this has seven standing stones in the center ring, then seven arches and seven stones in the middle ring, and then fourteen arches in the outer ring.

The archdruid's home also serves as a sort of local government for the community. It's the only treehouse home accessible with proper stairs. All of the other treehouses have wooden ladders or rope ladders that can be pulled up to impede access from intruders. Here's the archdruid's home:

The other buildings on the ground here are stables (#3), an inn (#4), and a general store (#5).

The villagers live somewhat communally. Since it would be kinda dangerous to cook food in a treehouse, there's a common kitchen and Great Hall. Everyone has a job, and for some, it's to work in the kitchens to cook for the village -- kinda like the dining commons at a university, perhaps.

Here are the "commons." It includes a small aqueduct to bring fresh water to the kitchens (7) and community baths (9). Dining is in the Great Hall (8). On nice evenings, a bonfire can be lit (10), around which the elves often sing and dance.

Most of the elves live in multigenerational treehouse homes. There are a few neighborhoods of these homes in the village, and residents can walk through their neighborhoods on elevated bridges without needing to go down to the ground. Here's an example of one of those neighborhoods:

I was going to add lots more trees throughout these neighborhoods, but they kind of distracted from the homes themselves.

Since the treehouse homes wouldn't have cooking or fireplaces, I guess these residences shouldn't have chimneys. I tried to cover the chimneys with upper canopy foliage, but I missed a bunch.

I think there are 28 residential treehouses (excluding three attached to the archdruid's that I thought might serve as guest accommodations for VIP pilgrims. They're meant to be multigenerational homes. In calculating the village's population, many residents do you think I should assume per residence?

Any thoughts or feedback?