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Royal Scribe

Royal Scribe

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Royal Scribe
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Birthday
February 5, 1968
Location
San Francisco, California
Real Name
Kevin
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Mapmaker
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16

Latest Images

  • [WIP] Wizard's Tower - Interior

    Here is the third level of the basement, and the final level of the Wizard's Tower.

    It's the part of the municipal sewers that connects beneath the wizard's estate. Pipes bring water from the river to the wells used in the tower and on the grounds, as well as the subterranean pond featured in Basement 2. Sewage comes in from the WC shaft from the tower as well as to other places on the grounds: the outhouse (next to the servants' house), and a manure shaft in the barn.

    Another shaft on the northern side of this map is from the pit for debris and other waste. Gelatinous cubes will digest any soft tissue (like rinds and peels from fruits and vegetables, as well as leaves and other foliage). Garbage that it can't digest (like bones, hardwood, and stone) get "stuck" in the gelatinous cube but then gets expelled when the cube moves up a slope. There's a whole ecology to these sewers that I wrote up a year ago, and will write up in more detail in the description when this is submitted to the Atlas.

    FYI, here are the ProFantasy products used on this level:

    There were more that were inherited from previous levels, but were cleaned out of the Symbols Manager when I used the "purge" button:


    LoopysueDon Anderson Jr.
  • [WIP] Atlas Contest (potentially) - Arbor Hollow (summer, autumn, winter, spring)

    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.

    LoopysueMonsen
  • [WIP] Swamp Witch

    When I was coming up with "spooky season" mapping ideas, I was debating between a haunted house or a witch's lair in a swamp. Why not both?

    That required experimenting with some different styles to try to create a swamp. (Let this serve as another plug for a jungle/swamp annual compatible with annuals like Creepy Crypts, Forest Trail, and Marine Dungeons.)

    I wasn't sure which way to go...so I ended up doing three versions. One is in the Mike Schley Dungeon (SS4) style, the second used Forest Trails as the basis, and the third used Marine Dungeons (though the second two had to borrow a bit from DD3 and other styles).

    I don't know a lot about swamps, but the images I've seen show a lot of trees both on dry land and in the water. In all three versions, I made it so that the tree tops could be hidden, both to create a battlemap version and also to show that some of the trees were growing out of the water and not just from patches of solid land.

    Here are all three side by side, and then in the comments I will show each one in more detail.


    LoopysueMonsenzace66
  • [WIP] Villa Citri (Roman-style villa)

    I finished the basement with the hypocaust. This level required extensive plotting to make sure the pipes went to the right places.

    First, here it is unlabeled so you can actually see everything, because there are a lot of labels. Note that the pools are supposed to be elevated (hence the drop shadows on them), as this is the lower portion of the pools where water is piped in and drained out.

    And here it is labeled. The labels include arrows indicating flow: blue for cold water, red for hot water, and yellow for warm air. The labels and the arrows are on separate layers to allow them to be independently hidden or revealed.

    A giant furnace (called a Praefurnium) is used to heat water and air. Here it is covered, and then uncovered.

    The hypocaust itself is basically a series of chambers through which hot air can flow, warming the floors for the level above, with vents that can bring warm air up to the upper stories of multistory buildings. These chambers are called Alveus. Within these chambers are stacked tiles made into pillars, called Pilae or Pilae Stacks, used to support the roof of the hypocaust as well as to conduct heat to the floors above. (This screengrab also illustrates the technique I used for the subterranean walls, using the cutout effects that Sue developed for Creepy Crypts, but using the stone and pebble fills she developed for Marine Dungeons.)

    The Pilae Stacks have a wall shadow on them, but I guess it would make more sense to use an outer glow instead since they're underground.

    When I was about 10 or 11, I first read about hypocausts from Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, the first in her Merlin-focused Arthurian novels. Young Merlin used the abandoned hypocaust on his family's estate as a hideout, inadvertently eavesdropping on adult conversations in the process. I'm delighted to finally be able to design one.

    LoopysueMonsen
  • A small carpenter store

    It's really great. I particularly like how you did the fence posts and railing. I can't think of anything I'd change or add.

    Cristian MustiataRicko
  • [WIP] Haunted Mansion

    And here's the third and fourth levels of the church. The main part of the church is covered by a dome, but it's all open air from the balconies up. The only portions with stairs going higher than the second floor balconies are the two towers on the southern side.

    Level three of the towers has a light source shining through the windows, like mini-lighthouses. I like the look of the brazier on the right, but it didn't quite make sense unless it was on the top floor (where I put bells). Even if it were something like the DND Continual Flame spell, where the magical fire emits light but not heat or smoke, it still doesn't make sense if it engulfs the inner wall of a stairwell that is continuing up. So I did an alternate version on the left side using luminescent crystals.

    And then there are great bells on the fourth floor of the towers, which come from Dundjinni Archives.


    LoopysueMonsenGlitch
  • [WIP] Haunted Mansion

    Top story of the tower. On to the wine cellar (and the rest of the basement).


    LoopysueRickoQuenten
  • WIP: My version of Royal Scribe's Most Excellent Wizard Tower

    My pleasure! Like I said, I'm thrilled to pieces that it's being used. If it ends up being used in a campaign, I'd love to hear what happened.

    Don Anderson Jr.Calibre
  • I'm hungry for your lore!

    Thank you for the tip -- I will check out Fandom.com. I actually started my own wiki about my world of Adnati on my WordPress-powered website. I use a plugin called Yadawiki for the wiki functionality. The Religion section is the most developed, followed by Geoscience. (History so far covers ancient history but not so much "modern" history.) I have tons more plotted out in MS Word docs that have not yet made it onto the wiki, much of which would have to be kept private until players learn those elements of the world.

    Now that I am finally starting to learn CC3+ and FT+ (after owning the software for about six years but being too intimidated to learn it), I can finally start doing some mapping. (I decided about six months ago to start watching the tutorials and surprise, surprise, learned so much more than I did on my own with the PDF manuals.)

    I don't actually have any players at the moment. Just having fun worldbuilding. But I have a fully fleshed out concept of how the players will meet, the circumstances that get them into a group and kick-off the story, and the major elements (and end goal) of their campaign arc.

    JackTheMapper
  • [WIP] Wizard's Tower - Interior

    Thank you!

    I admit that I drew from a lot of different sources. The base is CA186 Creepy Crypts (2022), which I used in preparation for when I get to the basement/dungeon section. The main fills for the walls and floors of the tower itself come from CA149 Beaumaris Castle (2019), and the windows are from that, too. Most of the furniture comes from Dungeon Designer 3, but some are drawn from CA14 Symbol Catalogs (2008), and some of the fireplaces are from Shessar's free supplement. Some of the outside vegetation comes from CA141 Japanese Temple and CA143 Asian Town (both 2018).

    Normally when designing something for the Atlas, I try to limit it to just a few styles to minimize the chance that others might be missing chunks of it. This time, I gave myself free rein to create my wizard's "dream home."

    Don Anderson Jr.