Here's the daytime with the redrawn water:

And here it is at night with a kludgy crescent moon. I couldn't find moon symbols in Cosmographer that I really liked, so this is a public domain image from NASA. It's a full moon, but then I put the SOLID 80 fill on top of the entire moon on a sheet called MOON PHASE. Then I added the Color Key Cutout effect to that sheet and drew a circle with a width of 10 over the part of the moon that I wanted to show, so that it would cut out the portion of the SOLID 80 that I didn't want. Still not sure I even want a moon in this map, but the moon symbol, phase effects, and lighting effect are all on a MOON layer so it's easy enough to hide it.

Tyr Alomere Tower - Floor 4

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Toggle: OUTSIDE MASK sheet to hide/reveal the semi-transparent parchment filter over the outside.

Description

Although this floor has a doorway to the exterior stairs, it is generally accessed by a spiral staircase on the northern side of the floor. This is the lowest floor in the tower to have proper windows rather than arrow slits. The main room on this floor is a comfortable lounge equipped with a wet bar, with water piped all the way up, where the wizard can entertain overnight guests. The floor is also equipped with a private chapel, two guest bedrooms, a WC, and a bathing chamber with a fireplace for heating water.

1. Lounge

2. Chapel

3. Guest Bedrooms

4. WC

5. Bathing Chamber

Tyr Alomere Tower - Floor 3

Toggle: TEXT LABELS layer to hide/reveal the numeric labels.

Toggle: OUTSIDE MASK sheet to hide/reveal the semi-transparent parchment filter over the outside.

Description

The tower’s main entrance is actually on the third floor of the tower, guarded by an iron gate and a steel door. It enters into a vestibule equipped with an armoire for guests’ cloaks, and a small WC. This room provides access to a cozy sitting room with a fireplace where the wizard can greet guests, as well as a private lounge where the wizard can have more discrete conversations with select guests. Most of the rooms on this floor do have have windows to the outside, but a circular passageway provides access to seven arrow slits. An interior spiral staircase allows occupants to move throughout the tower without having to return to the exterior stairs.

1. Entryway

2. Vestibule

3. WC

4. Reception Lounge

5. Private Lounge

6. Security Hallway

Sap Core map has so many amazing details! I don't recall seeing those craters before. Are they from Mike Schley Overland?

I like them!

For those who are interested in learning how to create these but learn better by watching, Ralf has a good tutorial about creating varicolor symbols, starting with the vector ones.

My personal experiences are more with desktop publishing, not design. Used to be reasonably proficient with things like PageMaker and Quark and MS Publisher — none of which is useful here. I used the Corel suite in the 90s but haven’t owned it in decades. To create the circular symbols for my Modern Journeys map, I did download GIMP and learned just enough of it to be able to crop an image to a circle. But for quite a lot of stuff, I have used (of all things)…PowerPoint!

It's a useful style for creating a rough idea of what I want to map, but somewhat limited in symbols. I like the idea of doing a sketch with this style and a more detailed version in another, with this style on hand to give to adventurers when the time is right. I love the idea of using this pencil sketch style for a map handed to adventurers by some weary ranger in a tavern who has scrawled out a quick idea of where the adventurers need to go -- while omitting many of the perils they'll encounter on the way.

The funny thing is: although I am not an attorney, my day job in the business side of publishing requires me to be involved in copyright permissioning on a daily basis. Fonts, however, are a new wrinkle for me.

I had another idea: Hunting Lodge Trophies.

Taxidermied wall-mounted heads of typical hunting prey (deer, bears, boars, maybe mythological creatures)

Bear-skinned rugs

Weapons display rack

Welcome, Ryan! One more thing, which you might already be planning to do: when you break it down into smaller regional maps, you can then add more details that might be too small for this map. I'm not certain what scale this map is, but for example, this map might only have the major rivers, but smaller rivers and streams might then show up on your regional maps. Or this may only have major cities, with smaller villages and hamlets being too small for this scale until you start to break it down. That gives you the freedom to follow creative inspiration as you dive in deeper.

Looking forward to seeing more!