Here's a bit more. More to come, especially fleshing out the empty spots within the village walls. Plus labeling, of course.

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?

Basement 1

This level contains catacombs with 64 crypts for wealthy individuals who were not entombed with their pharaohs. There are 16 vacant spots.

This level also contains two chambers with the temple’s treasures, which connect to a circular chamber inscribed with eight hieroglyphics. The original purpose of this chamber has been forgotten. (The truth is, this was towards the end of my designing and I realized I hadn't used the hieroglyphs yet, so here are some.)

A secret passage leads to a chamber with a teleportation portal. Another circular chamber has both of its doors destroyed. The chamber beyond has a 15x15 pit. The heat, stench, and red glow suggest that it drops into a bed of lava.

A locked door provides access to a set of stairs that descend 30 feet to Basement 2.

Basement 2

The 30-foot descent brings us to an octagonal chamber that appears to be used for secret religious rites, perhaps by priests who are part of a forbidden sect? This connects to a large meeting room. A secret door provides access to two more chambers.

A secret door on the northeast wall of the octagonal chamber provides access to a wide passageway that descends 30 more feet down a series of staircases to a narrow chamber. There on the west wall, more stairs descend another 10 feet into caverns carved into the bedrock.

Here the pit from Basement 1 does indeed drop into a bed of magma, encircled by a platform of cooled lava rock. A raised bridge provides access to a platform with glowing runes inscribed in a circle.

I’m really pleased with how the lava turned out here. I used two different fills that I think came from Monsen’s Mines. The darker one is on a sheet above the lighter one, and then I used the color key effect to allow brighter parts of the magma show through in spots.

For Forest Trail, I had to bring in the cottage from Darklands City, and the bones/debris from DD3. I struggled with two things: the riverbed and the ripples around trees growing in the water. For the ripples, I used the rapids symbols that come with the annual. For the riverbed, I tried three different versions.

Here are all three together:

The first version uses the riverbed fill from the annual. It doesn't look particularly swampy to me, though.

The second version uses a mud fill from the Forest Trail annual:

The third version uses a mud from Creepy Crypts:

I like the mud from the second two, but I'm not sure it's clear that the trees are growing out of muddy water and not just mud. Maybe if I added more waves, or played with the water effects?

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.

Playing around with the newest Sarah Wroot Revisited annual. This is the northern part of the Kingdom of Powys from my campaign world. The coastline was brought in from a Fractal Terrains export, but then the rest was done by eye/memory rather than trying to get the contours exactly right. It's like an impressionist painter's rough representation of the kingdom.

That makes sense about making sure the major things are captured on the map, while being able to add smaller ones on the local area maps. And naming the features as well. I will have to come up with some names that aren't subconsciously lifting from literature. (Can't tell you how many times over the years I've thought, "Oh, Imladris is a good name for my elven kingdom -- no, wait!") I keep a running list on my phone of potential NPC character names. Some of those names may be suitable for place names instead (especially since so many place names are named after people.)

Here's the map as it stands with more hills in the "midwest" area, more rivers and settlements, roads and a few major bridges. (My thought is that except if I name where a road crossing a river something like "Blah Blah Blah Ford," there's a bridge there, but I added a few bridges that are meant to be unusually grand ones.)

Let me know if you spot anything weird or geographically improbable, or if there's anything missing. I also need to double check the Atlas maps to the north of the area I claimed to make sure there aren't features like hills or rivers that extend past the southern edges of those maps.

Slight tweak. Something was bothering me with some of the houses southwest of the circular part of the canals. Upon inspection, I discovered that those houses built with the Random Streets tool ended up on the BUILDINGS HIGHER sheet. I removed them entirely and replaced them with the house symbols on the appropriate BUILDINGS sheet. Let me know if you see anything else that looks off.

Here's a look at it at night, with lights added. I experimented with adding a moon like Jeff B did with his contest entry, but it was creating weird banding effects that I couldn't resolve. Instead, I played with the Shadow-Transparency in the Global Sun settings.

This is 35:

This is 50:

Yup, I think it's a town, not a village. But that's okay, I have a home for it (looking at the parent map, it probably should be a town, not a village). But that's okay, it got me thinking and gave me ideas for a smaller village in the same style to design. (Also a little too symmetrical, but I guess it makes sense that everything would radiate out from the only water source for miles around.)