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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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12

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  • [WIP] Community Atlas - Gold Coast, Doriant

    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:


    MonsenQuentenLoopysueRicko HascheGlitchWyvern
  • [WIP] Haunted Mansion

    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.

    LoopysueRicko HascheMonsenQuentenGlitch
  • [WIP] Community Atlas - Rhaghiant (western Doriant)

    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.

    QuentenMapjunkieLoopysueBwenGunGlitch
  • [WIP] Marine Dungeons Lighthouse (more May Annual Stairs & Steps)

    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.

    LoopysueQuentenMapjunkieGlitchJuanpi
  • [WIP] Northern Powys (Sarah Wroot Revisited)

    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.


    LoopysueJulianDracosQuentenRicko HascheRalf
  • [WIP] Atlas Contest (potentially) - Arbor Hollow (summer, autumn, winter, spring)

    Here is Winter so far. Still tons to do, but I've managed to get everything on their correct sheets, I think, and the imported sheets in the correct order. Converted the rivers to the iced-over versions. I will add breaks and cracks from Winter Trails later to the Spruce River and the lower part of Whispering Pines River, and then frost to the upper part of Whispering Pines River. Converted the paved roads to the default winter roads, and the dirt ones to the winter muddy roads. (You'll notice that one path at the ruins in #11 hasn't been converted yet. When I start to bring in style features from Winter Trails, I will make that into a path or maybe footsteps. Converted the crops to snow-covered counterparts. But the biggest changes are yet to come: swapping out the building, tree, and other symbols for their winter counterparts. I will have to look at the sample maps with the annual to get ideas for how to better display the label numbers.


    LoopysueMonsenRicko HascheQuentenDaltonSpenceGlitchShessar
  • [WIP] Town of Kukaar (Ancient Cities Annual)

    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.


    QuentenLoopysueRicko HascheC.C. CharronJuanpi
  • [WIP] Inside the Temple of Fah

    Level 6

    We are now in the lowest of the three sections of the temple. Most of the tombs contain two chambers: a treasure room and a burial chamber. A few will have multiple treasure chambers, and occasionally there may be more than one burial chamber in the suite.

    Great pharaohs used to be buried with their wealth, but centuries ago, a new pharaoh decided to keep his father’s wealth, and instead buried his father with colored glass replicas of his jewelry. The pharaohs are generally entombed in a sarcophagus on a raised platform. Other sarcophagi in the room will usually be upright along the walls, but may be occasionally laid flat on the floor, a sign of great honor to the decedent. These are for the final resting places for people important to the pharaoh: spouses, valued concubines, children who did not themselves become a pharaoh, and occasionally even favorite servants like nannies who are treated as family. Those who predecease the pharaoh are reinterned at the time of pharaoh’s internment. For those who live after the pharaoh’s death, the tombs are opened to admit their remains, sometimes decades after the pharaoh’s internment.

    Also of note: in this section, the stairs up and stairs down are generally far from each other, perhaps as a way to confuse and confound intruders intending to loot the tombs.

    Level 5

    This level has more tombs, but there are a few things of note.

    On the west side, there is a burial chamber where the entrance to the treasure chamber and burial chamber have been destroyed, and the treasures and sarcophagus have been looted. The passageway to this section has been sealed but otherwise left untouched. It is the only looted section in this active temple.

    Another burial suite is empty, waiting for a future pharaoh.

    In the southeast corner, there’s a chamber with a great number of sarcophagi, some still empty. This room is the final resting place for high priests who have been honored to lay at rest near the great pharaohs.

    One mad pharaoh had his burial chamber and three treasure rooms hidden behind a trapped secret door. The passageway also contains a covered pit that drops unwary intruders 20 feet to Level 3.

    Level 4

    More burial chambers. (Note the shaft for the pit from Level 5 that descends to Level 3.)

    Level 3

    More tombs. (I noticed that some of the raised platforms don’t have a sarcophagus on them. Not sure if I forgot to place them, or if I placed them on the wrong sheet. I guess one of them might be for the reigning Pharaoh, and already contains the remains of predeceased loved ones, but that would only make sense for one of these tombs. Maybe the mummies just walked away?)

    The pit trap from Level 5 ends here. Those who survive the 20-foot drop may discover a secret door that leads to another hidden chamber, where another secret door allows escape to the rest of the temple. The skeletal remains suggest that one poor soul either didn’t survive the fall or never found the secret door to allow their escape.

    Level 2

    More burial suites, along with some storage rooms for unused pots and urns.

    Level 1

    More tombs, along with stairs that descend to subterranean levels of the temple. (What, more levels?)

    LoopysueDakAleD
  • [WIP] Greco-Roman Inspired Temple

    I was worried that my temple wasn't looking as cohesive because I was drawing fills and symbols from so many places that didn't quite mesh. In particular, I wasn't happy with how the trees looked. (I also added a gazebo at the top and a botanical garden at the bottom.)

    In the end, I decided to try the grass fills and trees from Forest Trail. Here they are without contour patches of other grass shades, at 50 and 100 scale.

    And then I tried adding patches of grass of the same fill style, but with a shade higher and lower. I really don't have an eye for this sort of thing. Should I have bigger patches? More numerous small ones. Should they blend in more?

    For the botanical garden, I couldn't find flowers among my symbols except for potted plants. It was supposed to be simple so as to not distract from the temple, but I got carried away.

    • I made rose bushes by taking bushes from one style and then placing small varicolored bushes from another style on top as roses.
    • I made flowers by using weeds from Forest Trail as the stems and then adding varicolored shrubs from another style as the flowers.
    • I added a fungi garden using varicolored mushrooms of different sizes (plus a few varicolored fairy ring mushrooms from Forest Trail)
    • I was going to use the anemones from Marine Dungeons as a plant, and then thought...why not use them as anemones? So I made a man-made pond for them, plus coral and a few other marine symbols.
    • And I added a carnivorous plant. The only one I could find was from the Mike Schley Overland, which is in a very different style. If anyone has recommendations for other carnivorous plants, please let me know.


    LoopysueJimPMonsenRalf
  • [WIP] Playing around with Sinister Sewers

    I made a few tweaks. Changed most of the effluent to brown except for the portions from the vents (aka storm drains) that's meant to be rainwater. Added a few bunches of leaves from Forest Trail to those ones. Added some bridges for maintenance workers to use to cross canals. Left a bit of green coming from one of the canals -- a mystery for adventurers to solve? I should probably add some slime....


    Ricko HascheJackTheMapperLoopysueWyvernJimP