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.

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.

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.)

In the recent Bird's Eye Overland development discussion thread, @HelenAA suggested of a set of castle symbols that could be fitted together to form different kinds of castles. I like that idea -- it's like the top-down version of the 3D symbols from the CA149 Beaumaris Castle annual.

Since the subject has been broached, I thought it might be a good opportunity to piggy-back on it and share a list I've been keeping of a "wish list" for a future Castle Construction annual.

The scope of this might require a two-part annual: one for the exterior structure and grounds, and another for the interior.

Anyway, here are my musings...

Fills

1. Metals (gold, silver, polished copper, tarnished copper, steel)

a. One set has the light reflection on it, like the Brass Inlay fill from Marine Dungeons 

b. Another set that’s just a plain fill without the light reflection (better for creating roofs, roof ridges, railings, etc.)

2. Flower beds (flower fills that can work with flower symbols like how the heather fill and heather symbols work together in Forest Trail)

Exterior

Castle Grounds

1. Rocky cliff symbols with compatible fills (kind of like the outcrop rocks in Darklands City) – good for building a castle on a hilltop, bluff, or mountainside

2. Hill symbols (good for perching the motte on with a motte-and-bailey style castle)

3. Heroic statues (male and female)

a. Statue of royal/noble figures

b. Statue of a knight on a rearing horse

c. Statues of major D&D player character classes (male and female):

i. Fighter with melee weapons

ii. Mage with a staff or wand

iii. Cleric/priest/holy person

iv. Rogue type (hooded & cloaked person)

v. Archer

vi. Bard/musician

d. Pedestals separate from statues so you can mix and match base and statue

4. Topiary – Bushes/shrubs trimmed into shapes of animals and mythological creatures

5. Flowers 

6. Flower bitmap fills (like how the Forest Trail heather fill and heather symbols work together)

7. Fountains

8. Equipment for a tiltyard (where jousts were held or knights are trained)

a. Quintain – shield or board on a pole (sometimes a mannequin) that would spin around the pole when struck by a jouster. Often a sandbag would be attached to the other end of the pole that would swing around and strike the jouster if they weren’t nimble enough.

b. Pell – A post or other target using for practicing sword strikes

c. Suspended ring – Hung from a string from an extended pole that jousters would attempt to put their lance through as they rode by. The string was weak enough to break if the jouster succeeded in snagging the ring.

Structure

1. Connecting walls-with-built-in-crenellations tool (or, alternatively, walls tool with separate crenellation symbols that can be dropped on it like in Marine Dungeons)

2. Turrets with different kinds of tiles, from Disney fairy-tale perfect to decrepit ruins

3. Fills with the same tile options as the turrets

4. Multiple drawbridge options (raised, lowered, broken…)

5. Flagpoles

6. Flags (varicolor) that can be “attached” to flagpoles

7. Spires

8. Elven latticed domes (like Rivendell in Peter Jackson’s LOTR)

9. Vines that can be added to the sides/tops of walls/roofs

10. Gargoyles and grotesques

11. Machicolations (“murder holes” on defensive walls)

12. Siege equipment

13. Architectural “frills” (like the tops of art deco arches or other decorations on the sides of buildings)

Interior

1. Magenta (or varicolor) cutouts for windows, doorways, arrow slits

2. Thrones (different options: ornate, shabby, “evil,” different materials (gold, stone, wood, ice, skulls), etc.

3. Ornate staircases (like for grand ballrooms)

a. Maybe modular staircase pieces, with symbols that can work together (but not as connecting symbols) to create different styles (winding down, fanning out at the bottom, branching at the top, etc.)

b. Different styles: marble, wood, etc.

c. With and without varicolor carpet runners down center

4. Musical instrument symbols

a. Upright and laying down

b. Harps, lutes, pan pipes, drums…

c. Pipe organs

5. Carpet symbols and/or fills

6. Varicolor vector symbol outlines of animals, mythical creatures, heraldic weapons, magical glyphs, runes, zodiac symbols, etc. to be used as floor inlays, “embroidering” on carpets/flags/table runners, etc.

7. Bells (large single bells for bell towers, and a row of glockenspiel bells)

8. Clock hands (above view, for clock towers)

9. Interior architectural frills – curlicues as engraved or embossed patterns on stonework?

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?

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.

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:

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.

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.

This cold weather here (which is not so cold for most of you -- it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or 15.6 Celsius, in San Francisco today) keeps inspiring me to do winter-themed maps. This one is my first use of the Ice Caverns dungeons from the CA189 annual from 2022.

In my campaign world, one of the human religions I've created is the Áes Camáir, a religion that is loosely inspired by Celtic mythology. The primary gods are the five "Children of Dawn" and their offspring. One of those five is Déine ap Gáeth, the goddess of winter and storms. (I realized some time after creating her that I was subconsciously recreating Elsa from Frozen.)

This temple and attached monastery is in an arctic environment, with part of the temple built above-ground and part below, which allowed me to also use some structures from Winter Village. The icy crevasse comes from Spectrum Overlands.

Here are the above and below maps, with description to follow.