The East Wing runs to a mere two vertical Levels by contrast, based on images of a couple of layouts on the DF Discord, combined here with the usual additions and amendments, for all the final plans are much simpler than for either of the preceding pair of Wings, and clearly show their rectilinear original forms rather more. This was though quite deliberate, as part of the concept of the various Wings was to show differences between them, suggesting they could likely be put to different uses, and that this area was probably still largely under construction. Plus it wasn't only the layouts that had been getting figuratively tied in knots with some of the other maps!

Simplicity only counts for so much though, so the entryway from the Palace this time isn't on Level 1, but on the lower Level 2 (which is also a somewhat larger map than the others):

Yes, it's coming up to that time isn't it? So here's my final version of Cloven House, firstly with the secret cave hidden, and then revealed:

This will be winging its way to Remy for the Atlas shortly, with its text and PDF notes, but in case anyone might be interested, the PDF description is here as well, should anyone wish to be "enlightened" further on the nature of this haunted house:

Worth noting though that a few comments are a trifle "adults only", concerning a couple of the potential apparitions and other ghoulish elements.

Place 2 is the "famous" Red Picket Golf Course (given Embra is, extremely loosely, derived ultimately from the real city of Edinburgh in Scotland, it proved impossible not to include something relating to golf in these maps of the Faerie city):

This time, there is the option to hide the labels for the course separately from any other map labels, to make the various hazards and obstacles easier to see, although the labelling is essential to work out what is meant to be where in terms of trying to complete the course:

A small key has been provided with this map as well, to better clarify what the recurrent features of the course are meant to be. The PDF and text files for this map describe in detail the Faerie elements of the course, which plays as something like a cross between "real" golf and miniature or crazy golf, with fantasy aspects to-boot. Of course, those descriptions also explain why the course seems both a lot smaller and shorter than real-world golf courses (key word "seems"...), and that it may take players, non-Faerie players especially, days to complete a round of the nine holes. Benefits may accrue for those who do persist and finish the course, however. And they may find their time has not been nearly so wasted as they may have felt while still playing (Faerie time-dilation can work both ways, after all).

There are just a couple of buildings on the map, and these have been provided with internal-layout drawings via a couple more toggles in the Atlas FCW file for the ground floor, and the upper storey of the Clubhouse (only):

Completing the circuit is Embra - Summerset in the northwest, with its small village of single-storey properties, the River Clack with a bridge (albeit the bridge seems detached from the village rather), both the main Clack Valley tributaries, plus a curiously unlabelled third tributary stream, which seems more significant than the named Silverburn (a deliberate choice!). However, dominating the map's centre are two substantial lakes and a marsh:

Next-up will be the first of Embra city's contents, the Enclosed Places.

It's certainly a very beautiful map, and I know well how difficult it is to find a suitable real-world base map from which to draw this region, so I think you've done a splendid job with it!

As Sue said, the seas look a little "double-exposed" currently though.

How historically-accurate were you intending to be with it?

I ask, as ancient Mesopotamia is a particular place of interest for me, especially around the 3rd-2nd millennia BCE, along with the Black Sea and places adjacent around the 2nd-early 1st millennia BCE, and east to what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and western India. They're places I've mapped and studied in some detail previously, and there are points I could make which might be of use, though only if you were wanting it to be more historical.

The river lines are very complex, particularly if you're going for that historical route, and a specific time-frame. The Tigris has pretty much held its course over the millennia, largely thanks to a stonier bed, but the Euphrates has drifted hither and yon across the silts of southern Mesopotamia especially, encouraged by deliberately-dug irrigation canals in places, beginning around the later 4th millennium BCE, for instance.

I know when I started out trying to map parts of this region, something that surprised me was how poorly different published atlas maps compared with one another as regards the modern watercourses, especially for anything other than the major river channels, even in the specialist (i.e. archaeological-historical) literature.

Thanks Jim!

And thanks for the explanation, Remy. I appreciate fonts can be problematic in CC3+ at times, although in this case, the two ocean labels seemed to have changed far less than the placement of the four numerals and their associated snowflake markers, which had moved closer to the labels - on the version above here, much closer - than where they were set on the CC3+ drawing. Interestingly, on the higher res printout I did, the texts hadn't altered at all, so far as I could tell, but the earlier placement of the four markers and labels was wrong; not by so much as the lower res version above, but very noticeably all the same. Which does make me think still that it's been primarily a proximity issue along the same horizontal lines (maybe because both the snowflake and ocean text labels were placed using the same horizontal snap-grid placement). Odd the snowflakes should have dragged the numerals with them all the same, as they're not grouped, just individually placed, and the numerals aren't all on the same horizontal lines. Just one of life's little mysteries, perhaps ?

I had another look at the Locations map again today anyway, and decided to try moving just the numerals and markers further out from the labels, and that seems to have worked OK:

The separation is now only about twice what it was previously, yet as you can see, the difference in where they appear is very much greater, and almost exactly where the markers currently are in the FCW file, as well as on the higher res jpg and printout I tried.

Final checking of the accompanying texts is still to complete, but I'm hopeful of having the set ready to submit by maybe tomorrow or Saturday.

Map four of my ten small settlements is Toresk Village:

I've updated my WIP topic with this map today too, and there's a higher-res version in my Gallery as well. The FCW and PDF notes follow:

Map two in my group of small settlements is for Bruga's Hold in Hex 403:

I've updated the notes in my WIP topic about this set as well, and there's a larger version of the map in my Gallery too. Meanwhile, the FCW file and PDF notes are here:

So at last, everything's ready, and has now been submitted to the Atlas. This is the final version of the Evth Pass map (higher res version in my Gallery):

Quite a journey from those three rolled dice that began it all!

Next time, the deities of randomness seem to be dictating a return to Peredur, in its northeastern part, somewhere in the Godtagel area, apparently...

The basis behind the Inkwell Ideas setting that I wanted to reuse here was as a sort-of druidic experimental station, a series of caves magically enhanced to allow the growing of normal surface food crops underground, protected from conditions outside, and defended by a group of willingly-summoned elementals. This seemed very suitable for this area, with its short summers and long winters, and although not illustrated specifically on the map, the notes for the area indicate there are a lot of other small caves across the Petroc Hills, which might also be used in future, if the experiment here works. It's all being done in secret for now though, in case something goes wrong, hence the defences. I tweaked a few items, added one or two more, and decided, partly based on the general layout, that it had originally been one of the old Hill Dwarf mines of the district. It's often amazing how much just seems to come together from a couple of initial thoughts in this way. I even contemplated having it be set-up just for growing grain crops for a different flavour of whisky at one point, but decided against that eventually. If they can grow the food underground, that'll leave more field space for cereal crops to make whisky outdoors, after all!

As indicated earlier, I'd be opting for the Jon Roberts Dungeon style from Annual 54 for the mapping of the Caverns, and although I had to make use of a couple of DD3 symbols to round-out what was needed, most of what was required could be found, or repurposed, from that style alone. So to the map:

The earthy colouring worked to reinforce the whole "druidic growth" concept, and it's a style that works well in showing what's outside and inside, as having greenery, bushes and trees available. To keep the interior clear enough for GM use though, I decided against adding specific plants there, just some fungi (which are one key aspect of the Growing Cavern area), and also went with a quite strong scaling grid, as distances here can be important. I continued the grid over the water, because half of Lowest Cavern is underwater, and characters could well end up stuck there (the underwater areas including the annexe chamber beneath Upper Cavern - the dashed white lines show bits of the lower caves under Upper Cavern). Those circled "T's" in Upper Cavern are indeed rotating Dwarf-made round trapdoors, dropping down to the barred-cell cave off Middle Cavern, and into the plunge-pool off Lowest Cavern. In Growing Cavern, the four labelled statue-like features are the magical items that keep the place functioning, as explained in the map notes, and which again have vaguely elemental aspects to them.

Probably the biggest mapping challenge was constructing the steps, which did start to feel a little as if they were having to be carved from the native stone by hand for a while! Each has to be on a separate sheet to enable the effects on them to be adjusted to create the illusion of showing which are higher and lower, with the added pain of trying to hide the dark glow at the "back" edge of the top step. They're not perfect, but to my eye at least, they seem perfectly functional to show what they are on the map.

One further troublesome aspect was the abysmally slow redraw times when using the "Trace" command here, because the caves are all drawn as fractal polygons. For reasons I won't pretend to understand, the command insisted on repeatedly following the entire Caverns outline every time it was used, regardless of which way I'd told it to go, or how small an area I was trying to trace. There wasn't any choice though, as aside from needing different floor textures in places, I had to create masks to Color Key cut-out the unneeded segments of the grid, due to the way caves are drawn in this style. Worked in the end, but quick it ain't!

A useful feature of the Inkwell Delver dice set is that one of the six dice is designed to show entrances to the subterranean systems. So for the first time in this mapping project, rather than simply devising a suitable way in to the dungeon or caves separately, the first segment of this map - from the exterior through to that first long, straighter, northeast-southwest passageway in Growing Cavern - came directly from the dice design. We'll get the chance to see another of these entrances in action next time.

As for next time, a new continent beckons, the largest on Nibirum, Doriant, and a location somewhere in the Duin Elisyr region...