As you'll likely be aware already @aulyre, there's a vast and still-growing literature on the archaeo-historical aspects of the region, and you could easily spend years simply wading through as much of that as you'd care to - I have, certainly, starting back in the 1990s!

Of my own maps of this region, I posted a selection just over a year ago on the Forum here. Unfortunately, this was shortly before the Forum underwent a major revamp to its current incarnation, so the post now looks rather a mess, as we had to embed images rather differently then, using an "[Image_12345]" coding notation, but the images are all still there, just no longer where they were meant to be in relation to the text, so you have to hop up and down to get the full gist properly.

As for references, a couple of atlases I found extremely helpful when I was starting out might be of interest, if you haven't come across them yourself as yet, and a couple of texts.

• Michael Roaf's Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (published in 1990), which I was thrilled to discover on checking this evening is NOW FREELY AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD COMPLETE (!!!), and with a string of appended corrections, thanks to the kind offices of its author, via the Academia website, as of 2017! Link. I think you will need a (free to join) Academia membership to download the full PDF, but that isn't too onerous. For all its date, it is an astonishingly inspirational work in my opinion.
• The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World edited by Richard Talbert (2000), which unfortunately isn't available online yet, though it is available for iPad as a download (as of 2013). Otherwise, the hardback version is available to purchase alternatively, which I think still comes with an additional CD-ROM, according to some comments I found online (the library copy I borrowed more than a decade ago had one), including this Wikipedia page, although some of the links from that are now broken. GBP prices (brace yourself!) for the hardback start at about 265 GBP (Amazon UK lists), but the iPad version is a less fearsome circa 15 GBP instead (albeit you'll also need an iPad, so swings and roundabouts...). The Princeton University Press pages for these are here: hardback version -- iPad version. The related Ancient World Mapping Centre website is probably worth a visit as well, albeit they've been having major site issues this year, so a number of links don't work currently. Most of their Free Map pages are still functioning, however, and are certainly worth a look too. The Atlas is another astonishing work, if for a somewhat later period than Roaf's text.
• Civilizations of the Ancient Near East edited by Jack Sasson (1995) is a monumental four-volume collection of specialist essays on all manner of topics for the region. The length and quality of individual contributions can be variable at times, but it is a wonderful means to find out at least some basics on a vast array of topics, with follow-up references to help get you started looking for more. Irritatingly, I can't even find an online description or a complete review of it, though I suspect barring extreme good fortune, it will mean accessing a library copy now anyway.
• Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux (1993) is probably THE classic single-volume introductory text to the region and period. It is, incredibly, and despite its date, still currently in print! You can also find it available to borrow or purchase via the Internet Archive here (limited preview version otherwise).

This has taken a lot longer than I'd expected to compile today, so I won't try to say more; there's enough to be going on with already, I suspect in this little lot!

On a roll, so Palace 7 was also done with a black-and-white style package, this time the Inked Dungeons one from CA160 last April, the first time I've used this. I must admit I wasn't too sure about it at first, as it uses a quite "busy" looking fill to mask the outside of the subterranean walls. However, when I selected the various snowflake images for the Palace designs, this flake was probably the most obvious to pick, because it looked so different to many of the others, as elongated on one axis. That in turn set me thinking about larger ice crystals, as the central Crystal Garden area here was a single huge ice crystal on the original image, so far as I could tell. So now this Palace has unusually large ice crystals visible along and buried in its translucent outer walls as well, simply because the style pack set me thinking while I was drawing the map!

In addition, Inked Dungeons comes with relatively few symbols, which isn't so much of a problem with these large-area Palace drawings, since as I've noted above, there can be problems where the symbols have too much interesting surface detail from other style packs. So I used only one, actually designated as a brazier, but repurposed here as its opposite - the fountain in the Crystal Garden - and just drew the few other more obvious features, as has been the case for many of the other Palaces.

The final step once more was to offer the option of a simple blue cover to colour the whole map, as previously, intended to be a toggle option in the Atlas version, and as with Palace 6, added using a blue rectangle with a strong Transparency Effect. Because it stops me panicking when I open the file and find it's just a blank white emptiness otherwise (see the Palace 5 notes above!).

Thanks folks!

@Fersus - Yes, I wondered about a hexagonal grid. However, over the past year, I've been involved in discussions about the use of movement grids in RPGs more generally elsewhere, and the consensus has been almost exclusively for square grids (or occasionally none at all). They're such a feature of most published dungeon maps, it's hard to break away from that, I suspect. Plus because hexes don't scale equally in all dimensions, a square grid works better for estimating distances for the GM by-eye.

Given the whole point about participating in the Atlas, and contests like this too, is to try different things, at least from time to time, my intention was to try to make each of the ten Palace maps different. So for the second one, I picked the Old School Blue style from CA12 (also known as the Create Your Own Style pack). Blue, ice, seemed apt!

For continuity, I've decided to stick with the Mason Serif Bold font that comes with CC3+, however.

Thanks Quenten! I started trying to analyse what the influences had been on this set, and while some were obvious enough, the more I thought it over, the more came to mind, mostly from folklore, mythology and fantasy fiction (which latter tends to rely heavily on both the former, of course). Plus as I said back when I started mapping "my" bit of Alarius a couple of years back, I've been working on parts of what was to go into that for decades, and the same is true here too, as essentially another part of the same thing.

Meanwhile, back to Palace 8, which is finally completed. This is it:

There have been a number of additions and amendments, mostly of a cosmetic nature, beyond the anticipated scattering of symbols and other internal additions, and the labelling, of course. The most substantial change was probably to reduce the overall size of the map somewhat, as the whole felt a little unbalanced at the top and base of the drawing once everything had been added. That was a bit fiddly, because there are always quite a number of entities to amend on the Map Border and Screen Sheets, as well as things like the Background Sheet, whose rectangle was also then too large.

I then had to change the fill for the frame. For all it might be thought a little incongruous as not having a very icy/snowy look, I rather liked the default wood-block pattern on the earlier version, and it looked a serious contender to remain, right up until the point where I adjusted the size of said frame. At which point, the lower border (only) suddenly had a dark horizontal line running right through it, because of the way the fill fits itself into drawings at the scale it had. And that quickly became A Distraction, so sadly it had to go.

The new fill for the frame is Water Green from this CA54 style, scaled-up to prevent it tiling, and holding up remarkably well in doing so, I thought. I was really just experimenting with it, but as soon as it dropped in with the light Bevel Effect, I knew it had to be The One!

Map eight of my little group of settlements is for Brightlawn Hamlet:

And here are the FCW and PDF files for it:

having updated my WIP topic and added a higher-res map version to my Gallery, as normal, too.

Map seven from my set of ten is for another hamlet, Rularn:

A more extensive set of notes than usual have been added to my WIP topic elsewhere on the Forum (as I remembered to make some screenshot versions as I was constructing this one!), with a higher-res image in my Gallery. The FCW and PDF notes files follow:

Hex 1307, Rularn: Instead of simply presenting the seventh map in this series briefly, as previously, it occurred to me in time to actually make some preparations for it, that this would also be a suitable point to illustrate how the maps in this set have been prepared. This is meant as a sort-of WIP topic, after all. And yes, this is a bit late to remember it!

As those who've followed some of my previous attempts at WIP topics here will know, I tend to work from hand-drawn sketches, scanned in and used as a base template for my CC3+ maps for the Atlas. These small settlement maps this time though have been done in a slightly different way, without a scanned-in bitmap to trace or adapt from.

That's in large part because of how the layouts for these villages and hamlets were arrived at, using the Shadowdark RPG random mapping systems. By rolling a few dice, and seeing where some lie in relation to one another on the tabletop once thrown, a basic settlement layout can be generated. I varied that system slightly, by drawing on other random tables in those rules to further detail some elements, and for the hamlet-sized places - such as Rularn - I reduced the options for how many features there could be in them.

This first stage generated the following information, including a sketch-idea for the map:

So there are two districts, on the north and south sides of the hamlet, with the keyword names "Low" and "Slums" having specific references in the rules for what tables to use to decide on the features in each. From these can be derived a number of points of interest, sometimes for the settlement as a whole. I've added notes based on the location already decided for Rularn from the Whispering Wastes overland map, and, based on the number of items in the settlement, a rough tally of houses for the whole place, generated using the old Judges Guild "Village 1" book, as noted back in the post about Ljungby Village above.

From this base, another rough sketch was prepared, using the Whispering Wastes drawing for the specific hex involved, to get an idea of how the various component parts might fit together:

Rather than using this as a template, it's really just a loose idea at this stage. The reason the stone circle and henge bank haven't been added yet is because I need to see what the layout looks like in the CC3+ map first, and can then determine where exactly those will lie. The Mill, a specific addition here beyond what the random rolls have identified, might not survive at all, or might be moved, or converted to a windmill instead, say, to comply better with the stone circle feature. The line of the Cindaros River in the sketch is likely too close to the main settlement for everything to fit inside a particularly circular surround presently.

Moving next to the CC3+ mapping, I decided from the beginning that all these small settlements were going to be placed on identically-sized maps, 800 by 650 feet in size, determined using the sizes the various settlement-sized maps were for the Faerie City of Embra, referred to in the Bruga's Hold post earlier in this topic. The settlement itself would always be the main focal-point for the drawing, which would leave parts of the outlying areas available for a variety of additions or enhancements, including notes and elements such as the title, scalebar and compass pointer.

The first things to do included adding a title, dropping in the river lines, and the main road that connects elsewhere, with a label for that too. I put these basic names in so early to remind myself which map I'm doing, aside from other things! This also means I remember to check things like river and road widths from any map intended to connect, however distantly, with the current one. Sometimes these might not be the same - rivers tend to widen downstream, for instance, and roads don't need to stay identically-sized along their lengths either. However, this sets things up, which can always be changed later. These WIP map illustrations are deliberately under-sized compared to Forum norms, to clarify they're really only indicators of what was going on, rather than cluttering the topic up with images larger than is really needed for that.

Ordinarily, I'd next add the highlighted buildings for shops, etc., as these are typically the larger properties, or the ones that better-define the settlement's overall layout, and other notable features such as any market place. Here though, everything has to be constrained by an outer henge bank and ring of standing stones, so I set up a new TEMPORARY Sheet and Layer, and drew in a template circle on those to show where it was meant to be (and after a bit of trial and error, it must be said):

With that prepared, the identified properties can be added:

Since this settlement is at the end of the road, and had already been suggested as rather run-down, that seemed the ideal chance to make use of a few of the ruined buildings in this style, one of which - as used - had the form suitable for a rectangular warehouse-like barn/shed. Thus that shape and size became the template for the drawn properties alongside it, apparently in a better state of repair. I've also brought in a copy of the water mill already featured elsewhere in this series, although as we can see, it's now on the lesser of the two rivers here, to keep it within the henge-ring.

Adding the rest of the houses, with a few ruined ones, fleshes-out the settlement, after which more smaller roads and paths to the doors can be added, together with some larger expanses of paved yards, by the mill and baker's, the inn and the warehouse sheds, including a few walls:

It may not be that obvious at this smaller resolution, but I've also added chimneys to various of the properties. After which, the henge can be added, and the temporary green circle hidden (not deleted for now, just in case!). Having already experimented with the Solid 10 bitmap fill and some lighted bevel effects for the barrow mounds in the Osalin map previously, I simply reused that again here, copying the effect over to a new HENGE sheet. Somewhat to my surprise, it looked fine without further tweaking, although the colouring overall was too close to the rivers, so I decided to add something by copying the henge polygons onto the LAND FEATURES sheet and then changing their fill style first to use the CA100 Grass texture (which was OK, but not ideal), and then to what had been problematical earlier in the sequence of villages, the Road Dirt fill, which this time gave enough texturing "under" the semi-transparent henge polygons to help the henge segments stand out as NOT rivers (or ribbon lakes)!

With the henge in place, now just the standing stones were needed, and a similar technique could be applied to create those, a simple polygon with a suitable lighted bevel effect, although I did also darken up the shadows to help them stand out more, as at this scale they needed to be small. I opted for the bitmap Solid 30 fill style for them, again to give them better definition. Although at this reduced size, they appear as little more than dots, this view shows the northern half of the ring completed:

After which things started to move on apace, completing the standing stones' ring, then adding some labels, and starting to fill-in the gaps, with a few more changes. This shows a typical partway-through shot of the process. The Mill label has been moved to add some small fields and other vegetation as well.

From here, things tend to progress more organically, as fresh ideas surface along the way for how to make the place feel more "alive".

Followed by the rest of the labels, as the final map (now at its full Forum resolution):

One further minor tweak was made to the shadows on the standing stones, to darken them up more, and help them stand out better against the vegetation, with a new scroll and a further note or two on the nature of the settlement.

And suddenly, there are only three more settlements to go!

Welcome aboard Reddog!

Yep, following the tutorials and working through the manual's exercises is definitely the only useful way to start. Critical comments about the program you'll find scattered over the Internet elsewhere are all about people NOT doing this, and blithely assuming the program's going to be identical to the basic graphic manipulation programs they've "always" used before. IT ISN'T!!! This is actual CAD mapping and draughting software, and if you're not familiar with how that operates, you will struggle. I did, certainly, until I watched some of Joe Sweeney's videos (there weren't any others at that stage, as this was some years ago, back when it was still CC3, not the current CC3+).

As far as map scaling's concerned, forget ALL about what size you need this or that bit of the map to be once you have it printed out, as this is IRRELEVANT to the creation of maps in CC3+. What you MUST do is create a map to the actual size the map's supposed to be using the relevant real-world map units - which for floorplan/Dungeon Designer style maps are either in feet or metres (you can decide which during set-up for that map). Make sure everything fits in your map to that scaling only. If the grid squares are meant to represent 5 feet, for example, make them 5 feet square in your CC3+ map.

When you've finished the map and want to print it out, that's the first time you need concern yourself as to what size things will be in the physical, printed-out world. If you need advice on that, or anything else connected with map scaling, see this excellently thorough blog post by resident expert and Forum mod Remy Monsen, which tells you all you'll need to know and more on the matter!

Further progress now, with the contours mostly mapped-in, except for the highest peaks. I felt it was growing less easy to separate the upper contours, so experimented with some colouring alternatives. The range of fill-colour options in this style is very limited, so that meant trying out some effects as well, including one or two I've only rarely tested previously. Naturally, everything remains in flux at this stage. However, this option seemed satisfactory, using a combination of an RGB Matrix Process, retaining the Glow to highlight the contour's edge, and a Blend Mode using the Phoenix setting:

As should be obvious enough, I've also hugely toned-down the contour-edge Glows since my previous post, when I was still trying to get the contour shapes right, and being able to quickly identify which was which was more important. The "woodcut look" of earlier has its attractions, and has been used to good effect in other maps presented on the Forum over the years. It seemed much too strident for the Worthington style's subtle colouring at this scale though.

Whilst blundering about among the effects, I chanced to find there was an inactive Texturize effect on the whole map. Turning it on did nothing obvious, even when I changed its settings. When I looked closer at what file it was reaching for though, the reason became obvious, as the file it was trying to find was located at D:\Programme\ProFantasy\CC3\Filters\Images\CA91 Texture.png. The correct file location for a standard CC3+ installation should be C:\ProgramData\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\Filters\Images\CA91 Texture.png. So I changed that, with this result (without altering any of the default settings):

While quite subtle, especially at this res, it does create a somewhat different appearance, as might be expected, rather like watercolour paper. I do like how it softens everything, even if I'm not sure if it'll stay to the end of the mapping at this point. While mapping, it'll have to stay off for best clarity (as it affects EVERYTHING in the drawing, of course, including the bitmap version I'm copying-in details from).

Further exploration showed a possible reason why this global effect had been turned off (and perhaps forgotten, given the non-standard file-path), as there's also a TEXTURE sheet, which has a Transparency effect, set to 70% opacity by default, and another copy of the texture PNG on it. This is right at the top of the list of sheets (actually, of course, at the bottom in the Drawing Sheets and Effects pane), so it affects the entire map and its frame. Naturally, this is why the whole map looks quite misty, and a little faded. I ran a series of experiments with both the global effect setting and this TEXTURE sheet on or off (hidden or shown for the sheet), though I'm undecided as to which is preferable still. I suspect I'll need to see how the finished map looks before making a final decision. The contours alone probably aren't enough to judge by at present.

All of which lengthy fiddling about only left enough time to add the highest mountain peaks, with a further colour change, this time making use of the CA91 Ice bitmap fill for a suitable pale topping. With whole-map texturing and the texture sheet visible:

and with just the texture sheet shown:

Without the global texturing is certainly clearer. As noted above though, have to see how I feel about it another day 😊.

I know some folks here are keen Cthulhu-esque fans, and some may already know that Chaosium has just released a new "Arkham" supplement for their Call of Cthulhu RPG. When checking the webpage for more details on the book today, I spotted that as quite often, they've made some elements available for free online viewing and downloading (as PDFs), including four new maps, two of Arkham, one of the city's surrounds, and - still more interestingly to me at least - a new map of Massachusetts for 1922 which has on all the main Lovecraftian additional settlements! All these are beautifully done in period style, and you can find the download links here, by scrolling down to almost the end of the page.

There's also a four-page PDF copy of the Arkham Advertiser newspaper available there too, again prepared in period style by the two leading lights of the H P Lovecraft Historical Society, Andrew Leman and Sean Branney, long noted for the excellence of their facsimile period physical products!