@Vir: There are a number of problems involved in understanding climate and how it would behave in circumstances for another planet than Earth with its current layout of continental landmasses, sizes and depths of ocean.

One is we don't really understand how Earth's climate works. There are a lot of theories and models, but many of them fall apart if we try to use them to explain the current Earth in any detail, and/or if we try to use them to explain what we understand about the geological past (this latter is a particularly major problem).

Another is that because we don't properly understand how our own planet's climate operates, when we try to use these theories and models to explain another planet's (and this has happened repeatedly in our own Solar System), they don't really work either.

So the further we get away from the current physical situation for Earth, the more guesswork is involved, essentially. (And there's a lot of guesswork involved in explaining the current situation already!)

Ocean depths different to Earth's create particular uncertainties, as it's clear there are things happening in Earth's deeper oceans that have huge effects planet-wide, but we don't really know why they happen. So when trying to look at a planet like this one, where great areas of the ocean are much deeper over far larger areas than Earth's, it gets to the point of either giving up, or just going with whatever you fancy!

Ocean currents, for example, can flow in completely different directions at different depths - a warm current might be flowing over or under a cold current behaving in this way too. Similar things happen in the atmosphere as well, so while that shouldn't be a surprise, it doesn't mean we really know why things are as they are.

If you need a south to north wind (maybe only seasonally), my advice would be simply invent what seems to you a good reason for why it happens, and if that involves something relating to Earth's climate/weather patterns, possibly only vaguely, just invoke that. If anybody's daft enough to question it, then obviously it's because it's also influenced by the planet's magical field!

If you need ideas based on what happens for Earth, I'd suggest taking a look at places online such as already suggested above here for the geological situation for Earth that's similar to your own planet, with things like the estimates for broad-scale current flows. If you can find a good-quality physical atlas showing similar things for either the past or present (which is a useful definition for "good quality"), that will be just as suitable, dependent on what you prefer.

As the medieval wall thickness point has come up a couple of times recently, it may be worth anyone interested reviewing the comments to this query posted on Worldbuilding Stack Exchange back in Dec 2016. The querent was fantasy mapping using CC3. There are some interesting notes there, though perhaps that of greatest relevance relates to an article, The Construction of Medieval and Tudor Houses in London (link is to the free PDF download of the article), which mentions, for instance, an early 13th century London regulation requiring house walls to be built from stone at least 3 feet thick. That not all were seems to have resulted in collapses, hence the regulation. It discusses other materials and construction methods too for the period from circa 1200 to circa 1600, so is worth reviewing.

Most of the other information readily available online relates to medieval castle walls, so is fairly useless for this kind of discussion, but if you dig around, you can find a few architectural and archaeological reports on individual medieval house buildings if sourcing more precise details for specific cases would be useful for your mapping.

As for the Hommlet D&D setting, the original T1 module makes the particular comment from the settlement's heyday (page 2): "Prosperity was great, for the lord of the district was mild and taxed but little. Trade was good, and the land was untroubled by war or outlaws or ravaging beasts." So, plenty of spare cash floating around, it would seem, at least when the original properties were built and enhanced, before disaster overtook things (it's a D&D module; what did you expect?!).

Which brings us round to the final South Wing, presented as just a single Level. More or less, anyway, as there are a couple of places where the tunnels pass over and under one another, which again helps give a slightly variant appearance to this map. This time, the base layout came from the DF video that actually launched the very first Burrows pieces, as part of their "Dungeons of Doom" KickStarter campaign in June 2017, "Encounter 14: Khri Colony". The Khri are DF's giant insectoid monsters that make such burrows, incidentally. The final amended layout is thus:

A lower height range seemed suitable for the southern side of the Palace complex, given how the surface view sketch was drawn.

So that concludes the extra maps to go with Errynor Map 40, and by the time you read this, I expect I'll be off mapping some far-flung corner of the region or other. Or is it ALL just an illusion...

As promised when I posted about The Cliff map, this is the first of the additional maps to accompany it, covering the Isle of Zariq, the surfaced tip of the huge seamount of the same name in the Frigid or Equine Ocean, some 750 km (470 miles) off the NW Alarius coast of Errynor.

I realise this may come as a shock, compared with many of my previous Atlas contributions, but there's just one version of this island's map!

In-keeping with the element of chance employed to a greater or lesser extent in all my previous Atlas items however, the original base map was generated randomly, using the island generator on the Red Blob Games website. The final map has been reworked to some extent to better fit with what was intended here, though not by much.

The terrain symbols and some names are a little misleading (deliberately), as a quick check of the scales will show the entire island is only circa 4½ km (2¾ miles) in its largest dimension. The terrain is craggy and volcanic, as the surface sits on the main seamount's vent (it extends to the eastern offshore Tooth & Claw Reefs, so is partly underwater). The highest peak however, Lodestone Mountain, rises only 100 m (330 ft) above sea level. Smokes, mists and minor eruptions, including of geysers, are common features. The vegetation cover is generally stunted and windblown. Most of it produces plentiful seeds or berry-like fruits, as it was chiefly brought here by seabirds.

Indeed, seabirds are the main obvious living creatures for newcomers to the place, and those mainly during their spring-summer breeding seasons. There are also many kinds of small insects, arachnids and other invertebrates. There are additional creatures less commonly seen here, as outlined in the map's accompanying PDF and text files, of which perhaps the more intriguing is a tribe of small, blue-scaled, reptilian humanoids, the Kobalts (= D&D's Kobolds), who live in a warren of tunnels beneath Kobalt Mountain. For once, and despite the classic RPG random dungeon design joke from the early days of D&D, that "I just rolled for 40 Kobolds in this broom closet", this was in fact a long-standing decision, not a randomly generated one ?

This first map of the 57 is designed to get visitors into the city from the outside world of the Clack Valley. A comparison with my early sketch for this link-map (shown above) indicates there wasn't much change along the way:

Indeed, its general layout was decided long before any of the other maps in the collection were prepared. However, this final form was among the last to be completed, thanks to needing extracts from some of those others. The frame decoration, as noted, is taken from the CA23 Map Border pack.

In the Atlas version, each of the numbered circles and central wedge-segments, except wedge 8, will link with their appropriate next maps in the Embra set. The outer ring of circles is the connection between the Mortal and Faerie Realms. Each circle leads to its separate Village map, showing how Embra appears from the outside, an appearance which can be different depending on its approach direction. As the names suggest, this outer ring is a compass-rose, representing in order north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west and northwest. GMs can opt to roll a D8, use the party's approach direction, or simply choose one of the Villages, to determine this initial connection. Similarly, when leaving Embra, the last place to be encountered will be one of these eight outer-ring Villages.

Segments 1 to 7 of the inner "pie-chart" connect with their respective "Places" schematic in the City itself, from where individual locations and streets within that type of Place can be accessed and explored. Segment 8 allows a random D8 roll to be used at GM's option to decide where a group may go next, as it provides the re-roll possibility mentioned in my earlier posting here, where the party would then be able to go directly to the Twilight Market from whichever set of Places was finally picked. GMs might alternatively decide by preference, or using the magical Law of Similarity, to select the next location instead. For example, if the party opened a gate to enter a field in whichever Village or Place they were in, by Similarity, they could then go to somewhere from the Enclosed Places selection. Had they been crossing a stream, they could have gone to one of the Crossing Places, and so on.

This is not necessarily all obvious from just the Official Guide schematic, and although there are PDF and text notes with the Atlas map, I felt it would be helpful to add some short comments to the map itself. By chance, the February 2022 issue of the Cartographer's Annual was published while this map was being finalised, providing an ideal opportunity to make use of one of its key elements as "The GM's Little Red Book". The full Official Guide map then, looks like this:

Keep forgetting I should update this topic.

The maps are all complete now, but may still need further tweaking. Like yesterday, when I found I'd blocked one of the staircase exits with a large cabinet, and forgotten to open the main gateway from being a solid stone wall... I tend to spot things like this only when pulling together the accompanying notes, and that process is still ongoing, however. So, subject to minor (if at all) changes later, the second underground level:

The idea for the Operations Room table is that the Atlas version can have the hotspot link to the full size table map - the table design here is simply a reduced-scale version of that actual FCW, with the Effects ranges tweaked to fit its reduced form. Not many surprises with the other rooms, except possibly those curious white passageways...

My thinking here is that in ages past, long before the castle was built, there was a temple or a shrine on this part of the rocky ridge, created to mark the spot where the descent began to the Tomb of the First Wyvern Lord. The straight passageway is then the surviving part of that initial descent into the octagonal room that's now been adopted as the Operations Room. This was the chamber where the body would be prepared for its final burial - vaguely like some of the Egyptian pyramid tombs and the temples near those - and then carried down the long spiral stairway that area 3 here represents to the tomb itself. The spiral winds around two and a half times, so the tomb is about another 100 feet (30 metres) below the surface.

Over time, the temple/shrine fell into ruins, and whatever traces may have survived were swept away centuries later when the castle was built here. There's no sign on the surface now of where the shrine/temple may have been, so the upper part of the straight white (actually marble-tiled) passage isn't simply blocked, it's been effectively erased beyond this small segment.

The spiral is fully intact though, and goes down to link in with that revised 2005-2014 dungeon layout mentioned earlier. That remained remarkably intact in the final version, though it has had a few tweaks and a couple of amendments. The largest of those was to change the original external link from a cavern and horizontal corridor to this spiral. I decided also to reuse it here partly because I was reminded of it through this topic on long, thin dungeon maps I started late last month. So here it is, the Tomb of the Wyvern Lords:

There's obviously something more going on here - the broken segments of the long white corridor leading to the Great Tomb (= First Lord's Tomb), for example - while the perceptive may spot some unusual bodies in Tombs G and H. So by activating the GAME MASTER ONLY Layer suddenly we see still more:

And for anyone struggling to see much at this scale, we can zoom in a little more on the GM's view:

All the room layouts and traps were from the original Dwarven Forge dungeon sets, incidentally, though the wall and floor colouring has been adjusted here because CC3+ let's you do things like that easily! The tombs and most treasure items were also based on resin or metal castings I used in the original layout, though the chariot in the final tomb was actually a standard Celtic-style with a double yoke for two horses. This version has been adjusted to be suitable for a wyvern. Yes, the first Wyvern Lord had a flying wyvern-drawn chariot. And those are the remains of his beloved wyvern.

The critters are a mixture of physical and incorporeal undead types (the latter are transparent, but as that didn't make much impact at full-map size, I also added a green glow to them as well). They only manifest if anything in their tomb is disturbed by something living. While they can be driven off and apparently destroyed, they can't actually be got rid of as long as intruders remain anywhere in the Tomb complex, and will keep coming back for more time after time until then.

Investigations by the current Citadel's occupants didn't progress beyond the first pillared hall. There are tales about this place that have somehow survived, while all memory of where it is has supposedly been lost. So the stone doors were closed, and walled-off, and scarcely anyone now involved beyond the leading commanders is aware such doors exist, let alone what they may lead to. There will be more information on all this when I get round to constructing the text and PDF notes for this level. I hope!

For now, and as some folks here seem to appreciate the flavour notes, a couple of extracts from the current iteration of the places lore from the area map to close with. From the Wyvern Dromes list:

Duck's Ford: Legend holds that this place-name derives from a cunning fellow who once tricked a dangerous bandit (or an ogre, or a demon) into drowning themselves in the river here, by telling them the ducks were just walking across the river bed, not swimming, despite the Jackson's breadth. The river bed is in fact unusually deep in the area, and a ferry runs between both banks regularly by Duck's Ford village on the southern bank, as there is no way to safely cross close-by otherwise. The Duck's Ford squadron base is set on a steep, stepped hill on the northern side of the Jackson, and its wyverns are exclusively blues, because this is the main training base for the big-winged blue wyverns. A key region for breeding blues is in the mountains up the stream that runs through Duck's Ford village, from where new recruits are often brought.

And from the SDF one:

Dunnish: Set on some high dunes by the coast east of the main River Jackson channel's mouth in the midst of the Delta, this is probably the most detested posting of all the SDF locations. Completely surrounded to landward by dense swamp-mangrove forests, this is accessible only by sea for cargo and most personnel movement. However, as the bays near this river channel have clearly long been favoured by raiding barbarians as temporary camp sites - there are remains of numerous such places scattered along the coasts in the vicinity - the base has a higher proportion of military ground and boat-based forces to try to prevent further such incursions. The SDF dome is a very recent addition. Its location affecting the personnel, and the presence of the dense mangrove brakes creating interference at times, means the SDF reports from here are commonly unreliable, and suggestions have been made that it should be moved to the nearby "Jackson Five" island instead. That though would mean having to construct a suitably raised site, as the island is too flat and low-lying towards its north-facing coasts. While the place-name derives from "dune", the personnel sent here darkly say it really originates as the place most likely to be visited by unspeakable horrors, following from one or other folk-story told of a fictional land called either "Ingland" (where a town called Dunnish or Dunwich once fell, or was dragged, into the sea), or "New Ingland" (where a town of similar name was assaulted by an invisible cosmic horror). Two Mark III Lightning Cannons help guard the shoreline, with an experimental ship-borne Mark I Cannon (the oldest, relatively weakest, but more robust type) set on one of the larger craft based here. This has never been tried before, and although tests so far have been satisfactory, it has never been used yet against an enemy raid.

"Jackson Five" island? Yes, the four largest islands and the one large promontory along the outer fringe of the Jackson Delta needed naming, and this seemed the most obvious option to go with...

Next in the sequence is the northeastern Village, Embra - Summerise:

Here, we have a broader River Clack, if still one with a ford. There are fewer buildings this time, although a couple are larger properties, particularly Mide House, treated as an inn in the accompanying map notes. In addition, there are two "interior" toggle options, one for the surface level:

And a second one for the upper floor of the inn:

As these "ghostly" comments may indicate, I'd had a few ideas of my own as to what else could have been happening in the area, partly also drawing on what I'd established for the Sussara Region earlier. One thing I was pretty sure of is that Marshmalika had been the first place attacked when the invaders arrived, given the Bay of Aqesh is a logical landing area, away from the open sea, where storms are more likely, and the most inland section of that would be as good a place as any to begin. I also thought it would be interesting to explore why their main headquarters wasn't on the coast any more, or indeed at an obvious communications centre with a reliable freshwater supply (it's the orange triangle on the Banjar province map in my first post above). Hence the ghosts, which the rank-and-file are most unhappy about. And there are oddly large numbers of poisonous scorpions and snakes where the ghosts are too, which were never found in such profusion previously, or indeed still at other parts away from the old inhabited locations.

So to the small town of Marshmalika itself, or more correctly, its abandoned ruins:

While the style's the same Desert Oasis one as before, other than the sea, I've deliberately muted the choice of other colours here to reflect its ruined status, and had quite a bit of fun creating The Pit and the Pentagram (no, not Pendulum 😉). Hopefully, those will be a little clearer on the higher-res version in my Gallery, and of course, clearer still once in the Atlas. I also chose not to have all the nearby features be on, or fully on, the map, to add to that slightly edgy, uncomfortable feeling, while still keeping it usable as a gaming map. I have to say too, I'm impressed by the versatility of this mapping style, so with just this one Annual issue, it's possible to create a vibrant, living settlement (Sussara Village last time) and an abandoned, ruined one here.

When I started rolling the Inkwell dice sets to generate the base maps for this whole project, I made a few decisions in advance. One was that I wouldn't reuse the same dice-face design twice (I just re-rolled any duplicates), and because I wanted to keep the maps fairly small and manageable, that I'd roll randomly between 2 and 4 dice at a time only. I'd then put together the map based on how the dice fell on the table, once slid together into a whole, naturally. For this "Ruins" set map, I just rolled two dice, and the orange rectangle on this image shows what the dice had set-up:

Most of the major features of the settlement, in fact, as that seemed appropriate. The only real change I made here was that the Temple was originally a group of large, partly or wholly ruined buildings, with trees and an open area in the adjoined block to its right. However, the Desert Oasis style comes with its own ruins, including this one, and it seemed a shame not to use it! The expanded areas were a mix of randomly-rolled options, with logical completions and expansions of roads and trails to fit the landscape around the settlement. Other ruined properties further from the centre aren't shown, as already buried by drifting sand, dust and ash, which is explained in the PDF and text files for the final Atlas version, along with what's going on at the various labelled sites. That House of Bones area is an especially unpleasant reminder that the place was invaded by ruthless folk who cared nothing for the local populace, incidentally (so those sensitive to such things should be warned).

I'm not sure if it's been all this thinking about warfare and ghosts, but my next port-of-call is (as randomly decided) to be on Mate Ora, southernmost of the islands in the Nga-Whenuatoto archipelago, a land where the dead walk, apparently. At least it's still in the southern tropics of Nibirum, so decently warm!

EDIT Feb 3: The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted there were missing internal lines in the Pentagram; images have now been corrected!

The next Place is Dragon Bridge, which of course is a Bridge along the back of a great sleeping Dragon (what else?):

An explanation for how this works is provided by the featured text alongside the map, and the larger elements from that - rocky mounds, golden discs, trees and coloured boulders - have been placed on the map itself. It's clearly been working for a long time, judging by the wooden village that has grown along the Dragon's back, spilling over onto both river banks.

Interiors for the buildings should be available via the usual FCW file toggle in the Atlas (next image), with a second toggle for the upper storey interior of the Honeydew Inn (lower next image):

As commented already, the Dragon is a symbol, from DD3, but greatly enlarged. It's also a varicolor one, with added purple polygons to match the description of the featured text. As ever, there'll be PDF and text file notes available in the Atlas, which will tell you more about those mysterious, subterranean Pixie Roads through Kelliwick Ridge...

Having tackled its nominal twin Isle of Zariq, it seemed reasonable to follow-up with the other seamount-tip Isle of Zaraq next, set amid the Frigid or Equine Ocean, about 620 km (385 miles) off the northwestern coast of Alarius. 

As with Zariq, I based Zaraq's appearance on another randomly-generated island from the Red Blob Games website, altered where necessary to suit what was needed here. 

Originally, I'd thought of reusing the Mike Schley overland style from the Zariq map, and reworking that map as the base template for this one. However, part of my reason for participating in the Community Atlas project was to experiment and explore different mapping styles. So this time, I went with the Volcanic Islands style from CA88 for April 2014 instead.

Indeed, I'd intended to use this style for the more volcanically-active Zariq map, till I discovered it doesn't have any actual volcanoes in it! My vision for Zaraq was with a longitudinal volcanic fissure or crustal weak line along the island's N-S long axis, which would only occasionally produce significant fresh lava, more commonly just giving frequent minor earthquakes, small eruptions, or exhalations of smoke and gas.

There were a couple of false starts. This island, like Zariq, is tiny, at about 5¼ km (3¼ miles) long, with "peaks" just 60 m (200 ft) high, so scaling the mountains to look right as sharp-featured hills needed some experimenting. Once that was sorted, the map overall was completed in a fraction the time the Zariq one had needed, largely thanks to the simpler vegetation tools in the Volcanic Islands pack.

That extra mountains-as-hills work had its advantages though, as the look of the symbols reminded me a little of the conchoidal fractures shown by the volcanic glass obsidian, so Zaraq and some of its surrounding islets became endowed with scattered obsidian deposits. These are especially common on Star Isle, which glitters even from a distance, when the sunlight hits it just right!

Apart from the usual wealth of invertebrates, most of the island's inhabitants are seabirds, chiefly when breeding. There are some nasty little lizards with a poisonous bite too, notably in the more northerly of the dense, low-growing, thorny "forests" of the main island, along with some still more venomous giant water spiders that lurk among the marshes surrounding the solitary freshwater lake further north, creatures whose range extends into the northern fringes of the forest cover and across Landslip Bay - they can raft over water using surface tension.

Landslip Bay is the only sort-of safe anchorage for ships, where the best shingle landing beaches lie under the looming cliffs along its eastern shore - hence the name, and remembering the "earthquakes" motif... For some extra spice, there are three deserted structures on the main island's eastern flank, whose natures are noted in the map's accompanying PDF and text-file descriptions. The inhabitants and structures were determined by random rolls using an old set of island generating tables, slightly modified, from the Judges Guild tome, "Island Book One" published in 1978, incidentally.

As for why the structures are deserted, well, the perceptive may recall there was a "Deep-Sea Hag" symbol shown in the lower right corner of Errynor Map 01, which might be related. We'll be coming back to her again, especially towards the end of this set of maps...