Sometimes things go different than planned. Wasn't happy with my first Empire of the Sun map, built a 1001 nights themed RPG character, started thinking about her origins/ background and ended up with this map. 🤗

Mainly used the Cities of Schley style, with cliffs from the City Cliffs Annual and palm trees from the Spectrum Overland style. Actually did a search for "palm" in the symbols folder to find them...

Manual shadows could be a bit better, but I think they'll do.

Might add Vignettes and two map Keys (one for the main settlement and one for the former slave gnome enclave on the left side) if I have the time.

Tried out the John Roberts City Style to see what I could to with it.

I'd appreciate a few more symbols - it did not look good when I added symbols from other styles so I removed them again.

But all in all I like the look.

Edit: The overlap and gaps in the city walls gave me a bit of trouble. In the end I used simple polygons on the "Walls"-sheet to fix it - sort of. Does anyone have a better idea for touching up the city walls?

Thanks a lot, @JimP

I kept the central cavern almost life-free to emphasize it's demonic nature (the octopus is my stand in-figure for the demon, and if the players actually try the water from the well, they will find it dead-sea-salty).

But you have inspired me to "liven up" the relatively untainted water to the west. Really starting to like the Marine Dungeons style and its possibilities Especially the "swirly" marine sand looks great.

I've added a number of rock columns to give both the players and the demon more cover (the latter is a very good and quiet climber, so it'll also be able to hide on the ceiling).

Also added a slight edge fade between the gravelly cave walls and the earth and darkened the latter a bit.

Think this'll be the final version:

Finished the cavern underneath the monastery.

The four connections to the surface should allow the demon worshipped at the temple to climb up and play cat and mouse with my party. We'll see how it goes.

Think the map looks good but a tad plain - if you have any suggestions for improvement, please advise.

Update. Finished the interiors and also updated the original Map to include the few changes that show with the roofs on.

Will see if I do the water caverns below next.