A few months ago, I posted a ruined temple that I designed in the Forest Trails annual. The folks who live in a nearby village often come during the day to picnic on the river banks to the south, southeast, and east of the ruins, but never on the ruins itself. There are rumors that the site is haunted (and plenty have claimed to have seen ghosts there at night). Plus, the place is overrun with snakes, some dangerously venomous.

I have finally designed the levels below the temple's ruins. This is mostly designed with Creepy Crypts, with heavy assist from DD3 and a few elements from Dungeons of Schley. I will post more images of this in my galleries.

The basement areas of this ruined temple have been taken over by an unsavory religious cult known for developing poisons as part of their worship of a serpentine god, and using them in their kidnappings and assassinations for hire. (The "ghosts" the townsfolk swear they've seen is actually smoke coming up through the ruined steps.)

The cultists mostly live in the first level of the temple's subterranean levels. They don't actually use the mossy steps (they enter and exit through lower levels). The original priests' chapel has been replaced by an alter to their serpentine god, and several sections of this level are dedicated to raising the venomous creatures.

The stairs in the northwest corner room also descend to the second level of the basement, but that's where they end. Here there are prison cells used to hold the cultists' kidnapped victims. One room is dedicated to raising the rats used to feed the pet snakes. A room that was once used to prepare the deceased for entombment has now been converted into a laboratory for the production of poison. There are also catacombs with crypts of the original temple's religious leaders. It's unclear whether the new cult also buries anyone in the crypts [maybe I will put a pile of bones in one of the sarcophagi that have been picked clean by the gelatinous cube in level three], but they do use one of the tombs for its secret use: the secret stairs in the southeastern-most tomb that descend to the third level. (Oh, the sewer pipes from Sinister Sewers are used to bring in fresh water from the river.)

The third and final level is mostly the real entrance/exit used by the cultists (though one "waste management" area brings in a gelatinous cube to keep things hygienic). Here, the stairs from the crypts above lead to a room with a tunnel to the north where the true entrance is located far away from prying eyes. But a secret door also leads to a winding stair: 506 stairs that descend another 380 feet to a secret room where a teleportation portal is located.

I played around with Edge Fade settings on the TERRAIN ROCK sheet and settled on an Edge Width of 4 units, an Inner Opacity of 100%, and an Outer Opacity of 25%. (In comparison, the grass, earth, and other textures have a width of 15 units, an Inner Opacity of 100%, and an Out Opacity of 0%.)

Here's how it looks full size, plus a few coastal zooms.

Last month, I shared a map of a sewer system that I developed. @Lorelei recommended that I submit it to the Community Atlas...but I figured I couldn't submit a sewer system for a town without also creating the town to go with it. This one took a few weeks.

I have a hard time breaking out of orthogonal map-making. This very much looks like it was laid out on a grid, something I will have to focus on not doing next time. I was constrained, though, by the fact that the sewers were already designed and I had to make the rest of the city fit the sewers instead of the other way around.

I decided to design it in the Darklands City style. I had to include city cliffs (they're already in the sewers map, after all), and originally I considered using the City Cliffs like Ralf did in the second episode of his five episode Big City Project tutorial. Then I discovered that the rocky outcrops already in Darklands City make fantastic cliffs when stacked on one another, and there are even sheets already set up for the base, middle, and top cliffs. Honestly, the cliffs are probably my favorite part of the map. The waterfalls come from Forest Trail.

My town also has two other water features: irrigation canals to bring water to the nearby farms outside of town, and an aqueduct system to bring water from the river into the town. Of course, the aqueducts should be covered (to keep blown leaves, bird poop, etc. from contaminating the water supply), but the water looks so pretty. (I put the aqueduct water on another sheet to tone down some of the effects that wouldn't work with such a narrow band of water.) There's a mill on the water designed so that the paddles scoop up buckets of water to deposit into a reservoir that feeds the aqueducts. I couldn't find a mill symbol, so there's a big tower for the reservoir, and its roof extends enough to cover the paddle wheel. ;-)

The "downtown" area includes a market square (24), temple (20), city hall (21), city watch and jail (22), and courthouse (23). The buildings around it are all merchant shops, while farmers and other merchants set up stalls in the plaza on market days. Building #16 is the community baths, located by necessity along the aqueduct line.

The upper portion of the sewer system is also shown, including the "Great Maw" (the giant pit where refuse is thrown down to be devoured by a Black Pudding), and the runoff where cleaned water is returned to the sea.

If you recall, at the lowest level of the sewers, a tentacle creature has taken up residence. I decided to put a mage's home in the town above that area (27). Still undecided: did the mage move to the town to study the creature that lurks beneath it? Or is he responsible for the creature? Perhaps he conjured it one night, summoning from the Outer Planes, and it escaped into the sewers where it eventually grew too large to escape its new home. In any event, the mage has grown prosperous by selling some of the green waste that the creature produces (as evidenced by the valuable exotic trees in his garden that he was able to afford to import). Turns out, that green goo is a useful ingredient in a lot of potion recipes, and other wizards (or their apprentices) travel to the mage to buy his green goo. They often stay at the Black Cat Inn (26) -- the proprietor named it as a sort of tongue-in-cheek reference to a wizard's familiar.

Still to come: I want to make sure that every city is properly on the correct layer for the "All Buildings with Color" effect to work properly. (This style did not come with those layers, and for some reason the "Add city layers" command didn't work, so I added them manually.)

Thoughts? Recommendations?

I have a habit of showing my work-in-progress and then forgetting to post the final. So here it is with two different roof styles. (For comparison, you can see the version done in the Marine Dungeons style in my gallery.)

Oh, and here's the FCW if anyone is interested in using it.

Here are the new steps, each with their own sheet with a Glow (Outside) with a Strength of 12.5% and a Blur Radius of 2. I didn't add the Glow effect to the lowest step, thinking it would be flush with the plaza, but maybe I should add it. I first tried it was a stone fill that was one shade lighter than the plaza, but I think it looks better one shade darker.