What a cool idea for a thread! I've been working on the lore for my world for five or six years, but it's been less than six months that I've finally started to learn Campaign Cartographer, so I don't have a lot of maps to go with the lore.

But here's a map of a Greco-Roman inspired temple (more images in one of my galleries), and the lore to go with it:

This religion is loosely inspired by Greek/Roman mythology -- temples are in that style, and the gods are depicted in art wearing tunics and togas, even though the populace doesn't wear that kind of attire anymore. I will give you a condensed overview. In the pantheon, there are eight major gods who are consorted couples that rule over the four spirit realms: the heavens, the seas, the land, and the underworld. Iliós, the Sun God, is the god of thunder and lightning, battle and war. His consort, Vasilissa, is the goddess of governance, law, and civilization. Together with their adult children they reside in a palace of gold and fire, called Aurinko, which traverses the sky as the sun. The gods of the sea are Thálassi, god of salt water and oceans, and Révma, goddess of freshwater lakes, rivers, and streams. They reside in Helmi, a spherical palace carved from a giant pearl that traverses the oceans of the seas and the skies as the moon. The gods of the land are Thirío, god of animal life on the earth, and Iouloúdia, goddess of plant life. The live in Trypóno, a palace on earth most often shown as being nestled in a hallow of a giant oak tree. The gods of the underworld are Dikastís, the Judge, Adjudicator of Souls, and his wife Éleos, goddess of mercy. They live in Kólasi, an icy, gloomy palace in the underworld. It is said that evil sinners are punished in Kólasi when they die until they are allowed to reincarnate to try again. The spirits of ordinary folks reside in Helmi until they reincarnate. The most heroic are brought to Aurinko to reside with the gods for eternity. (This is a very condensed version that doesn't go into the details of the twelve lesser gods who are their children.)

This temple is meant to worship the entire pantheon. Outside, the barbecue pits are used by temple priests to sacrifice offerings to the gods (great bulls, stags, sheep, and other animals). The gods "feast" on the aromas and then the earthly remains are served to the poor. The pool in front is meant to honor the gods of the sea. The lion statues on the stairs represent the gods of the land, as does the bronze inlaid tree symbol inside the temple. At the peak of the temple is a statue representing the gods of the heavens. In front of the temple there are double rows of eight columns, representing the eight principle deities. There are 17 columns on the sides (in the Greek style of double the front columns plus one.) Inside the temple, which has two giant statues representing Iliós and Vasilissa, there are four niches, each decorated with mosaics representing the four spirit realms: Aurinko, Helmi, Trypóno, and Kólasi. These mosaics are made from luminescent crystals that shed colorful light -- you can see reflections from these mosaics in the second image above.

That's a super condensed synopsis of one of my world's religions (and one of the two principle religions in the main kingdom that will be a starting point). I'm still in "learning and experimenting" mode with CC3 and haven't designed a whole lot of maps to go with the rest of the lore yet.

I have been working on taking a part of the world I created in Fractal Terrains and recreating it in various CC3 styles. I did a version in the Parchment style, and now I'm working on one in the Mike Schley style. (I was going to wait until it was done, but I just can't contain myself.) When that's done, I will try doing the shaded contours style that Ralf demonstrated in this video:

The portion of my world that I've been experimenting with is a great island nation called the Republic of Lumadair, a democratic republic with elements inspired by the Roman Republic. Here are exports from Fractal Terrains. (Note: this map is about 6,000 miles wide, so the rivers shown should be considered to be only the very largest ones. That said, I may still add more to the island later.)

And here it is again, recreated in CC3 using the Parchment Worlds style:

It is intentionally scant on civilization details other than labeling the capitol and a mysterious and foreboding area of magic.

Not really sure why the botanical garden didn't post properly. Trying again.

I was worried that my temple wasn't looking as cohesive because I was drawing fills and symbols from so many places that didn't quite mesh. In particular, I wasn't happy with how the trees looked. (I also added a gazebo at the top and a botanical garden at the bottom.)

In the end, I decided to try the grass fills and trees from Forest Trail. Here they are without contour patches of other grass shades, at 50 and 100 scale.

And then I tried adding patches of grass of the same fill style, but with a shade higher and lower. I really don't have an eye for this sort of thing. Should I have bigger patches? More numerous small ones. Should they blend in more?

For the botanical garden, I couldn't find flowers among my symbols except for potted plants. It was supposed to be simple so as to not distract from the temple, but I got carried away.

• I made rose bushes by taking bushes from one style and then placing small varicolored bushes from another style on top as roses.
• I made flowers by using weeds from Forest Trail as the stems and then adding varicolored shrubs from another style as the flowers.
• I added a fungi garden using varicolored mushrooms of different sizes (plus a few varicolored fairy ring mushrooms from Forest Trail)
• I was going to use the anemones from Marine Dungeons as a plant, and then thought...why not use them as anemones? So I made a man-made pond for them, plus coral and a few other marine symbols.
• And I added a carnivorous plant. The only one I could find was from the Mike Schley Overland, which is in a very different style. If anyone has recommendations for other carnivorous plants, please let me know.
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I’ve been working on a temple inspired by Greek and Roman architecture, and while I think I’ve made some decisions in areas where I was vacillating, I’m open to feedback.

The temple is for a fictional religion in my campaign that shares elements from Ancient Greece and Rome (in architecture and in how the gods are depicted, like their attire). This temple is therefore not intended to be historically accurate: it intentionally mixes elements that were unique to Greek temples with those unique to Roman temples, and it intentionally deviates from both in certain ways.

I got to learn some new techniques as part of this. I used the Marine Dungeon from the 2021 Annual in large part because they include my favorite pillars, an essential part of a Greco-Roman temple. I used the color key effect for the first time in an actual dungeon (love the bronze inlay symbols). I made an effective use of layers for the first time, combining all of the roof elements from different sheets onto a single “roof” layer (called the “pediment”), which allows me to show or hide the entire roof by hiding or revealing a single layer – basic stuff, but it’s the first time I really paid attention to layers effectively. I also created my own custom symbols for the first time (for reflections from mosaics on the walls illuminated with luminescent crystals used by dwarves in my world to light their subterranean homes). And I played with lighting effects for the first time.

Both Greek and Roman temples used the temple’s pillars provide the ratio for the size of the temple. The space between pillars was always double the diameter of the pillars (except that the middle pillars might have an extra gap between them, sufficient to let two people walk through them side by side). The height of the pillars was ten times the diameter. (In my temple, the pillars are five feet wide, so there’s a ten-foot gap between each and each are 50 feet high.) There were always an even number of pillars in the front, from four to twelve, and the number of columns on the sides was based on the number in front. The Greek formula was double the number in front plus one, while the Roman formula was twice the number of pillars on the front minus one. (For the eight pillars in front of mine, the Greeks would have 17 on the side and the Romans would have 15.)

Greek temples were set on a series of three steps called stylobates, which surrounded the temple on all four sides. The Romans instead had the temple sit on a raised platform called a podium, with an impressive staircase entrance in the front (like the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court building).

I intentionally mixed and matched Greek and Roman features to suit my fancy. I put the three stylobate steps at the base but extended it far in front of the temple to create a plaza area where temple priests in my fictitious religion could ritually sacrifice a wild auroch or boar so that the gods could feast on the aromas before the remains were used to feed the poor. I put then put my temple on a large, marble podium, but then used the Greek formula for the number of columns. (I used marble a lot -- are there any styles with granite fills?) I also used double rows columns because it looked cool, though I have no idea whether I used them in a “proper” Greek or Roman manner.

I also created a fountain or reflecting pool in the plaza, mostly so that I could play with the fun water effects (like the ripples at the fountain walls and the pedestals in the fountain with statues of the gods of the sea). That also gave me a chance to use the submerged bronze inlay effect. The inner wall with ripples had ripples on the outside of the wall, too. I wasn’t sure how to handle that, but I ended up adding an outer wall without ripples as a lower step, and that seems to have worked.

And I created three “barbecue” pits that temple clerics would use for their rituals.

The enclosed building of the temple is called a “cella,” from which we get the word “cell” used for where monks sleep (and later prison cells, and eventually the biological term for plant and animal cells). I added a door to the back room to allow priests to go back there without having to circle to the temple’s back entrance. And I added stairs going down to not-yet-designed crypts, which will include a tunnel connecting the crypts to the basement of the rectory, the building in the lower right. (If there’s a more appropriate Greek or Roman term for a rectory, please advise.)

The niches inside the cella are not historically accurate, to my knowledge. The Greeks and Romans both had rectangular rooms. They niches aren’t meant to be stained glass windows. They have mosaics on the walls that reflect light because they use luminescent crystals that naturally glow.

Here are some areas where I experimented with different approaches:

The Pediment, or Roof

Originally, I wasn’t going to show the roof, but I realized that players might not realize that the portions within the pillars were all under a roof, even the parts not enclosed by walls. So I added a shadow over the portion that would be under the roof, an effect inspired by the trees of the Forest Trail (where you can hide the trees but still show the stumps and the trees’ shadows, so players can know when they are under a tree or hiding behind it).

But then I decided I wanted to be able to show the temple roof, like when I recreate this for a full city. I experimented with different techniques for the roof’s material, and for allowing one side to be a little shadowed.

In one version, I used two different shades of stone from the CA161 Rycroft Town template to show the shadowed side. In the other version, and this is the version I’m leaning towards, I used the stone roofing tiles from CA177 Darklands City template on both sides of the roof, but then placed a black rectangle with a transparency effect (20% opacity) over the shadowed side.

Question: Do you prefer one roof over the other?

Offering Pits

For the sacrificial offering pits, I used a molten lava fill as the base, and then piled on some burnt wood from CA177 Darklands City. That template had some great flames, too. (Originally, the only flames I could think of were Mike Schley’s, which are great but in a very different style.)

The offerings come from the free Bogies Redthorn Tavern symbols, which are great but maybe a little too realistic?

Question: Are the flames too much? Are there other “barbecue” symbols you’d recommend?

Lighting

In a previous thread, I asked if there was a way to have lighting effects without disabling the global sun so that I could have an inside and outside (without having to recreate all of my sheets to have indoor and outdoor versions).

https://forum.profantasy.com/discussion/13954/adding-lighting-effect-without-changing-global-sun

The answer was no, so I had three options: (1) revamp all of my sheets so that the outdoor portions were on sheets after the end of the lighting effect; (2) use semi-transparent colored circles to simulate the effect of the glow from colored lights; or (3) create a separate copy of

That’s what I have so far. Any suggestions? (It’s my birthday, so please be kind!)

Oh, here's the FCW file if you're interested.