Level 12

The Temple of Fah is also a repository for a great number of religious and government documents. Many of them are mundane and boring: records of flood patterns and agricultural yields, of famine and other disasters. Vital records for the population: records of live births, marriages, and deaths. Historical accounts of the pharaohs and their accomplishments, and of great wars and battles. Bestiaries, zoological treatises, and other studies of the natural world. Transcriptions of religious documents. Every official government and religious document is stored in the temple, along with a great many other written works.

On Level 12, the senior scribes have private offices to do their work and manage the work of junior scribes in the levels below.

Level 11

On this level, there are six libraries, each equipped with rows of bookcases and numerous desks for junior scribes to maintain records and transcriptions.

Level 10

Level 10 has three shrines to different gods of the pantheon. These shrines may be visited by the pharaohs, top nobles, and senior government officials, but not the general public.

Level 9

Level 9 has two shrines to different gods, and a small room for priests to get ready. Most of the level, however, is occupied by the top third of a massive circular room dedicated to semi-private religious ceremonies such as coronations and royal weddings. At the cardinal points of that chamber, this level has 10-foot wide balconies (with railings) to look down upon the religious practices below.

Level 8

This level has five shrines to the gods. Although the great religious hall described above cuts through this level, there is no access to it from Level 8.

Level 7

This is the main level that non-priests are allowed to enter. It has four entrances from the first landing of the ziggurat (where, outside, there are also four more entrances that descend to Level 6). The central chamber is the 28-foot-high chapel where coronations, royal weddings, state funerals, and other religious ceremonies for the powerful elite are held. Three connected chambers are shrines to the three-part triplet god, with a fourth unconnected shrine dedicated to their mother, the feline-faced cat goddess. Two other chambers are used for the priests to dress or prepare for religious services, or for elite guests like the pharaoh to wait in privacy.

From here we can descend to the tombs in the lowest third of the temple.

Let’s climb up to the second landing, where we are standing on the roof of level 12 facing the side of level 13. There are eight entrances, one on either side of the four exterior stairs. The entrances in the northwest and southeast quadrants go straight ahead into level 13, while the entrances on the southwest and northeast quadrants immediately descend down 10-foot side stairs to level 12.

Level 13

No one actually lives in the temple. There are no kitchens or similar facilities. Even so, occasionally people are allowed to spend the night there. High ranking priests may sleep there after a late-night religious rites, or the night before an early morning religious service. Pharaohs sleep there the night before their coronations, and sometimes on other occasions. Level 13 has four bedrooms set up. Towards the center, there are interior stairs ascending to Level 14 and descending to Level 12.

Let’s go up, and then we will make our way back down.

Level 14

This level has three more bedrooms, plus a fourth room with a strange design carved into the floor tiles. (Is it a summoning circle? A teleportation portal?) Stairs in the center ascend to 15 and descend to 13.

Level 15

This level has three treasure chambers, all connected through a central room where guards are stationed. Stairs ascend to Level 16 and descend to Level 14.

Level 16

This level has a large 30x30 foot chapel in the center of the level. Three side rooms are dressing chambers for the priests. They are sparsely furnished, but have chests containing the priests’ vestments.

The chapel is 20 feet high, cutting into Level 17. A crude representation of the sun (looking more like a bullseye target) is painted on the floor in gold leaf. There are no stairs going up, because there is nothing above this level except for the upper half of this chapel. Here’s what it looks like from Level 17:

There is nothing on Level 18. It’s just solid stonework.

Let’s make our way back down to Level 13 and use the interior stairs to descend to Level 12.

A few months ago, I posted the Temple of Fah, a ziggurat I created to play with the CA209 Stairs and Steps annual. At long last, I have finally designed the interior.

I know this map is ridiculous. Egyptian pyramids only had a handful of rooms for the tombs of a pharaoh and their treasure. Sumerian ziggurats also only had a handful of interior chambers. But I decided to go whole hog and create a sprawling interior complex reminiscent of the classic dungeon crawls I first experienced with D&D in the early 80s. (My first introduction to the game was December of 1979.)

Here’s a side view of the exterior to give you a sense of the entrances:

There are two landings before reaching the very top of the ziggurat. The first is on level 7, standing on the roof of level 6, and the second is on level 13, on the roof of level 12. The entrances on each landing are to the left and right of the exterior stairs continuing up. The 10 feet wide doors are designed to be concealed for aesthetic purposes, blending in with the side of the ziggurat when shut, but they aren’t exactly hidden or secret.

The landings divide the ziggurat into three sections. The top-most section is primarily used by priests and religious leaders. The middle section has chapels and shrines that the royal family, wealthy nobles, and elite government workers are invited to for private religious celebrations, including weddings and coronations. The general public is never invited inside. Instead, religious leaders stand on the first landing of the temple to lead the masses gathered before the temple in their religious ceremonies. The lowest section contains the tombs of great pharaohs and powerful religious leaders.

I decided to design the interior rooms and passageways using the color key knockout effect that @amerigoV describes in this thread. The walls are granite from the CA149 Beaumaris Castle annual. Most of the other fills and symbols come from the CA150 Ancient Tombs annual.

Here’s an example of a level with the effects turned off:

Each level of the ziggurat is 10 feet above the level below. The rooms and passageways inside are mostly 8 feet high, leaving two feet of stone for the ceiling (or the floor for the level above).

Let’s go inside!

Following my test runs with the village of Greenwood Falls (population 920) and Redway Hill Township (population ~3,500), here's my attempt at a major city: Wolfwell Falls (population ~55,000).

This is what Watabou gave me to work with:

And this is what I came up with:

Here's a close-up of the Castle District, which I figure is a bit more upscale.

(I kind of messed up the river there. I when I did the "Change like drawing tool" command, I accidentally wasn't on the River/Water sheet, and I think when I fixed it I messed up the top layer or something.)

The nicer neighborhoods have a lot more greenery. Most neighborhoods have more dirt than greenery, and the area by the docks is muddier.

As predicted in the Redway Hill Towship thread, the longest part was redrawing the secondary roads. According to the Info: Count tool, there are 59 paved roads and 948 unpaved roads! I hope I successfully converted and/or deleted-and-redrew all of the roads. I had to do all of that, and also create a handful of special buildings, before being able to convert everything left to be the regular buildings. If you see any really weird buildings, it might be something I didn't properly convert to whatever it was supposed to be before turning it into a building.

I should draw a lot more fields -- the ones on the north side of the city won't be enough to sustain a city of 55,000 people! (Also, I just noticed that I call it "Wolfwell Hall" on the map instead of Wolfwell Falls. Gotta fix that.)

This was super educational. Thank you! I definitely plan on rewatching. Lots of new commands and techniques to study.

Here are some thoughts I jotted down on potential topics for future Live tutorials. Apologies if some of these exist already (and if they do, could someone point me in the right direction?). If you'd prefer a new thread for these suggestions, please let me know and I can move these suggestions to that thread.

• Build a castle, inside and out (like CA149 Beaumaris Castle) – might require multiple tutorials like the Big City series did.
• Vertical Dungeons / Side Views
• Advanced Drawing Tool Techniques (drawing commands like control-for-smooth with mirrored polygon tools, parabolic polygon, Bezier, cubic poly, chained arc, multipoly tool) – many are mentioned here and there in other tutorials but could be helpful to have a whole video about these techniques to have one video to rewatch.
• Elven Village with connected tree houses (SS5 Elven assets, maybe with a custom-made Rivendell-inspired palace)
• One Day World Builder tutorial video
• CA92 Real World Vector Data (how to import, examples for using like maybe a historical map or a post-apocalyptic map)

I had other ideas, but I think they’re more for future annuals or monthly symbols instead of Live tutorials. I’ll throw them here anyway.

Potential Future Annuals

• Exotic Fantasy Ships (swan boats, gnome dirigibles, eagle-shaped airships, shark-shaped submarines) – feathered/scaly fills, painted wood fills, transparent glass domes (or semi-transparent fills for panes of glass)

Potential Monthly Symbols (possibly an Annual)

• Castle Fixtures, External – Gargoyles & grotesques, flags & flagpoles, spires, bells, drawbridges, machicolations (murder holes), corbels, any other castle ornamentation that could be seen from above
• Heraldry symbols expansion – solid varicolor silhouettes of animals, mythological creatures, zodiac symbols, other common heraldry symbols not currently available in CA15 (great for using as brass inlays or stitched on fabric per this thread)
• Greco-Roman (dungeons & city symbols and fills). Dungeon Symbols: more column options, litters on poles, lounging couches, more statues. City Symbols: various temple types, amphitheaters, aqueducts, Forum…