This is the second of three monasteries that I am collaborating with Ricko on. The ideas and text description are Ricko's. The mapping is from me, with his advice, but he is currently traveling and hasn't had a chance to see a lot of the newest stuff. Since he won't be back for nearly a week, I figured I would solicit feedback here in the meantime.

(Also, I have not yet added the clouds that Ricko includes so beautifully in his maps. I will be experimenting with that next.)

There's a full description that will be included when it's submitted for the Atlas, but for now, here's a synopsis:

The Sacred Path of Hei Shan Si

In the heart of the Black Mountains and surrounded by the Ancient Forest, amidst peaks that touch the sky, stands the Hei Shan Si Monastery (Temple of the Black Mountain), a sanctuary of spiritual peace in contrast to the chaos of the surrounding region. Founded by an anonymous sage, the temple is said to have been built with the help of divine forces, its black walls harmonizing with the eternal shadows of the mountains.

The Challenging Path

The road to Hei Shan Si is a test in itself. It begins in the fertile valleys, and ends at the final stop in the village of Yuan Lin Zhen, passing through the living heart of the forest, steep cliffs and narrow trails that wind dangerously through the mountains. Incessant rain, dense fog and biting winds are constant companions of travelers. Worn rope bridges span unfathomable chasms, and legends tell of guardian spirits who punish those who disrespect them.

I didn't have a lot of birds to work with, but I did use the cartouche from Forest Trails and a few other birds from Dundjinni Archives. Like with the last monastery, Chuan Bei Si, the monks use a labyrinth path for meditation (similar to the Labyrinth at the Cathedral of Chartres). But while Chuan Bei Si's stone-and-tile labyrinth is poorly maintained, cracked and worn, the brass-and-tile labyrinth at Hei Shan Si is immaculately maintained.

Clouds are coming, but that will require some experimentation to get it right. They will be on a separate layer that can be toggled on and off.

Rather than going through every map style, the faster approach was simply to go through the fonts installed on my computer and then check the ones I liked against the list of approved fonts on the How to Contribute page on the Atlas. I found some that unfortunately are not on the list. Davak is the Wizards of the Coast's official dwarven script, and Rellanic is their elvish script. I believe both are permitted for personal use, but I'm not sure if commercial use is permitted. Tengwar Cursive is Tolkien's elvish script, but in addition to limiting for personal use, the license specifically says that the Tolkien estate must approve for any commercial use. Similarly, there's a Hobbiton font for noncommercial use. Anglo Saxon Runes looks great but is also limited for noncommercial use.

Exploding a font and using them as symbols doesn't change the fact that they still read as a font and therefore are subject to any licensing limitations of the original font.

So a question for Remy:

• If there's a font that's not on the approved list but is available for commercial use, are we allowed to explode them and use them as symbols for Atlas submissions, or would you feel safer only using fonts on that approved list?
• (Moot question if the answer above is "no.") If there's a font that's not on the approved list but is available for noncommercial use only, does the Atlas count as noncommercial use that would allow permit that font to be used as an exploded symbol?

Thank you!

Before attempting to do my entire campaign world in the new Fractal Parchment Worlds style, I wanted to try it out with a familiar spot: the Republic of Lumadair.

For this one, I exported Lumadair from Fractal Terrains in the Fractal Parchment Worlds style that Ralf demonstrated in today's Live session. But I also exported a contour map of the same view, and then copied a few of the elevation contours over, then used the Draw Like tool to convert them to the proper contour appearance.

My personal experiences are more with desktop publishing, not design. Used to be reasonably proficient with things like PageMaker and Quark and MS Publisher — none of which is useful here. I used the Corel suite in the 90s but haven’t owned it in decades. To create the circular symbols for my Modern Journeys map, I did download GIMP and learned just enough of it to be able to crop an image to a circle. But for quite a lot of stuff, I have used (of all things)…PowerPoint!

It looks fantastic!