After doing a dark elf farming village and a wood elf forest treehouse village, how could I resist revisiting my sea elf outpost and using it as inspiration for a sea elf village?

This is Eilân Danaäd, a harbor and village in a rocky reef area north of an island off the coast of Dóriant. The village includes both dry ground structures on the harbor side as well as below-water residences on the other side. The sea elves created the harbor as an opportunity to trade with sailors from the Dóriant mainland, as well as sailors traveling to Dóriant. The elves sell or trade deep sea fish and marine vegetation that would be difficult or impossible for surface-dwellers to get to. They also provide ship repair services for ships damaged at sea, and help sailors navigate through the rocky reefs.

The harbor consists of a horse-shoe shaped tiered great wall, with a great tower in the center and two somewhat shorter outer towers. Each tower has a landing pad on top to accommodate aerial visitors who ride pegasi, griffons, or other flying mounts.

The Great Tower in the center extends all the way down to the sea bed. It contains the villages government, and has plenty of space both below and above the surface of the water for the sea elves to hunker down during the strongest storms. (The sea elves wouldn't drown in the storms, but they could be blown miles out to sea.)

The harbor includes an inn for sailors eager for a bit of dry land and a bed that doesn't rock. It also includes a tavern, where sea elves can imbibe with visiting sailors. (Drinking alcohol -- or any other liquids -- isn't possible below the waves, though in their marine environment, the sea elves do imbibe with hallucinogenic fungi, fermented sea cucumbers, and other intoxicants.)

There is no natural source of fresh water at the harbor, so the elves have created several cisterns to capture rainwater. Sprinkles of rain occur nearly daily, and storms (usually mild) occur frequently throughout the year.

Both the towers and the wall are in two tiers, with the lower tier rising about 50 feet above sea level and the upper tier another 30 feet above that. The wall provides protection for the above-ground part of the village for all but the strongest of storms.

Below the waves, most of the village residents live in private homes topped by either a hexagonal or octagonal turret. Each residence is either one, two, or three stories high, not including the turret. (Note the shadows of different lengths.) The entrance to each residence is through a doorway at the turrets. There's no need to swim all the way down to the seabed to disturb the coral gardens surrounding each residence, as the entrances are at the top.

The one-story residences are basically studio cottages, with sleeping and living spaces all at one level. The taller residences will have a common area off of the turret's entrance, with bedrooms in the levels below.

None of the residences have cooking facilities. Dining at home requires food that can be eaten raw, or previously-cooked food that can be served cold. Instead, cooking is done at common cooking spaces (#3), where residents bring food on long skewers to cook over geothermal sea vents. The cooked food can then be brought back home, or can be brought to one of the dining commons (#4) for a picnic.

The sea elves do have a few marine agricultural gardens. Each of these has a pillar in the middle, where gardeners can activate an enchantment that helps keep pests away. The enchantment creates the illusion of a shark swimming around the area. The illusory shark radiates a low-grade Fear spell. Elves are immune to the spell, and it's low grade enough that most intelligent creatures only experience a mild feeling of foreboding at best. But for fish and other low-intelligent sea creatures, the spell triggers a flight reflex, which helps the elves keep their crops from being nibbled away by marine pests and predators.

Farther away from the harbor, I created a few examples of the rocks and reefs. I tried a different approach to creating them. Instead of using polygons with a sharp bevel, I instead used several polygons with a "Shaded Polygon (Angled by Edge") effect, each with different angled slops. Let me know if you think I pulled it off.

Some sort of tentacled sea creature has taken up home near one of the reefs. The sea elves can help sailors navigate around it to avoid a Scylla v. Charybdis catastrophe.

In a previous thread, Ralf encouraged us to post ideas for future annuals and artists we’d like to see. I know there’s been threads of these sorts of ideas before, but I thought I would take the opportunity to start a new thread, and I hope folks will add their own thoughts.

There’s this one artist whose style I really love. She’s super busy right now, but if she ever has a spare moment, I always love new additions from … Sue Daniel! ;-)

This month’s annual highlighting Mike Schley’s Overland symbols really emphasizes how much of his stuff we have to work with – not just overland, but city and dungeon, too. Since he’s been a longtime D&D designer, his style is great at capturing the same vibe when designing your own maps for D&D campaigns. In deciding what style I want to use for a new map, I often gravitate to his because of how much variety there is to work with. (If he’s looking for city and dungeon level ideas, I would love more Greco-Roman buildings and furnishings.)

So in that spirit, I would love to see more annuals with stuff that is compatible with other styles, particularly Darklands City and Spectrum Overland. I know that might be tricky to do an expansion of an annual released years ago. When an annual has an expansion, it’s generally in the same year (Marine Dungeons, Darklands City, Forest Trail, Monkey Frog Overland, etc.) so that a customer doesn’t have to buy two annuals to use both sets together. But what about expansions designed to stand on their own but also work complimentarily with previous sets? I’d love to see more settlement and adventure-hook symbols that are compatible with Spectrum Overland, and more structures/buildings for Darklands City (and the snowy versions for Winter Village). Right now I’m on an elves & dwarves kick, so elven/dwarven Darklands City structures would be awesome.

Other ideas:

Jungle/Swamp Adventures: something compatible with Creepy Crypts & Forest Trails, but with more jungle elements – palm trees, tropical trees, swamp trees (like trees in water with the ripple effects from Marine Dungeons), bright flowers and other foliage, monster/beast footprints, vines, traps, treasurers you might find adventuring in ruined temples.

Castle Construction: something like CA149 Beaumaris Castle, but with design tools and more castle-specific symbols. Symbols like gargoyles, varicolor flags & banners, crenellations (like the way Marine Dungeons lets you drop crenellations onto walls), machicolations/murder holes, plate armor, thrones, weapons, murder holes, siege/warfare equipment…

Inlays: I’ve mentioned this before, but I would also love more varicolor vector symbols that could be used for so many things like heraldic charges, floor inlays, stitching on fabric (rugs, banners, etc.) – animals, weapons, flowers, runes (in dwarven and elven styles), Celtic or elven design patterns, astrology and astronomy symbols, etc.

Related to this village: I am planning on submitting an intermediate map of the Kingdom of Enía portion of the Gold Coast. And now I'm thinking that I might also do another map of just the Firessí Woods. I think it might be easier to do the Firessí Woods map now than after this temple village is added to the Atlas.

If I do create a Firessí Woods map, are there any sorts of adventure hooks or mapping possibilities you'd recommend including? I have the Tempuwari Ruins, which were meant to provide a place for an adventure reminiscent of the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Other than adding a few more tiny elven hamlets, and maybe a few cave openings in hills, are there other mapping/adventure hooks you'd like to see?

When I was working on Fon'Anar, my elven farming village in Verinress'Arl on Artemisia, I had an idea for a different approach for an elven village that I wanted to try next.

This little village of Yréas Kóltyn is set in the Kingdom of Enía, a northern country in the Gold Coast region of Dóriant that I am submitting as parent (or great grandparent) map to the Atlas. It's a religious community overseen by an archdruid who oversees religious observances at a Great Henge located in the Firessi Woods. For context, it's located in the yellow box on this map:

I did the map using the Forest Trails annual, with heavy assist from the Darklands City annual. Here's the map in progress:

And here is a more battlemap-ready version of it with the trees (and treehouses) hidden, and just stumps and shadows shown:

The treetops and treehouses are all on a single layer to make it easier to toggle them on and off.

The idea of the village is that they've grown up in support of the temple in support of the elves who make pilgrimages there for the opportunity to experience religious services in one of the holiest places in the kingdom.

Here's the temple close up:

In my campaign world, the elves have seven gods, which is why this has seven standing stones in the center ring, then seven arches and seven stones in the middle ring, and then fourteen arches in the outer ring.

The archdruid's home also serves as a sort of local government for the community. It's the only treehouse home accessible with proper stairs. All of the other treehouses have wooden ladders or rope ladders that can be pulled up to impede access from intruders. Here's the archdruid's home:

The other buildings on the ground here are stables (#3), an inn (#4), and a general store (#5).

The villagers live somewhat communally. Since it would be kinda dangerous to cook food in a treehouse, there's a common kitchen and Great Hall. Everyone has a job, and for some, it's to work in the kitchens to cook for the village -- kinda like the dining commons at a university, perhaps.

Here are the "commons." It includes a small aqueduct to bring fresh water to the kitchens (7) and community baths (9). Dining is in the Great Hall (8). On nice evenings, a bonfire can be lit (10), around which the elves often sing and dance.

Most of the elves live in multigenerational treehouse homes. There are a few neighborhoods of these homes in the village, and residents can walk through their neighborhoods on elevated bridges without needing to go down to the ground. Here's an example of one of those neighborhoods:

I was going to add lots more trees throughout these neighborhoods, but they kind of distracted from the homes themselves.

Since the treehouse homes wouldn't have cooking or fireplaces, I guess these residences shouldn't have chimneys. I tried to cover the chimneys with upper canopy foliage, but I missed a bunch.

I think there are 28 residential treehouses (excluding three attached to the archdruid's that I thought might serve as guest accommodations for VIP pilgrims. They're meant to be multigenerational homes. In calculating the village's population, many residents do you think I should assume per residence?

Any thoughts or feedback?

Okay, here's the next iteration.

I tried to use blotchy lighter sands to suggest sand dunes, like the Sahara Desert, and darker blotches to show more solid, earth-packed areas. Not sure if I should try to get them to blend in more with a partial transparency or something?

Tried to make the roads show up a little more, but I can't tell if it was that successful. I liked the idea that the guys with the camels could be used on the trails roads to indicate that it was more of a general route through the sands, where most travelers would need an experienced guide to make sure they don't get lost, since a proper road would be blown away or covered with sand. There is a more treacherous area in the southern part of the desert called the Devil's Backbone, where a proper road on more solid land passes next to a 50-mile long fissure. It's a dangerous route, beset by foul creatures that creep out of the fissure, especially at night. But the road is on solid land, and without a guide, it might be a safer route than braving the shifting sand dunes. (I put a tower next to one of the villages down there -- maybe a wizard is there that the adventurers just have to visit?)

Thoughts?