After my village of Per-Nezahd grew too large and is rightfully now a town, I went back to the drawing board and created a new village in the same Desert Oasis style. This one is significantly smaller.

[Note: this is in an area of the Atlas that has not yet been developed. I have parent maps almost ready to submit, and will start a thread later this weekend to submit them. Just finishing up the descriptions for them.]

There are 22 buildings that are either fully residential or mixed-use business/residential. I assumed an average population of 5.2 residents per residence, giving me a population of 114. Does that sound about right? I also spread things out a little more than you would in a walled city or town, but maybe I should spread things out even more?

I used varicolor bushes of different sizes to create crops. I don't know much about desert oases form, but I thought maybe a hill would be needed. I added a darker terrain below the hill to distinguish it from the smaller patches of hills scattered around, which were meant to be sand dunes.

I was going to use a ziggurat from SS5 as the temple, but the temple symbols in this annual were too irresistible to pass over. In the end, the only symbols I used outside of this annual were two broken columns in the ruins from CA49. For a village like this, it didn't seem necessary to label much in the village itself, just the temple and the taverna. I don't think a village of this size could support too much specialization, though there are market stalls available for the use of trade caravans that pass through. I also figured that this village was too small to afford to construct a wall (though maybe I should add a tower or two?).

In the lower right on a bit of an outcrop, I set some ruins of an ancient temple and city. Near the road that reaches the ruins, I placed a cart and scattered boxes and barrels to suggest that maybe an archeological dig is underway? Adventure hooks: maybe the archeologists have disturbed an ancient malevolence that should have remained untouched? Or maybe, Indiana Jones-style, the adventurers need to race to find an ancient artifact before the opposition finds it.

For the title, I used the default font for this annual, but it was too hard to read for other place names, so I used Papyrus for those labels. Is it okay to use a different font for the title? Should I switch the title to Papyrus? I didn't use the scale bar, as pretty as it is, because it says "miles" on it and this map is only 500 x 400 feet. (Although...if I ungroup it, maybe I can delete the "miles" text? I will have to try that.)

Any advice or feedback?

Yup, I think it's a town, not a village. But that's okay, I have a home for it (looking at the parent map, it probably should be a town, not a village). But that's okay, it got me thinking and gave me ideas for a smaller village in the same style to design. (Also a little too symmetrical, but I guess it makes sense that everything would radiate out from the only water source for miles around.)

Working on a desert village using the Desert Oasis style, but now I'm wondering if it's turning more into a town than a village, even though it's only 500 feet x 500 feet.

I added a wall around it because I figured they'd be pretty protective of their water source and the crops it's able to sustain. Added an inn and stables because I figured that traders would be coming through. And a pyramid outside of the walls as the Halls of the Dead (either tombs or a columbarium). All of this is making it feel a little big for a village -- which is fine, I can always add it to the Atlas outside of the competition and do another desert village for the contest.

Thoughts?

This is great! I love the idea of using CC3 for non-battlemap purposes. Street fairs, for example, could use it to show which streets are closed off, where vendor and food booths are located, and the location of performance stages.

Here's an area map of the Eknapata Desert region on the northeast corner of the Gold Coast map. I decided to do it in the Scorching Sun annual. The mapping guide for the annual recommended Mike Schley Overland as a complementary style for additional symbols, so I used that for the pyramid at the city of Nekhmatunis, the ziggurat at the city of Khemtufu, and the half-buried statue and obelisk at the Sakherma Ruins. I also threw in a few of his camel-with-guide symbols to represent nomadic tribes, and a sandworm just for fun. There are a few more villages, too, and another monastery that I figured were too small to be on the parent map for the entire Gold Coast region. I also added a volcano, but figured that would be on the parent map. Since the parent map hasn't been submitted to the Atlas yet, I went back and added it to the parent map, too.

I'm enjoying the opportunity to try out different map styles with this project. I plan to design one city with Mike Schley's Mideastern symbols from SS5, and another with the Desert Oasis annual.