You should be able to create a new drawing tool using your hatch style by taking one of the existing ones that uses a hatch style (for ease), and saving it as "New", using whatever name you prefer.

You'll need to set up the hatch style though NOT in the "Properties" section, but in the "Outline" one, as an "Extra entity", clicking the "Properties" button. Under the "Hatch style" list in the "Custom tool properties" pane this "Properties" button opens, you'll need to scroll through the list to find your hatch style, and then click it. Then OK everything, save the new tool, and test it out.

Hopefully, that'll do it! If not, I'm sure one of our resident experts will leap to your aid - good luck!

These are interesting experiments. It's something I've tinkered with a little before, and it is tricky to get the look right.

There are two further possibilities here, I think. One would be to try just using the Mike Schley clouds, and see how those work out. A possible trick might be to use some inverted dark hills for the underside of the clouds (these might need resizing, and testing out different varicolor options); not sure about this latter. The other would be to add some more clouds elsewhere over the map in the style of those you already have. Their isolated nature right now is drawing too much attention to the contrast with the ground, I suspect. More clouds might help disguise that.

You might also try using the Alyssa Faden clouds (if you have the Annual with them in, at least) as an alternative, as the shadows on those would help with the "multi-layered" cloud concept, and some would work as just darker clouds. They're more similar to the cloud forms you have now than the Mike Schley ones, certainly. The Mike Schley ones do have gaps in them though, which might make them seem more natural over a Mike Schley landscape. Those options are a bit limited though.

In terms of aerial creatures, I've a vague recollection of a winged dragon on a north pointer in one of the mapping styles (which would need work to extract just the dragon, and which in any case I can't now find, so may simply be misremembering...), but if you have Dungeon Designer 3, there's a top-down cockatrice which could just about pass for flying, I think. However, there's a greater range of options in the free Dundjinni symbols - dragons, birds, bats, other flying animals, etc. If you don't have those, you can find the link to them here, though they do need some care to install correctly.

Good luck for further progress!

I ran into the same issue that Ralf identified during the livestream when preparing my recent Monseignor District map for the Community Atlas, regarding the unscalable hatch styles, when trying to map the swamp areas there. My problem was greater though, because the area I was mapping was a lot smaller, at 10 x 15 miles.

The way I got around it was by accessing the hatch style's FCW file, and simply copying over all the constituent vector polygons, and rescaling the lot together. I then just copied and pasted those rescaled elements to where I needed them for the swamp texture, and in the forms required. This had one advantage, as I also wanted some grassland texture to represent the farmlands, and the swamp texture's polygons include those horizontal linear polygons too. Just a few more copy & paste operations.

It would be practical to use the hatch style's FCW file to set up individual symbols for use when mapping this way, so the individual pieces would be scalable like any normal symbol. Plus that would have the advantage you could also make use of techniques such as "Symbols in Area", "Fill with Symbols", etc. If you're going to be making frequent use of one of these early Annual styles, that would definitely be worth doing.

Thanks very much Remy!

Since I've had a couple of queries about the Inkwell dice sets outside the Forum, and to clarify for those interested here, the simplest solution is to visit the DungeonMorphs page of the Inkwell site. As you'll discover there, the designs are available also as cards and fonts, and there are books with descriptions and ideas for the more recent sets as well.

In addition, and because I think he actually started the whole concept of geomorphs with this ten-space design (that's ten spaces per side on the design), it's worth looking at the past postings on Dyson Logos' blog, as he's provided illustrations showing many - now maybe all - the designs he's produced over the years, including those he's done for Inkwell. There's a "Geomorphs" tab under the "Navigation" sidebar on his blog, but that only covers the 100 designs he did for a personal challenge in 2009-2010, all collected for easy download in one place. Using the "Post Categories" search box, the Geomorph Mapping Challenge has 217 blog entries, which goes WAY beyond those he's been commissioned to do for Inkwell and those 100 earlier maps!

If the gelatinous cube symbol is actually partly transparent anyway (given you can see the texture of the floor below it), items don't all need adding to the cube. As long as the items exist as symbols, they can simply be put "below" the cube by the map's creator.

On the size element, the "you can drive a cart along them" argument is partly why I suggested seeing the sewers in "The Third Man" movie, because that's where the climactic chase happens, with large numbers of police and soldiers, where there are multiple levels stacked over one another, and nobody has any problems for headroom, and places are up to river-cavern wide in parts. Somewhat like the early London Underground "tubes" (and I'd assume others built around the same time, later 19th century), some of these would have been dug out as trenches, had their surfaces coated with mud/bricks/concrete, etc., and then covered over later where necessary.