Having tackled its nominal twin Isle of Zariq, it seemed reasonable to follow-up with the other seamount-tip Isle of Zaraq next, set amid the Frigid or Equine Ocean, about 620 km (385 miles) off the northwestern coast of Alarius. 

As with Zariq, I based Zaraq's appearance on another randomly-generated island from the Red Blob Games website, altered where necessary to suit what was needed here. 

Originally, I'd thought of reusing the Mike Schley overland style from the Zariq map, and reworking that map as the base template for this one. However, part of my reason for participating in the Community Atlas project was to experiment and explore different mapping styles. So this time, I went with the Volcanic Islands style from CA88 for April 2014 instead.

Indeed, I'd intended to use this style for the more volcanically-active Zariq map, till I discovered it doesn't have any actual volcanoes in it! My vision for Zaraq was with a longitudinal volcanic fissure or crustal weak line along the island's N-S long axis, which would only occasionally produce significant fresh lava, more commonly just giving frequent minor earthquakes, small eruptions, or exhalations of smoke and gas.

There were a couple of false starts. This island, like Zariq, is tiny, at about 5¼ km (3¼ miles) long, with "peaks" just 60 m (200 ft) high, so scaling the mountains to look right as sharp-featured hills needed some experimenting. Once that was sorted, the map overall was completed in a fraction the time the Zariq one had needed, largely thanks to the simpler vegetation tools in the Volcanic Islands pack.

That extra mountains-as-hills work had its advantages though, as the look of the symbols reminded me a little of the conchoidal fractures shown by the volcanic glass obsidian, so Zaraq and some of its surrounding islets became endowed with scattered obsidian deposits. These are especially common on Star Isle, which glitters even from a distance, when the sunlight hits it just right!

Apart from the usual wealth of invertebrates, most of the island's inhabitants are seabirds, chiefly when breeding. There are some nasty little lizards with a poisonous bite too, notably in the more northerly of the dense, low-growing, thorny "forests" of the main island, along with some still more venomous giant water spiders that lurk among the marshes surrounding the solitary freshwater lake further north, creatures whose range extends into the northern fringes of the forest cover and across Landslip Bay - they can raft over water using surface tension.

Landslip Bay is the only sort-of safe anchorage for ships, where the best shingle landing beaches lie under the looming cliffs along its eastern shore - hence the name, and remembering the "earthquakes" motif... For some extra spice, there are three deserted structures on the main island's eastern flank, whose natures are noted in the map's accompanying PDF and text-file descriptions. The inhabitants and structures were determined by random rolls using an old set of island generating tables, slightly modified, from the Judges Guild tome, "Island Book One" published in 1978, incidentally.

As for why the structures are deserted, well, the perceptive may recall there was a "Deep-Sea Hag" symbol shown in the lower right corner of Errynor Map 01, which might be related. We'll be coming back to her again, especially towards the end of this set of maps...

This map details the subterranean lair of the blue-scaled Kobalt tribe - essentially D&D's Kobolds - in the central uplands of the Isle of Zariq. 

As commonly with my Community Atlas mapping, I opted for a random aspect, here regarding the layout of the caverns, which came from the Curufea's Random Cave Map Generator website. This online system creates its maps from electronic versions of tiles from the huge array of those drawn some years ago by artist Ed Bourelle of SkeletonKey Games (DriveThru RPG link). I like SkeletonKey's earlier tiles, as they have an appealing clarity, and allow the construction of more varied layouts and settings in a consistent style than just about any other set of printable tiles I've come across. The Curufea system shows you exactly which tiles from which set have been used should you need to rebuild the layout as actual printed tiles, plus the PDF images in the original files can be copied and pasted into other programs to set up a GM's map showing precisely what the final layout will look like. In my pre-CC days, this was a real boon!

For this map, I decided to try some large-area random options, and saved one of those that looked especially promising for what I needed. 

Of course, this random map ends up square, while the nature of the tiles means there will be several unconnected segments shown for almost all such layouts. However, by importing this base drawing into the CC3+ template, making several copies of it, rotated and moved around so different segments could be married up in the final version, something closer to what was required was achieved.

The map was always going to be quite complex. Having had a long fascination with kobolds, albeit initially in the form of the British folkloric mining goblins, I've been pleased to see how D&D's miniature draconic humanoid versions have developed under the system's 5th edition, with elements of those folkloric creatures incorporated. In particular, my ideas for this map were heavily influenced by the discussion and kobold lair map in Volo's Guide to Monsters (Wizards of the Coast, 2016, pp. 63-71). So there were to be wriggling, winding tunnels, sometimes crossing each other without linking at different vertical levels below ground, chambers with various functions, and many traps.

As another part of my Community Atlas mapping efforts has been to explore different styles, I opted for the Modern Cave Mapping style from the Caves and Caverns issue of the Cartographer's Annual, CA7 from 2007. Which allowed the creation of the map: 

The layout was scaled and designed to fit to the locations on the Zariq map, as far as such things can be when translating pictorial side-view symbols into physical areas on a top-down plan. Consequently, the whole should be seen as sloping up gradually, if somewhat inconsistently, from the SE (lower right) to NW (upper left). The SE segment, where the entrance is, is set mostly below the "hill" symbol on Zariq, while the bulk of the Caverns lie beneath the "mountain", so the "tower" shown on the mountainside equates with the multi-level rounded cave fitted with a sloping spiral ramp inside at the top left of this map, where the "Tower Guards" symbols are.

While some of the usual Modern Cave Effects were tweaked or changed in places to better suit here, the light brown glow effect for the solid rock was left at its normal level. On a more typical map size, this would make it fade away in the larger enclosed rock areas, and at a shorter relative distance from the outer walls. However, it seemed to work better left like this to me, as it helps to emphasize the narrowness of the tunnels and smallness of the caves. Similarly, the Key labelling was deliberately scaled as larger than necessary to continue that impression. Kobalts are only about a yard/metre tall, and their tunnelling naturally matches their stature. Adding a couple of varicolor Token Treasury symbols made sure nobody might be mistaken about the nature of Kobalts!

The composite method of constructing the final layout where sometimes tiny patches of floor texture had to be added to link passageways, together with larger areas of passage and cave floors to create the illusion of under- and overlying cavern sections, meant the usual method of adding a grid - by copying the entire floor only onto the Hex/Square Grid Layer, and converting the floor fill to a suitably-sized grid - wouldn't work. Or rather it would, but the grid became inconsistent, sometimes with overlaps, across the entire map. After several tries to create a single polygon from these disparate segments, I was still unable to get the whole to work together properly, so opted to cut my losses and simply hand-drew the entire grid instead: 

Yes, it's a three-foot grid. I found a five-foot grid was too difficult to read in the passageways especially, so after a very brief experiment, changed it. As that's a yard, it could be easily restated as a metre-grid instead, though for precision, that's actually closer to 0.9 metres, of course. Well, that was my excuse for not drawing a metric grid as well (that's a h*ll of a lot of lines to draw and trim to entity once...). I did though add the two scales to help in estimating greater distances.

Then I added the traps: 

These were allocated a numerical key whose description, with other details on the Kobalts and their lair, are included in the map's accompanying PDF and text files for the Atlas. The idea is that both the grid and traps will be accessible using toggles in the final Atlas map.

Should you spot a similarity between this map's style and that used for "The Hive" maps I entered for Lorelei's Mapping for Dice competition a year ago, that's partly because they are the same; and yes, my choice for those Hive maps was heavily influenced by having worked on this map some weeks earlier!

As promised when I posted about The Cliff map, this is the first of the additional maps to accompany it, covering the Isle of Zariq, the surfaced tip of the huge seamount of the same name in the Frigid or Equine Ocean, some 750 km (470 miles) off the NW Alarius coast of Errynor.

I realise this may come as a shock, compared with many of my previous Atlas contributions, but there's just one version of this island's map!

In-keeping with the element of chance employed to a greater or lesser extent in all my previous Atlas items however, the original base map was generated randomly, using the island generator on the Red Blob Games website. The final map has been reworked to some extent to better fit with what was intended here, though not by much.

The terrain symbols and some names are a little misleading (deliberately), as a quick check of the scales will show the entire island is only circa 4½ km (2¾ miles) in its largest dimension. The terrain is craggy and volcanic, as the surface sits on the main seamount's vent (it extends to the eastern offshore Tooth & Claw Reefs, so is partly underwater). The highest peak however, Lodestone Mountain, rises only 100 m (330 ft) above sea level. Smokes, mists and minor eruptions, including of geysers, are common features. The vegetation cover is generally stunted and windblown. Most of it produces plentiful seeds or berry-like fruits, as it was chiefly brought here by seabirds.

Indeed, seabirds are the main obvious living creatures for newcomers to the place, and those mainly during their spring-summer breeding seasons. There are also many kinds of small insects, arachnids and other invertebrates. There are additional creatures less commonly seen here, as outlined in the map's accompanying PDF and text files, of which perhaps the more intriguing is a tribe of small, blue-scaled, reptilian humanoids, the Kobalts (= D&D's Kobolds), who live in a warren of tunnels beneath Kobalt Mountain. For once, and despite the classic RPG random dungeon design joke from the early days of D&D, that "I just rolled for 40 Kobolds in this broom closet", this was in fact a long-standing decision, not a randomly generated one ?

I think the hex-size and location-scaling issues stand out so much for me because my experiences with hex maps began with the SPI board wargames, where hex-placement of symbols and units was absolutely key, and that translated into the earliest RPG hex maps I worked with, those by Judges Guilds, where again the settlements were scaled into the hexes, with things like isolated strongholds and towers reduced to very simple, tiny, open squares and circles, so small it was often hard to find them quickly, which is perhaps pushing too far towards the other extreme!

For the village places that need to be in better communication, it would be possible to have them stay where they are, but introduce much more direct routes between them. This might mean redesigning other parts of the village to fit - reasonable, because the village would have grown up around such existing routes. If the houses had been there first, the important places would have been sited differently, to allow those more direct routes to be possible from the outset.

There's a fair chance the marketplace would have ended up more central too, as in reality, such things often started out on the Village Green, an open area in the middle of the village to allow community events originally. It could be moved to somewhere more peripheral if it needed additional space the Green area couldn't provide. The Inn would likely end up by the Green too, again as a handy near-central location. If the market moved, the Inn might have its effective facing altered, or simply expand (if space allowed) to provide patron access from all the suitable directions.

With the new undersea symbols ready, finally I could begin constructing the first map. Logically, this was to be my original Map 1, at the top left corner of the Errynor map:

Clearly, the seabed was going to be the primary aspect here, with just two tiny islands above sea level, so that's where I began:

The tremendous cliff at the continental shelf edge is so dominant here, that had to become the map's name, while the relative sparsity of other undersea surface features had been a deliberate choice from the initial planning of the main Errynor map. What items are shown, are thus those more easily found by new travellers to the area, or those whose presence is more influential for whatever reason. This also reflects the apparent nature, as far as can be established, of Earth's own ocean floors. The shallowest seabed mapped here, towards the lower right corner, lies below some 300 m (nearly 1,000 ft) of seawater, for instance. It further fits with the idea of the relative smallness of the undersea intelligent populations in the region, compared with the vastness of Nibirum's oceans, as I'd envisaged them. There is the further advantage that plenty of space is available for GMs to add extra points of interest, should they wish.

The red-limned regions are Kachaya/Sea Devil provinces, incidentally.

I added a SOLAR/GEOMAGNETICS Layer overlay to show lines of latitude for each 1°, and the midline for Nibirum's polar auroral zone. This option should be available by a toggle for the Atlas version.

These 250 x 200 mile maps are small enough for the north direction to be fairly consistent across most of the area covered, so I'd been able to add a compass rose as well, which hadn't been possible for the main Errynor map.

When designing the hand-drawn paper maps at the start of this project, a selection of larger/more interesting/more dangerous creatures (and things, for the solid surface) that could be encountered had been randomly included. Many of the undersea types were free-swimming. For RPG use, it's naturally important to know where these are not merely for the sea and undersea land surfaces, but in the water column between too. Hence another map toggle, activating the UNDERSEA WATER COLUMN Layer, is intended to shift the view to that water column (it's best to turn off the TEXT, SURFACE UNDERSEA Sheet for clarity first):

This view isn't at a fixed depth below the sea surface, simply to illustrate in general what can be found somewhere in the water column. Thus although the great seamount rock columns of Zariq and Zaraq have been given physical dimensions here, those are representative only. An 11-page PDF of the map's accompanying text-file notes explains this, together with detailing various of the other more noteworthy features shown.

A third toggled view, turning on the COAST/SEA Layer, shifts us to the sea's surface, where the seamounts have become small islands, and the midwater denizens have been joined by several ghost ships and an area where floating wreckage collects from time to time:

By turning off the SYMBOLS, SEA SURFACE Sheet, the paucity of sea surface features is very clearly seen!

GMs here may be unsurprised to learn I became distracted by some of possibilities of this map while drawing it into CC3+, as I've hinted in some of my more recent Forum posts here. Consequently, instead of progressing immediately to the next Errynor sub-map, I embarked on a group of feature maps from this one first. Plus, it also seemed unhelpful to not provide some guidance regarding the nature of the undersea features, especially the sea-bed settlements, for future mapping, as this is something scarcely touched-upon by published RPG settings and adventures. Thus this one map has become merely the first in a package of around twenty from this one area, which explains much of the delay in getting them ready for the Atlas, given I felt the whole group needed to be finished before any were submitted, in case changes were needed to those prepared earlier in the sequence - and that has happened along the way.

In fact the maps were prepared relatively quickly in each instance with CC3+. The most time-consuming aspect has been preparing and checking the detailed write-ups for them, as these are what has particularly allowed me to explore and expand upon ideas regarding fantasy undersea environments that I've been mulling over in part for decades.

Rather than drop the entire set on Monsen at once, my intention is for a gradual "release programme" with a new map or map-group only every few weeks. Maybe this will give me time too to complete more of the "Errynor 40" maps along the way, hopefully not taking quite so long each...