As mentioned a couple of days ago, aside from the mapping, I've also been pulling together the notes to accompany this set of maps, so for those who might be interested to know more in advance, here are the general comments from the start of that file, as drafted to date.

No one is quite sure who or what the Winter Queen really is. The rare tales mentioning her suggest she may be a deity or an exceptionally powerful, probably immortal, perhaps Faerie, creature. Few such tales give useful details on her nature, though many cultures in the higher northern and southern latitudes of Nibirum preserve variants or fragments of the stories, where the Queen has numerous alternative, typically apotropaic, local titles. It is clear she is thought to possess great magic, much exceptionally obscure knowledge, and a considerable burden. Humanoid in form, she appears as very tall (around 8 or 9 feet high; 2.4 to 2.7 metres), dressed in a long, hooded robe, with piercing blue eyes, bearing a long white staff or crook taller than she is, and an air of great sadness. Her clothing and physical features are said to alter subtly from one day to the next.

She cannot leave the Palace, and has no control over where it goes, as the Palace moves magically, and instantly, once a day to a new location. It is said to be never in exactly the same place twice, but its location is always in an icy, remote, spot, concealed below the surface. Its solitary entrance, while small and hard to find, has no door (there are no doors throughout the Palace), and can be recognised by the profusion of perfect representations of summer flowers and foliage all around it, made of crystal-quality ice. This summer array of perfect specimens is astonishingly beautiful, all of which objects are very fragile. Damaging any is a swift way to raise the Winter Queen's ire, something the tales strongly warn against.

Wherever the Palace alights and for fifty miles around (eighty kilometres), the weather worsens and turns wintry, if it was not winter when it landed. Sometimes, it settles in the clouds, where it stirs them to winter storms, pouring hail and snow down to the surface beneath in icy gales. Even then, the Palace remains deeply hidden by the clouds, for all it still has its ice-flower-surrounded single entrance.

While some tales allude to it, one reality about the Palace is that the souls of all who have died recently in the frozen places of the world, and all those who have died from cold elsewhere, must pass through it on their way from wherever they were to wherever they may be going. A few may linger in the Palace for a time, and some may become temporary guests or servants of the Winter Queen. The Queen has no control over which may stay or move on immediately, however. She frequently converses with those passing through even so, from which much of her secret knowledge derives. Occasional tales may hint disparagingly that the Queen is merely running a ferry service for the recently deceased.

The Palace changes its form whenever it moves, never the same twice, though always in plan-view having the shape of a gigantic snowflake, with walls, floor and ceiling composed entirely of solid, if at least slightly translucent, crystal-like ice. This is always beautiful, with glittering facets like gems that reflect light on or just within the solid ice surfaces. Somehow, light palely manages to illuminate the whole interior with a soft radiance, no matter how deeply buried the Palace may appear to be. At times, rainbow-coloured beams, arcs and spots may be seen, like haloes in the outdoor sky that are created by refraction of sunlight through tiny hexagonal ice-crystals in thin, high-altitude, clouds. Sometimes such light effects may become dazzlingly bright briefly. The ice walls, floors and ceilings reflect light as well, which in places can take on a mirror-quality surface. Such mirrors can allow glimpses of past or future events and places, memories left by the passing spirits, perhaps. The Winter Queen does have some control over such light, vision, visionary and illusory effects within the Palace.

Queen and Palace are so inseparable because in essence, they are parts of the same thing. Many of the Queen's "servants" are actually living ice-constructs which appear from, and can return into, the inner ice surfaces of the Palace as required, thus too are simply another element of this whole being.

Palace 6 (that's over halfway!) is another black-and-white map, using the CA48 Black & White Dungeons style. This time, I chanced using a few of the symbols that come with the style, mostly because I liked the throne, and didn't want to just have that one symbol on its own. So we have actual fountains in the Crystal Garden for once, and a set banqueting table, with seats, for the Banqueting Hall (not the clearest in this low-res image, I appreciate). I also did a little more decoration for the floor of the huge central Ballroom, primarily because the forms were on the original snowflake image, and I thought the floral design especially worked well with the overall concept of the Summer Palace idea. Plus that outer large hexagonal line forms a neat border to the Ballroom itself. As last time, the first map is the B&W version, the second one where I've added some blue iciness, this time in the form of a simple blue coloured covering rectangle with a strong Transparency Effect on it. Again, if all goes to plan, this should be available via a toggle in the Atlas version.

Whereas Palace 5 used a simple drawn polygon for the floor outline, with the internal wall-blocks on that drawn and set up using walls and floor masks on Sheets above the floor one, here, the floor was done as a multipoly, after drawing in the internal walls first, and copying them to the floor sheet before carrying out the command. And treble-checking I wasn't going to need to do more with it later, given you can't adjust nodes on a multipoly later!

Despite which, if you check very hard in the FCW file, you will find one spot where I had to add a new floor patch because one of the walls had grown just a bit too spiky... Isn't it always the way?

It's a tricky subject to advise upon without really knowing what you'd like to be mapping. For example, if science-fiction is important to you, then Cosmographer will be likely a high-priority add-on; if building new worlds, then Fractal Terrains might be a better choice.

Sue's advice, to take some time for a thorough check-through of all the information on the ProFantasy website before deciding, is very sound.

Buying everything in one go will save you money longer term, but you might end up feeling overwhelmed at suddenly having far too many choices, and little idea what to prioritise from them all. Plus you'll also need to factor-in having sufficient time available to usefully explore whatever items you do eventually purchase beyond the core CC3+ program.

The Cartographer's Annual 94, Vandel's Dwarven Dungeons has an anvil and a furnace in it, and you might find some suitable objects for use as tools in various places - try the weapons catalogues, for instance. The Munson's Mines pack from CA125 has some whole and broken mining tools, as well, for instance. Might take some finding all there could be of interest, and you might run into difficulties getting things to match if they're drawn in different styles, of course. And it depends whether you have all these add-ons, of course!

For the next Palace in the sequence, Number Five, I decided to switch to one of the black-and-white styles, and picked the Mike Schley Inks one to try out for the first time. I'd hoped it might be possible to use some of the actual symbols that come with the style this time, instead of just drawing almost everything, but unfortunately, there seemed to be too much surface texture on the ones I preferred, so that when viewing the whole map, they looked like indeterminate black blobs, which didn't seem ideal. The texture might have worked for the ice furniture the Palace contains in a smaller map, I suspect; all part of the learning curve, of course!

I also took the opportunity to try out some ideas for colouring the whole map, using Effects like the RGB Matrix Process. That too proved unhelpful, as colouring not just the map, but all of the surrounding CC3+ drawing window as well, which isn't something I've come across before. Then again, I've not used anything other than the "Gray" and "Sepia" settings on an entire map like this previously, so again, live & learn.

What I did decide upon was to provide an option to view the map with a coloured screen over it, so I simply drew a white rectangle across the whole map and its frame, applied a strong Transparency Effect to its Cover Sheet, and a simple RGB Matrix Process Effect too, favouring an icy pale blue. Hopefully, this can be applied using one of Monsen's special toggles in the final Atlas version.

It is slightly terrifying to open the CC3+ map now with the Cover Sheet showing, but with the Effects turned off, because all you see is a white screen! First time I did that, there was a moment of panic as to whether I'd lost the whole dratted map! Then I remembered...

So, two versions of Palace 5 here, the first the straightforward black and white one, the second with that Cover Sheet in action.

Inevitably, the uncoloured one is the sharper, because to get a sufficient RGB Matrix colour Effect on the blue one, the Transparency can't be set too low, but it seems an acceptable compromise.