First task on resuming mapping was to complete the structural building interiors and gardens:

However, while I was "digging" the gardens, it became clear the vague not-path from the road to the back of the inn wasn't clear enough. At first, I tried adding patches to cover the hard-line road edges, and tweaking the effects that created those lines too, but it didn't improve, so ultimately, I redrew the connecting area as a full stretch of the road-style dirt pathway, while retaining its funnel-like appearance as seen from above. Doing this though also made me think further about these roadways, so I also added some more of those little "weed clumps" along all the roads, notably at the junctions, in the places where wheels, hoofs and feet would be less likely to pass frequently, all to make the roads look a bit less maintained. They are beyond the main settlement's boundary wall, after all.

Plus we can see how that mid-property fireplace worked out in the end - a fireplace on one side, a cooking range in the narrow, galley-like kitchen on the other.

With this completed, it was time to begin detailing the internal contents of the central properties, those belonging to the temple and its ancillary elements. Temple access hall and priests' quarters first:

Followed by the dwellings of the lesser clergy and higher-ranked followers:

After which came the rest of the inn:

There were a few other changes made here as well. I wanted some water troughs for the stable block, which were simply drawn using fill polygons, as there aren't any suitable symbols in this style (although I did repurpose some stretched versions of the unlit braziers for the wall-mounted hay baskets in the separate stalls - likely too small to see at this res). It then occurred to me that other troughs could be positioned elsewhere, so I put a couple more in by the main crossroads, not far from the well there, and added a few cauldrons resized as buckets nearby, as already done elsewhere.

In addition, I changed the sheets for some of the larger furnishings, to give them a bit more shadow, and thus presence, when viewing the whole map, as I discovered I'd already done that for the bar furniture at the inn earlier. Not sure now if that was by accident or design though!

Finally, the last row of properties could have their interiors completed:

I did think of furnishing all the buildings, but felt that would draw attention too much away from the more central properties linked to the subterranean map. This does also leave open the possibility to install player-characters in one or other of these should they wish to spy on the temple and its congregation at some point. Plus it was common practice in many of the earliest D&D maps to show no roofs, just walls, stairs, doorways and windows, for surface buildings.

That just left the labelling, for which I chose the default font that comes with the Naomi Van Doren mapping style, the awkwardly-named IM FELL DW Pica PRO. Names for most of the items were predetermined using tables in Mythmere Games' "Nomicon", as noted in the first post above here, and allocated where appropriate. Thus we reach this completed first map, or at least its surface view, now at full Forum res, no less:

I'll spare you details of how much effort went into tweaking the effects, sizing, colouring and placement of the labels, compass rose and scalebar; suffice to say, it was almost a session in itself.

Next will be designing the upper floors of the properties here that have stairs, which may explain how that Banys Hall label applies to what are apparently two separate buildings at present...

Thinking further about this option since the livestream, it's a powerful tool no matter what kind of settlement you're wanting to map, even if it's to fit in a pre-drawn setting, as anything unwanted the random option generates can be readily moved or removed to fit terrain features (e.g. coastlines, rivers, cliffs).

Different areas of a larger city could be created randomly in different ways (medieval and modern could be mixed, drawn from different random maps, for instance), and then fitted together in a suitable CC3+ master file, simply by copying over the relevant parts of the separate randomly-created settlements.

Naturally, this would need quite a degree of restructuring and amending after the fact to make everything fit together correctly, although a lot of the base work would be done from the random creations.

It would also be possible to "super-detail" parts of a settlement drawn in a quite different style, such as a Watabou-type settlement, leaving the "blank" areas for segments that weren't necessary for such detailing. Again, unwanted parts of the random design would need removing, but this would be something to consider if of interest.

Just time to generate a quick sample random city map before the stream (it may not take anything like that long, depending how long you take adjusting the parameters first)!

While tinkering along the northern, east-street area, I'd started wondering how viable those narrow strips of grass might be along the southeastern side, and even if I should remove the bushes and thin grass verges on the other. Currently, I've opted to maintain the bushy verges (makes sneaking around the front of the inn easier for nefarious purposes, after all!), but have "paved" the other side's verges with a fresh area of dirt trackway.

To make up for the loss of vegetation cover, some new garden plots have been set up (not all with their vegetation added at this stage), together with a battered, earthen area between the curving road and the back gate of the inn's yard, which seemed a natural addition, using the same dirt fill as the gardens, with much less vegetation cover. The perceptive may notice I've also now added a lot more small, low-growing, "dots" of meant-to-be weeds in numerous places, helping break-up the textures and some of the harder pathway edges in places.

Now the rest of the garden plots northwest of the inn street have been finished, it's perhaps a little easier to see that vague, not-yet-pathway from the road to the back of the inn:

Which leaves just one last row of buildings to design internally, and a few more garden plots to add. This was as far as I got in my most recent session:

The non-spiral staircases have been a little bit of a battle all the way through. The initial trio all had the same orientation, so could be easily copied from one place to the next and still have their effects look correct, although even then, the second one had to have its staircase symbol adjusted for size (which luckily meant it fitted better to the third house as well).

Those in the two houses west of the main road though were in an opposite orientation, and needed to be added to a new sheet with altered effects to stop their shadows protruding through the solid wall they're inside. With those alternatives in-place, the two new staircases on the inn street were less of a problem in that way, for all adjustments to the shade angle have been necessary for nearly all the "landing" floor pieces, to get them to work with their lower floor planking as well.

One other thing was corrected. For some reason, all the doors and windows in the northwesternmost property of the "temple square" section (closest to the south corner of the first house on the south side of the inn street), had ended-up on the wrong sheet, and were casting wall-level shadows. That was spotted because I normally use the "eye-dropper", :CC2KEEP:, to set-up for whatever items I'm next drawing in a map like this, which provides a quick means to do so (especially for Layers, which aren't always automatically associated with symbols, for instance), and a check for mistakes - as here.

Nearly done now, at least for this first mapped level...

If you're wanting to darken the entire map, it may be possible to achieve something approximating your second image by setting up the effects as Sue was showing, but using the "Whole drawing" radio button, instead of just for one selected sheet. This can have unwanted consequences, depending on what your original map was like, but it is probably experimenting with at this early stage.