
Wyvern
Wyvern
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Community Atlas: Embra - Constructed Places
Constructed Places map 1 is that for the ruler's Crepuscular Palace at Embra. Well, I say "ruler", but she's actually more the physical embodiment of Embra made magically real and living, The Verdant Sorceress, who flies on wings made of summer flowers. Something like the Archfey of D&D, though really more like the deity of/being who is Embra in power and abilities here. The name and flower-wings came from random rolls using tables in A Wanderer's Guide to the Feywild, by Heavenly Spoon, available on the DM's Guild download site (Pay-What-You-Want). The rest is more "me", however. I'd added some details to the PDF and text files for the Crepuscular Palace map before I realised it would be feasible to provide a CA3 drawing of the Sorceress for the Atlas as well, something that needed quite a bit of late revision of both texts and the Palace map. Although there wasn't space to add the full CA3 drawing to the Palace one, I did want to add a suitable link-spot by it. So this is the final Palace map:
And this is the lady herself:
Of course, this is only how she appears in her Elf-like humanoid form, when out and about meeting people, and not trying to terrify visitors unnecessarily. She could seem equally to be anyone else in Embra, or anything at the city - such as a flower, a shrub, a tree, a building, a pond, a floral meadow, a path, a hill, a forest, a cloud, a rainbow, colours in a cloud, the River Clack, or a blade of grass. In a real sense, she IS Embra, in all its aspects, positive and negative. (Oh, and this means the final tally of Embra drawings for the Atlas is now 58, not 57...)
Those who've been following this lengthy series of posts regarding my Embra mapping closely may recall the Palace Heights map among the Hilly Places, and spot the resemblance to this Crepuscular Palace one. That would be scarcely surprising, as they're the same place, here with the Palace a living, still fully extant, building, rather than grassed-over ruins. With an interior:
However, the interior is shown only for the ground level. The upper storeys - which all the towers, walls and great central dome have - are left for GMs to determine, if required, as the elements in it change from time to time.
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Community Atlas: Embra - Constructed Places
The last set of Embra "Places" maps is that for the Constructed Places of Interest, linked from central segment 7 on the "Official Guide" map:
This is the busiest set for individual locations of any of the Places groups, with seven, leaving a mere three to be condensed onto the eighth "Streets" map.
The Celtic knotwork border was adapted from one in the, by-now-famous, Dover Clip-Art "Celtic Borders on Layout Grids" book, providing a completely connected square, to complement the original circular design used for the Village maps. That seemed an appropriate method of "book-ending" the entire set, as well as tying-in with the idea of both being constructed places, if of somewhat different sorts. In altering the design from what had been a vertically-elongated rectangular one to the required square here, I discovered when looking at the finished piece with its colouring, that I'd accidentally produced an asymmetry in the patterning. I did wonder briefly about amending that, but liked the look of something slightly off-kilter as apt for a Faerie setting, and so left it. The hours of effort it would have taken to change it had, of course, nothing to do with that choice...
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Live Mapping: Modern Atlas
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Community Atlas: Embra - Wooded Places
The opening map in the group, for the Painted Light Monument, was based on a design from the old Judges Guild "Temples I" book. As noted previously, these maps are smaller in scale than those in any of the other JG books being used as bases for the Embra Places maps, so this too needed a smaller CC3+ layout:
Which of course also reveals the dragon and lion motifs used to further decorate these map frames.
While a deceptively simple map with just a few shapes on it, apart from the omnipresent vegetation (Wooded Places, after all), as the central round tower is almost 90 feet tall (27 metres), there's clearly more to this than meets the eye, which the toggleable (FCW file) interior views should help demonstrate. First the lower level of the Tower Base (the map labels have to be turned-off for clarity when showing the interior):
Then a schematic mid-Pale Tower view:
Followed by one more for the highest interior view, just inside the roof:
I decided to add a few basic notes to each of the interior views as well, to help clarify exactly what was being shown. And yes, the number of steps IS accurate for the height of the tower, as the accompanying PDF and text files for the Atlas will reveal!
Speaking of steps, I had quite a few problems with the Effects on those little steps leading up the gentle angle of the outer part of the solid Sloping Base, as regardless of what I tried, there was - and indeed still is - a degree of interference between the stacked Sheets comprising them. This final version was the better compromise I decided was liveable with, where unless you're paying especial attention, the markings could be simply a bit of wear across one of the pale step stones.
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Community Atlas: Embra - Wooded Places
Approaching the end of this "guided" (?) tour of Embra, the penultimate group of sites to visit comprises the Wooded Places of Interest, approached via the relevant central pie-wedge from the "Official Guide" map, as usual:
This set, like the Hilly Places, has half-a-dozen individual mapped locations to connect, plus a seventh map for its four "Streets".
From the start with the Enclosed Places at Embra, it always seemed likely I'd be revisiting the foliate borders used there for these Wooded Places map frames too, as nothing else I'd come across seemed to fit the bill quite so well, this time with a reworking of the colours. As we shall discover however, I couldn't resist another couple of the knotwork creature designs from that page of those also in the Dover Clip-Art "Celtic Borders on Layout Grids" book...