Royal Scribe
Royal Scribe
About
- Username
- Royal Scribe
- Joined
- Visits
- 8,944
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member
- Points
- 3,244
- Birthday
- February 5, 1968
- Location
- San Francisco, California
- Website
- https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/31814/Royal-Scribe-Imaginarium
- Real Name
- Kevin
- Rank
- Mapmaker
- Badges
- 16
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Ideas and Wishes for Monthly Dungeon Symbols
I am so glad you asked, because you know I've been keeping lists! You can check out some of my ideas in this thread, but here's a recap of some highlights:
Interior
- Thrones - Ornate metal and stone; "elven" (wooden with art nouveau flourishes); "evil" (skulls, spikes, etc.)
- Regalia - Crowns; scepters; orbs
- Couches - Both "regular" and Roman-style (I think SS4 only has chairs that I make extra wide for couches)
- Mage/Sage Furnishings - Globes, astrolabes
- Ornate Staircases - Maybe modular so you can construct your own (left, right, and center for bottom, middle, and top, in stone and wood, with and without varicolor carpeting)
- Musical Instruments - Upright and on their side (lutes, harps, harpsichords, drums)
- Ancient Tombs - Think Indiana Jones-style stuff, like idols
Exterior
- Gardens - Varicolor flowers, rose bushes, berry bushes, exotic/carnivorous plants
- Tiltyard - Quintain, pell, horse armor
- Topiary - Bushes trimmed to form the shape of animals and mythical creatures
- Statues - Riding and standing free. Royalty plus archetypical character types (sword fighters, archers, mages)
Building Construction
- Flagpoles - Upright and on their side, separate from flags for flexibility
- Flags - Varicolor top-down and on their side
- Gargoyles and Grotesques
- Clocktower - Clock hands on side of building; bells for belltower
- Spires
- Façade Ornamentation - I don't know the proper term, but here are some pics I took to illustrate
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[WIP] Swamp Witch
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[WIP] Haunted Mansion
I'll be starting on the actual Haunted Mansion part of this Haunted Mansion Map today. But first, here's the rest (almost) of what's going on in the church and graveyard.
Here's the first level of the church's basement.
It may seem odd that a basement has so many windows. This basement is only about 75% below ground. The top 25% is above ground, and that's where windows to let light in are located -- close to the ceiling from the inside, but at foot level from the outside. There's a set of double doors connecting to a interior ramp that leads out to the graveyard. The mortician has two rooms here, one for preparing the deceased for funerals, and another that connects to a lower storage room in Basement 2. This level also has a few offices for the priests and clergy staff, a few storage rooms, and lavatories. Other than the doors from the graveyard, it is primarily accessed from the four stone spiral staircases (the two southern ones going all the way up to the bell towers, and the two northern ones going to balconies for the choir in the main chapel.
Continuing down into Basement 2, we find the mortician's storage rooms (including a stack of unused coffins) and the church's crypts for VIP decedents. I kept the shafts for the wells here so that I wouldn't accidentally create passageways through them. The two shafts that aren't connected to the crypts come from the lavatories in Basement 1 as well as the drain in the mortician's room. They connect to the not-yet-mapped sewers one more level below. (Sinister Sewers will come in handy again!)
But wait! Not all is as it seems here. There are two secret passageways off of the mortician's storage rooms. (I love that the cut-away polygons used to carve out tunnels can be moved to the "Secret" layer so that they can be hidden or revealed so easily.) The passageway heading west connects to a secret spiral stairway entrance to the Rectory. Who knows how many generations ago it was put in -- the church's current head priest, who lives in the rectory, doesn't even know it's there! The second passageway heading north connects below the Brambleheath Tombs, created by the Brambleheath family who also built the now-haunted mansion.
But wait again! One more secret here. If you remove the lids to the sarcophagi and coffins, you'll notice that a few have moldering remains but most are actually empty. They all have proper plaques naming the supposed occupants. It's unclear if the bodies were remove after burial, or if they never made it into their coffins. One on the northern side is filled with rocks, suggesting for that one, at least, it was interred without a body.
The sewers will come later, after I've done the Mansion. For now, let's head over to the Brambleheath Tomb. When you enter the tomb, a Glyph of Warding protects it from graverobbers. For a family tomb, it's surprisingly small: one large sarcophagus on the floor, two smaller ones on ledges to either side of it, and two urns with the cremains of other ancestors.
Visitors who make it past the Glyph of Warding can trace their finger along a sigil on the sarcophagus lid that activates a temporary levitation spell, raising the lid to reveal a staircase heading down. (I love this symbol set!)
The lower level of the tomb reveals a "small"" family crypt.
But wait, more secrets! A passageway heading south on the eastern side (this is the passage that connects to the mortician's storage room beneath the church, and another passageway that heads down stairs and then turns to head beneath the graveyard towards the mansion. If we open the coffins and sarcophagi here, we see that most do have bodies. It's hard to tell because they're in shadows, but the northeastern-most one was buried with a sword, and the one next to it was buried with a staff. Plot hooks!
That's it for now. Haunted Mansion and sewers still to come...
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[WIP] - The Griffon's Eyrie
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[WIP] Wizard's Tower - Interior
Here are the first two levels of the basement. Sewers still to come.
Basement 1
A wine cellar in the northeast corner is conveniently close to the stairs, so that the wizard or their staff can slip down for a few more bottles in the middle of a dinner party. Continuing clockwise, the other rooms are a freezer, a larder, a storeroom, and in the northwestern corner, a refuse pit is used to throw organic, wooden, and metal waste for disposal in the sewers.
Basement 2
The second level of the basement doesn't appear to have much. A corridor heading west leads to stairs that descend into the sewers. To the south, a cavernous chamber has been turned into the wizard's grotto. River water has been pumped in to make a man-made pond, heated to a pleasantly cool temperature by a few warm luminescent crystals. A second, larger pool is warmed by enough luminescent crystals to keep the water as warm as a hot bath. The room is lighted by clusters of luminescent fungi. On the western side, a spacious WC also doubles as a changing room.
But wait, there's more! This floor also has two secret passageways. One near the stairs leads to the Wizard's secret treasury chambers. The outer chamber is used for coins, gemstones, and other valuables. The second chamber, accessed through a short corridor protected by a Glyph of Warding holds the Wizard's magical treasurers. In addition to being about 30 feet underground and carved into the rocky hillside, the treasury is protected by marble walls that are five feet thick. Between these walls and the rocky cliff is another foot-wide wall of lead to protect the room against scrying eyes.
Another secret passageway north of the stairs leading to the sewers leads to a cavern, through which a secret Teleportation Portal can be accessed. The southwest corner has been sealed by a Wall of Steel, protected by another Glyph of Warding. If you get past that, the passageway quickly dead-ends into a pile of rubble.
The Wall of Steel and the rubble can be hidden using the RUBBLE layer:
FCWs
And here are the FCW files for these levels. (Remy, this is not the official thread for submitting to the Atlas. I will create a new thread with these maps properly labeled and described, plus a village map to come.)
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Invasion of the Pod People
Coincidentally, I happened to watch one of the remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the 2007 Nicole Kidman film Invasion) the night before Mike Schley's latest monthly symbols were released. Just for fun, I decided to do a quick-and-dirty map with the new Hive Civilization symbols. I hadn't gotten a chance to play with the Mesoamerican symbols (busy making villages when those symbols came out!), it gave me an excuse to try them out, too.
If there's a Hive expansion next month (they tend to come in pairs), maybe I will revise this same map to show the Kheek'zit invaders' expansion onto the mainland.
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[WIP] Adnati - Birdseye Continental
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[WIP] The Wizard of Schley
Still haven't finished the basement (got sidetracked with Cosmographer), but revisiting this to add some of the newest monthly symbols. I experimented with adding tombstones #4 and #5 from Mike Schley's latest monthly as decorations on the top of the tower, like where gargoyles and grotesques would go, but I couldn't get them to look right. And creating a little graveyard outside of the tower looked weird on such a small hill. But I couldn't resist doing something with the new symbols, so I added tombstone #4 as a statue amidst the trees on the western side, and the wheelbarrow next to the vegetable garden.
I think I've managed to get something from each of the 2025 monthly dungeon-scale symbols into one or more of these Wizard of Schley maps.
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Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, and Happy New Year!
I first joined the forums a year ago after months of watching YouTube tutorials (and years of owning the software but too intimidated to learn it). Map-making has become a soothing respite for me. The process taps into both my analytical side (figuring out all of the techniques to make things work) and my creative side (creating a work of art from a blank canvass). Thank you all for being such an important part of my year.
Apropos of Ralf's tutorial today (go "like" and subscribe!), I wanted to share my own holiday maps I designed for cards. You can see more in my galleries.
My first attempt was a country inn celebrating the Yuletide.
But I have found that for friends and family who aren't used to role-playing games or fantasy books with maps, some find the top-down maps to be a little confusing. I decided to go with a more isometric route using Spectrum Overland. This is the one I ended up putting on my cards. I call it "The Toy-Maker's North Pole Workshop."
(A friend commented that the castle is snowflake-shaped, which hadn't occurred to me. Love it!)
And for a more pagan solstice vibe, I also did this henge in a snowy forest. The henge radiates a magical purple glow.
Thank you, everyone, for your kindness and support this last year. I am very happy to have found this community.
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[WIP] Winter Solstice










