Here is Basement 2. Most of it is taken up by the mansion's sewer system, including a branch that comes from beneath the barn. There are shadows from the shafts above where waste is deposited into the sewers. Waste flows to the southern-most part of the line, where a chute connects the mansion's sewers to the municipal sewers. There are also two shafts here to connect the wells (one in the barn) to the water table below.

The secret stairs from the wine cellar connect to a small area here, with more stairs continuing even further below.

Here's a zoomed-in look at the chute that also shows a closer look at the effluent (with sheet effects copied in from Sinister Sewers).

Great! I played with the ADJUST HUE/SATURATION effect to soften the wooden part of the bridge so it blends better. Even though it's unlabeled, I may declare this map is "done" unless anyone else notices anything that needs fixing. Love this style! Thank you to @C.C. Charron, Ralf, and everyone else who had a hand in its creation.

It looks good! First I tried it with 10-foot wide, 10 degree pitch increments, with a 80 degree pitch at the edges, working up to a 10 degree pitch at the center. The transitions were a little sharp:

Then I redid it with a more gradual transition, 5-feet wide sheets with 5 degree pitch increments going from 85 degree pitch at the edges to 5 degrees at the center. That worked much better! Some fill styles worked better than others, of course -- though some that I didn't care for might be improved if I play with adjusting the scaling. Roof tiles didn't really work very well, but wood worked, as did different stone fills. Here are the top 50% of my experiments:

Thank you for the tip, Sue! I can play with fills (and the scaling of those fills), but I feel like I have something solid to work with here.

I first started with Dungeons & Dragons in December of 1979. !!! Back then, our maps were hand-drawn on graph paper, or store-bought modules that were only slightly more sophisticated than graph paper. Played off and on with different groups for decades.

In 2017, having not played for nearly a decade, I started to create my campaign world. I searched for mapping software and the Internet's consensus was that Campaign Cartographer was both the most powerful and the hardest to learn. Sounds like a challenge! I used my tax refund to buy everything except the annuals (which I didn't understand)...and failed.

I've always been a visual learner. I retain more from reading a book than from listening to the audio version of it. I thought I could teach myself from the PDF manuals. I got some basic concepts, but I didn't really get them. I fiddled around with the software but everything looked awful. (They might have looked slightly less awful if I knew how to turn on sheet effects.)

Then COVID hit in 2020, and with a lot of not-leaving-the-house-time, I revisited my world-building, but not map building. It wasn't until mid-2023 (six years after buying the software!) that I finally decided to start watching some of the tutorials. The obvious thing to everyone except me: videos aren't just audio, they are also visual. Things started to click. And then I became addicted to the videos. To see a blank canvass come to life and turn into a work of art! And then to start mapping: even more addicting! I've mentioned this before, but it is really stimulates left brain/right brain simultaneously. There's the creative part about creating a work of art. But there's also the analytical/problem-solving part about how to do that with textures and symbols and optical illusion sheet effects. I posted my first map here (not the first map I created, but the first I posted) in January 2024, and it's been full speed ever since.

Okay, here's a first pass at the portion of the map I've adopted for the Community Atlas. This was done using the Spectrum Overland style. So far, this is mostly just terrain converted from the parent map.

I want to add more individual trees around the edges of the forests where they look too squared off. I still need to add rivers (this map only came with one in the bottom right), and if necessary, more hills or small mountains at the source of the rivers.

This map came with five settlements. At this scale (each grid square is 100 miles), should I keep the beveled dots from the parent map or use the lovely Spectrum Overland symbols? I created a diamond-shaped one (on the larger island) for other points of interest. (I'm thinking that island may be a resort playground for the rich and famous, like a cross between Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, that operates outside of the reach of the country's law enforcement.)

I wasn't thrilled with how the savannah/grasslands blur into the desert on the right. I may need to adjust the sheet effects. I also thought about encircling the desert with dunes. I did it half of it that way so you can see it with and without the dunes. Thoughts? Oh, and I need to add some saguaro cacti or joshua trees.

I'd like to add a swamp somewhere. I plan to add a henge at one of the northern forests, surrounded by more trees -- that's where elves live. And a dwarven fortress in one of the southern mountains.

Roads will come last, once I've determined the rivers, major settlements, and points of interest, and then need to connect them.

Advice welcome, including the name.

I finally have a bit to show for my contribution to the Community Atlas Competition. More work is needed but it's enough to provide the gist.

I adopted a little farming village on the edges of Verinress'Arl on Artemisia. The parent map's notes explain that Verinress'Arl is populated by Aeifa (surface dwelling drow), who are ruled by a Matriarch, where succession is by fight to the death among her female offspring. The red box here (northeast of center) shows the village in relation to the rest of the kingdom:

The village was once the site of a military outpost, but when it was decommissioned generations ago, a village grew up and took over some of the surviving military facilities: a small fortress that became the village jail, and a tower atop a hill that was purchased by sorceress to live out her years of retirement. The tower was passed down to one of her apprentices, and so on through the generations.

While the villagers are mostly self-sufficient, raising enough of a variety of crops to sustain the village, it's known for its fruit orchards and even more for its vineyards and the wines that are popular throughout the realm.

Here's the village so far (I also put a copy in my gallery if you want to zoom around):

Still more to add within the area protected by the palisades, and forests to the north/northeast.

Here's a closer view of the hillside known locally as "the rock" (though a proper name will be provided on the map):

In addition to the sorceress' tower on top of "the rock," there are three other buildings the dig into the hillside. On the south/southeast, a decommissioned military fort has been converted into facilities for the village watch, with jail cells built underground in the hillside. On the eastern side, the Temple also digs into the hillside where the crypts and religious records/artifacts are maintained. And on the north side, the winery (which may be a bit oversized, now that I see it) also extends into the hillside, where wine can ferment in giant vats in caverns protected from the heat of the sun.

The government buildings include the City Clerk's office in the center, with the courthouse to the east, the mayor's office to the northeast, and the town council chambers to the northwest.

Here's an example of treehouse housing. More smaller complexes like this will be built elsewhere within the palisades.

Outside of the village walls on the southwest side is a large pond. There are some industries along the creek that exits the pond: a small mill, blacksmith, tanner's, and glassblowers. North of them is a hillside and field that have become an entertainment area. A large bonfire is lit most warm nights, where the villagers make music and dance. There's also a stage where traveling minstrels, troubadours, and traveling acting troupes can perform for the villagers who can sit on stone benches before the stage or on the hillside behind. The big building on the northeast side of the pond is the community baths (elves are stereotypically fastidious, after all).

Much more to come, but since it's officially August, I wanted to post what I have to date to start getting feedback.

Made some good progress, including labeling some of the primary businesses and points of interest. I also widened it a bit to make room for a legend. The text was a little hard to read so I added a semi-transparent back. Let me know if it's still too hard to read, and what you'd recommend to help that (make the back less transparent? darker or lighter shade?)

Here's the inside of ones of the hag's caves. Outside, you'll see her cauldron over a fire pit along with some gruesome trophies: skulls and scalps on pikes. (Also added bed a of fungi outside). Bones dumped in a heap in the opening area. "Bedroom" area off to the left -- the bed is just a pile of dried leaves. Some cells for captives (fresh meat!) with grasping vines to keep captives "shackled" and carnivorous roots barricading the doorways. And in the middle, steps going down...

Oh, and I reduced the opacity of the drawn shadow to 40%, hoping that will make it less "floaty."

I just noticed that although I posted my completed map in the competition thread, I didn't post an image of it here. Doing that now, just so this thread shows the full process.

I have wanted to use Mike Schley's elven treehouse symbols ever since I started mapping with CC3+, so I am delighted to finally have had the opportunity. (My friend keeps calling this map -- especially because of the elevated pathways -- my Ewok Village.)

And here's the temple's basement. Here, monks who have passed their initiation tests live (there are above-ground barracks for the trainees, but only a fraction of them survive the training). While senior monks are entombed in the crypts when they pass away, trainees and more junior monks are cremated, and their remains are kept in urns in the columbarium. The ritual room includes a teleportation portal that can take senior monks to the "Trial of the Elements" dungeon, and this is where the initiates who have survived that trial appear at the end.

Oh, but wait, there's more: two secret passageways that connect to a secret escape route (revealed by unchecking the SECRET layer). One route is accessed through one of the sarcophagi that conceals stairs that descend (love that symbol, always need a reason to include it).

More to come in a bit...