A few months ago, I posted the Temple of Fah, a ziggurat I created to play with the CA209 Stairs and Steps annual. At long last, I have finally designed the interior.

I know this map is ridiculous. Egyptian pyramids only had a handful of rooms for the tombs of a pharaoh and their treasure. Sumerian ziggurats also only had a handful of interior chambers. But I decided to go whole hog and create a sprawling interior complex reminiscent of the classic dungeon crawls I first experienced with D&D in the early 80s. (My first introduction to the game was December of 1979.)

Here’s a side view of the exterior to give you a sense of the entrances:

There are two landings before reaching the very top of the ziggurat. The first is on level 7, standing on the roof of level 6, and the second is on level 13, on the roof of level 12. The entrances on each landing are to the left and right of the exterior stairs continuing up. The 10 feet wide doors are designed to be concealed for aesthetic purposes, blending in with the side of the ziggurat when shut, but they aren’t exactly hidden or secret.

The landings divide the ziggurat into three sections. The top-most section is primarily used by priests and religious leaders. The middle section has chapels and shrines that the royal family, wealthy nobles, and elite government workers are invited to for private religious celebrations, including weddings and coronations. The general public is never invited inside. Instead, religious leaders stand on the first landing of the temple to lead the masses gathered before the temple in their religious ceremonies. The lowest section contains the tombs of great pharaohs and powerful religious leaders.

I decided to design the interior rooms and passageways using the color key knockout effect that @amerigoV describes in this thread. The walls are granite from the CA149 Beaumaris Castle annual. Most of the other fills and symbols come from the CA150 Ancient Tombs annual.

Here’s an example of a level with the effects turned off:

Each level of the ziggurat is 10 feet above the level below. The rooms and passageways inside are mostly 8 feet high, leaving two feet of stone for the ceiling (or the floor for the level above).

Let’s go inside!

Here's a version with a darker red:

And here's a version where I tried lighter text on a darker background. (The white ones at the end are the only ones that really work.) For this one, I moved the text to a different sheet so I could turn off the white glow that just made it look bolded in a way that made it harder to read.

I was going to render a part of my Fractal Terrains campaign world in the new Sarah Wroot Revisited style, just to play around with the new style, but I decided to wait until Ralf has a chance to do a tutorial first. In the meantime, I went back to the January 2024 annual that I never really played with, Fantasy Realms Reimagined, to try it with that.

I was going to render the Republic of Lumadair area of my map that I have done before in the Parchment Worlds, Jerion Shading, and Mike Shley styles, but I decided that it was too massively oversized for this style. Those maps are 6,109 by 2,445 miles! (I think we calculated that Lumadair is slightly smaller than Australia, and the map includes part of the mainland continent of Lenoch, which I wanted to include to be able to do more mountains and rivers.)

So I picked a prominent river in the main kingdom I am developing, the Achalus River, and decided that it would run through a duchy named after the river. This is a much smaller map than Lumadair, but it is still 1,343 by 537 miles.

Anyway, here is the Fractal Terrains output in both the Jerion and Schley styles, just for frame of reference:

And here is what I did in Fantasy Realms Reimagined:

I copied over a mid-level elevation contour from the Jerion export to serve as a temporary drawing guide for the hills, and then another higher elevation as a temporary guide for the mountains. This style doesn't actually have a hills or mountains background the way the Schley style does (I mean, it does, but just for the individual hill or mountain itself: it renders onto a layer for the hill or mountain itself, with the ridge lines going on another layer). But I decided it was helpful as more than just a drawing guide, so I changed the hill background to brown and the mountain one to gray, put them on separate sheets, and added Edge Fade and Blur effects.

The coast looks blurry, but that's just because the map is so large. Here's how it looks zoomed in (it has a bevel effect on the LAND sheet instead of having a separate outline on a Coast sheet):

Even though I labeled this post as a Work in Progress, I probably won't do much more on this particular map. We'll see how much more I do when I have a chance to revisit it with the Sarah Wroot Revisited style. I may end up adding all the extra stuff when I flesh out the entire kingdom, which I suspect I will do in the Mike Schley style. This was just for fun and practice -- and it gave me a chance to use a style from this year's annual that I haven't really worked with before (other than using the hills in a back-burnered rendering of the Wizard of Oz map that I'm working on).

Here's what it looks like with those new sheet effects. I can add more dunes as well -- either a few big ones, or more smaller ones? Also, I may have attached the wrong FCW file before.

Okay, here's the next iteration.

I tried to use blotchy lighter sands to suggest sand dunes, like the Sahara Desert, and darker blotches to show more solid, earth-packed areas. Not sure if I should try to get them to blend in more with a partial transparency or something?

Tried to make the roads show up a little more, but I can't tell if it was that successful. I liked the idea that the guys with the camels could be used on the trails roads to indicate that it was more of a general route through the sands, where most travelers would need an experienced guide to make sure they don't get lost, since a proper road would be blown away or covered with sand. There is a more treacherous area in the southern part of the desert called the Devil's Backbone, where a proper road on more solid land passes next to a 50-mile long fissure. It's a dangerous route, beset by foul creatures that creep out of the fissure, especially at night. But the road is on solid land, and without a guide, it might be a safer route than braving the shifting sand dunes. (I put a tower next to one of the villages down there -- maybe a wizard is there that the adventurers just have to visit?)

Thoughts?

Here's the interior of the lower levels of the Frostmaidens' Cradle caverns. Starting to work now on the final lair, the volcanic Womb of Ashes.

The basement of the villa.

Toggles

FURNACE ROOF layer to hide/display the roof over the furnace

FLOW ARROWS layer to hide/display arrows showing direction of hot water, cold water, and warm air

PARCHMENT layer to hide/reveal the layer of parchment that provides a sort of sepia filter over the outdoor areas.

TEXT LABELS (NUMBERS) layer to hide/display the numbered labels.

TEXT LABELS layer to hide/display the legends describing the labeled numbers. 

Files

Description

The basement of the Villa Citri and its estate.

Villa Basement

1. Villa Fountain

The base of the fountain in the villa’s peristylium courtyard, with water pipes to keep it filled even in the dry months, and a drain valve to empty the fountain for maintenance.

2. Villa Impluvium

The base of the villa’s impluvium.

3. Heating Caliduct

Heat vent brings hot air from the hypocaust to the upper levels of the villa.

4. WC Shaft

Shaft brings waste from the lavatories to the sewers.

5. Water Well Shaft

Pipes bring river water to the upper floors of the villa.

6. Cella Vinaria

The villa’s wine cellar.

7. Horreum

A storage room.

Balneae Basement

8. Frigidarium

The lower portion of the cold-water pool, with the pipes to bring water in and the release valves to drain it when necessary.

9. Caldarium

The lower portion of the hot-water pool, with the pipes to bring water in and the release valves to drain it when necessary.

10. Tepidarium

The lower portion of the warm-water pool, with the pipes to bring water in and the release valves to drain it when necessary.

11. River Water Pipe

Water piped in from the river.

12. Cold Water Tank

River water is piped to this massive tank to provide water for all of the villa’s operations.

13. Hot Water Tank

River water heated by the hypocaust is stored here to provide the villa and bathhouse’s hot water needs.

14. Sudatorium Steam Vent

This vent provides hot steam to the steam sauna above.

Hypocaust

15. Praefurnium

The wood-burning furnace used to provide hot air and water for the villa and the bathhouse.

16. Furnace Chimney

The chimney to vent the hypocaust’s smoke.

17. Firewood

The hypocaust naturally needs an endless supply of firewood to keep air and water hot.

18. Alveus

The hollow space beneath the building's floor, where hot air from the hypocaust circulates.

19. Pilae Stacks

These are the small pillars of tiles that support the raised floor above the hypocaust, creating the space for hot air to circulate.

20. Cold Water Pipe

Pipes bring cold water throughout the bathhouse and villa.

21. Hot Water Pipe

Water heated by the hypocaust. 

22. Hot Air Pipe

Hot air from the hypocaust used to heat the bathhouse and the villa. 

23. Hypocaust Controls

A complex series of controls allows water pipes and heating caliducts to be opened or shut as needed, either for maintenance or when warmer weather precludes the need for heated floors.

24. Drain Valve

Used to drain water from pools directly into the sewers.

25. Sewers

Stairs that descend into the portion of the municipal sewers that services the villa.

I am ready to submit the FCW for the Eknapata Desert for the Atlas, knowing that it won't be processed until after the contest ends (though it is a parent map for a village I am submitting to the contest).

Here is the FCW, along with a PDF Description and a plain text file (with accents replaced with standard ASCII characters).

I changed the two labels to near-white for settlements and near-black for geographical names. (Let me know if you think I should reverse that, with dark names for settlements and light ones for geography.) Playing with text-along-a-curve for some mountain ranges and rivers, and moved some to the side to make them easier to read. (For a few of them, I had to explode the text and ungroup temporarily to adjust the kerning.) Made some effects changes to the political borders but I need to redraw them to reflect the river changes. Oh, and I embiggened the compass and moved it. It also has an inner glow to make it stand out a little.

May not have more time today to work on this -- about to head out to a family function for the day. Hoping to finish it this weekend.

Still working on this. Text is slightly larger, and the glow is as well. Added more names, though I still have a few more rivers and settlements to do. Should I be naming the roads, too?

I am think about putting country names, settlement names, and geographic names each on a separate layer so that end users can toggle them on and off as desired. They're already on separate sheets, though, so maybe that's sufficient for toggling individually, and a single layer for all of them to toggle all names on/off simultaneously?