Thanks very much folks!

Closing-in on the final stages of this project now though, so here's a view of Palace 9:

This was done using the SS2 Bitmap A style. I was rather taken with some of the fill options for this, as you might tell! The background here is the snow fill, but the palace itself was drawn using the Water Green 1 fill, as this just seemed such a rich, icy-looking option to give some real colour to this Palace, as a change from some of the previous ones. Not a great many choices from the symbols, unfortunately, as very few come with a varicolor option to better match the icy theme - just the central throne in the end, though at this resolution, you can barely see it, of course.

I'm going to miss drawing these snowflake patterns, I think, but there's the danger that the more I do, the less interesting they may become, since - as my comments regarding the construction of Palace 8 might indicate - I have developed a pattern for drawing these now, which while useful, isn't necessarily such a good thing, as it discourages exploration and innovation. I have enjoyed seeing the styles that were new to me though. There's so much in the full complement of the CC3+ packages I've never properly explored, so I have been trying to take time during this mapping exercise to go through all the fill styles available in each mapping type I've selected, as well as all the symbol catalogues for each. Probably never going to remember where any of these things are when I next need them, but...

Haven't managed to get the rest of the "Palace Quirks" notes typed-up yet; they'll likely follow after the Palace 10 map. And hopefully a little while after that, I might finally get the set submitted for the Atlas!

Last among the Watery Places maps is one condensing the final five streets into one drawing, the second illustration below showing just the streets for a bit better clarity at the normal Forum resolution:

The roadways were constructed randomly, as described in the Enclosed Places Forum notes, with the final appearances and features determined sometimes by the street names, sometimes by other factors. Potter Row is of course where the great ceramic craftsfolk live and work, several in houses built of pottery - a couple even in the form of gigantic pots (this is Faerie, after all). The featured text for Wadingburn Road suggested a willow-lined stream, and fancier properties. Rainbow Lane had to have rainbows along it - even to the roadway itself - while Bathtub Alley cried out for a large pond or pool to be added for those water faeries to be in. And then we have Glass Harmonica Way...

I mentioned in the introductory Embra topic that music had been one of my primary influences on how a Faerie city should be presented, and maybe one of the most "faerie" real-world instruments should be the glass harmonica, as well as being one that requires extraordinary skill and ability to play. So having come up with the street name near the start of developing Embra, it was always clear this was going to be a community of musicians, instrument makers, composers, and the like. The random nature of my street design mechanism meant the available area was smaller than I might have preferred initially, though the whole point of using random systems is to work with whatever that may throw at you, and adapt accordingly. The featured text provided an interesting adjunct, suggesting this wasn't going to be an ordinary street at all, but one closer to a gated community in the real-world, and from that everything else simply flowed (appropriately for a Watery Place, perhaps!). The one downside to the final map is that because I wanted everything clearly labelled, the small area meant the labels ended up concealing quite a lot of the area's character. However, the toggle option in the FCW Atlas file to turn off the place-names means it is possible to get a better view of the whole:

From which we can all again play "spot the red sandstone components" - and hopefully get a clearer impression of the final layout. And yes, the street was originally populated with random CD3 houses, which then got moved, adapted, redrawn and converted to their final shapes here.

Moving on swiftly from the dubious delights of Toll Cross brings us to the cheerier Travelling Places segment of the Twilight Market, Market Row:

A colourful scatter of tents, wagons and stalls spills along and beyond the road here, and there's even a group of buildings, since for once, there is a more fixed settlement alongside the Market (or perhaps it grew up because the Market was here). Though the footprint of several buildings is large, particularly when contrasted against the much smaller market stalls, I opted to make them all merely single-storey structures, so the Market didn't get lost among the houses. Only the buildings have been provided with internal floorplans, which also helps clarify which they are, of course:

The individual darker trees are to match with the featured text notes, and I think something of the strangeness of Toll Cross lingered with me, as I decided not to name the open land between the two "Mirror" properties and the foot of Longing Hill, which the Market also seems to avoid, and simply kept it as an empty place the locals become evasive about if anyone asks. Quite why I've left for GMs to determine, however...

I second Sue's comments; this was an extremely difficult vote, as there are just so many fascinating maps produced in such different styles.

Hopefully, everyone contributing enjoyed their mapping, and perhaps learnt something fresh along the way.

It's certainly been a delight reviewing them all again now!

Get voting folks!

If what you're wanting to do is use online images to make your own vehicle trace-drawings for conversion to symbols, it's worth checking the military museum sites (especially if you're hunting for more obscure vehicles) and also scale model websites - including model kit manufacturers. A number of manufacturers now have PDFs of their kit instructions online that you can freely download, and they sometimes have illustrations showing top-down views for the paint and decal schemes for instance, which might be another starting point.

In terms of constructing the symbols, I'd suggest having a set-up where the lines, base colour, camouflage patterning and any markings are each done as a separate Sheet in CC3+ (or more likely "layers" in non-CC3 graphics programs), to make it easier to swap those for different theatres and times. Also, @Lillhans' comment about separate tank turrets is an excellent one. I'd suggest too using Sheet overlays for the top of various AFVs that have different variants using the same lower chassis and skirts, again to make those easier to swap-out without having to keep redrawing each time.

Hopefully before folks get too involved in their mapping for this, it's worth reflecting that Vertshusen is situated around 65° South latitude on Nibirum, which means it's about on the Antarctic Circle (for Nibirum, this is at 65°S). So in summer, the Sun never sets, and in winter it never rises. For those less familiar with such locations, it may be worth examining some of the architecture and building layouts used in settlements in such places today on Earth - Alaska, Northern Canada, Iceland, northern Scandinavia and northern Russia (there are no southern hemisphere equivalents on Earth) - some aspects of which might require a nudge or two from magical elements to replace the technological ones, given there really weren't many substantial, permanent settlements around the Arctic Circle during medieval-equivalent times on Earth.

Just to make sure I'm not leaving anyone behind here, some brief explanation. From the early days of RPGs, those running the games have been encouraged to design areas for the players to explore, frequently using random generation systems to do so. "Hexcrawling" is the overland version of this, where each hex represents a fixed distance (if sometimes a little vaguely defined, given a hexagon is not the same size from its centre all around), commonly 5 or 6 miles, though larger or smaller sizes than this are not infrequent. What are now called "Old School Rules" (OSR) RPG systems often make use of this technique, and these have seen a particular upsurge in popularity this year, following ongoing problems from the current owners of "Dungeons & Dragons".

One of the unexpectedly phenomenal successes of recent times in the OSR line has been a new RPG called "ShadowDark", which presents a very streamlined update on the OSR theme, that incorporates improvements from modern RPGs more generally. I've been very taken with the whole ShadowDark RPG conception, particularly as the Core Rules include everything needed to play the game, such as a random generation system for hexcrawls.

Last weekend, I did a couple of small test areas, to see how the system worked (hexes here are 6 miles in size), and although the system which will appear in the printed Core Rules has been tweaked a little since then, I prepared the maps in CC3+ through the week, to see how they'd look, using the 2010 Overland Hex style. These are the basic maps as generated by the random system rolls, with a list of their contents, and a separate key:

Yeah, as someone who's been preparing illustrations, diagrams, graphs, etc., for print publication for decades, draw it in black and white from the start, and keep things simple. Some of the delicate lines and shading on the cliffs, for example, may not look great on a BnW print, especially if the size is to be reduced to something like a typical paperback novel page, and the mottled fill will likely end up looking just grubby. Line clarity is often key too; the use of ruled-line hatching and dot-shading in printed drawings and maps didn't end up that way by-chance, after all.

Still reeling from the shock that the style wasn't called "Sinister Suers", naturally 😉!

As usual with such competitions, there are far too many entries deserving of the top places, and far too few votes available per person to vote for all I might wish!

I do think it's important to emphasize again that everyone who took part deserves our praise and admiration. There's not a single map here that won't grace the Atlas with its presence.

And they'll also have pushed us on way beyond Map 1,000 once they've all been added to the Atlas.

Well done to one and all, regardless of what the final results may show!