More progress on the swampy lair. Here with trees shown and the treetops hidden. (With the latter, you can see the ripples around the trunks of the trees in the water -- I do love that ripple drawing tool so much!

Also added more algae throughout. In the southeastern island, I added a pool of blood where the hags conduct their gruesome rituals. And to the northeast of that island, there's a pen where the hags and their lycanthropic were-crocodiles breed crocodiles.

Working on the Swamp Hags' lair now.

A year ago for Halloween, I did a series of maps experimenting with creating a swamp witch's lair using three styles: Dungeons of Schley, Marine Dungeons, and Forest Trail. Of the three, Marine Dungeons was my favorite. This time, I decided to experiment with using Darklands City, because I love the green hue of the water effects. I wasn't happy with how it was turning out, so I experimented with using Creepy Crypts, with some of the sheet effects on Darkland City's water brought over.

But I still wasn't happy, so I went back to Marine Dungeons. Last time I used Marine Dungeons for a swamp, I had to play with the sheet effects on the water to give it a swampy vibe. This time, I discovered right away that simply changing the background from the lovely tropical beach sand to a more muddy earth color immediately changes the water, too. This doesn't change any of the sheet effects, it just changes the background from Marine Dungeon's sand to the CA181 Dirt 03 from Forest Trail.

This also makes use of symbols and effects from Creepy Crypts, Forest Trail, and Darklands City (plus tentacles from Sinister Sewers because I wanted the green tentacles). This is a battlemap view with the treetops hidden so you can battle beneath the branches.

This is still a work in progress. Among other things, I need to add tons more trees on the land and in the water, plus more dirt and vegetation patches. And lots more algae.

There are three hags in the swamp hags' coven. Each has her own thatch cottage elevated on pillars, and then the slightly larger thatched cottage in the southeastern side is their ritual room. The hags use ladders to get into their private quarters, but the ritual room also has stone steps descending into the swamp water. You can also see the bone bridge connecting this area to the teleportation portal.

Here's the teleportation portal (from Creepy Crypts). I was going to add the glow symbol from DD3 but the effect wasn't as subtle as I wanted, so I drew a purple polygon on a sheet with an inner edge fade that goes from 0% opacity at the edges to 40% in the center. I may redraw it with a longer radius. (The purplish dots are will-o'-wisps.)

And here are the "prisons" for the hags' captives. Muddy pits contained by low walls (about one foot off the ground) where victims are submerged halfway up their chests. The tentacles keep them restrained and also fight off rescuers, but their suctions also administer a low-dose poison that keeps the captives asleep most of the time.

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."

First pass of the outdoor areas of the Forest Hags' lair, the Withering Glade. The premise is that elves once used it as a shrine, but the hags drove them out, poisoning the Great Tree in the center of the glade.

I've been experimenting with using the Forest Trails cliff symbols back to back to make ridges. One other thing I tried, inspired by something I saw Ricko do: instead of using the grass and dirt fills with the grass and dirt patches symbols to make the edges more raggedy, I only used the dirt and grass patches. There are also two sets of all of the tree sheets (including tree parts for stumps and tree shadows), so that some could be beneath cliffs and others above. I thought I would need multiple sheets for the cliffs to show ascending elevation, but I didn't. Had to keep reminding myself that it's all an optical illusion. Amazing how things you can trick the eye, especially when, like the cliffs in Forest Trails, you draw in the shadows instead of relying on sheet effects.

Zooming in, here's one of the three caves used by the coven of hags as bedrooms.

Here's a zoom in on the henge (which operates as a teleportation circle). The gray tree at the cliff base in an Animated Tree. It was a dryad's tree, but the dryad was turned into one of the hags, corrupting her tree. You might notice some vines growing out of the cliff wall near the tree. They are animated, grasping at the hags' captives and serving as organic shackles. This is the only one above ground but there are more within the caves.

Oh, and in the southeast corner, a trio of harpies have set up a nest.

Oh! That's a good tip. I have been omitting room numbers on player versions, figuring the players could just point to the room they have a question about, but that could be tricky in a large map like this. Good suggestion.