As mentioned in my latest post regarding the Temple of Nidag maps in Alarius, the next maps in this series were going to be visited upon Kumarikandam, somewhere in the Xinxing Region on the great Tiantang Grasslands:

Looking over the extant Atlas mapping for this area showed a number of possibilities, as relatively little had been mapped in more detail here previously; essentially just the settlements of Shinsato and Ylangxi. Having already established, from adapted materials in the Inkwell Ideas book that accompanies the Trailblazer geomorphic dungeon designs I'd be using here, that this was going to be a combined maze and tomb, I wanted somewhere more out of the way to place it, and eventually settled on the Mingjue Ruins, next to the map's top edge:

The various pictorial structures on this Xinxing map are, as so often, overscale, as that orange square outlining my selected place is actually 20 miles per side!

Thus, when zoomed-in to just that area, the ruins stretch almost right across the whole zone, here with the usual numerical grid added, with one-mile squares, so I can randomly place features of interest subsequently:

Preferring to try to work with what this showed, rather than simply reducing the region occupied by the ruins, I decided that something weird must have happened in the past to create the huge areas of dead forest all around that enormous chasm, and which was perhaps associated with why the ruins were here, and so seemingly extensive. Thus rather than all being structural ruins, I instead made the ground across the ruins area especially rough, with low, grassy hills and rockier tors, as well as some genuine old structures, given it's frequently hard to say modernly whether this or that grassy knoll or tor is really a natural feature, or an ancient ruin, without detailed investigation. Being in the tropics too, around 15°S latitude, the grasslands were set as having very tall grasses in season, to help further disguise the nature of the land here.

While I didn't prepare a series of WIP shots while preparing this map, I did a couple of test images to check if the symbol scaling I'd settled upon was working satisfactorily, which give an impression of what had been decided and where, all prepared using Ralf's new Hand-Drawn Fantasy style:

This one was very early in the process, with only a few features, beyond sketching-in much of the existing terrain, but it gives an idea of how I'd opted to lay-out the are-they-aren't-they ruins.

The following image was much further along in the mapping, and was done as a test to check the font sizing and effects as much as anything. The Tomb of General Chengdai, incidentally, is the site for the dungeon map here, hence why it's already been labelled:

A few further tweaks were necessary subsequently, of which perhaps the most major was swapping-out all those brown broken tree-trunk symbols for more of the simpler black-line dead trees, mostly because, having had doubts earlier, I realised it was a bit confusing/distracting for some of the smaller feature symbols. This was so even after I'd added the rest of the labels. Which brings us to the final version of the map:

Options for what the various features were, were determined using random tables found throughout the "Knave" 2nd edition RPG rules, published by Jacob Hurst & Swordfish Islands LLC, with most of the names determined also randomly from tables in the "Nomicon", published by Mythmere Games.

I chose not to add any streams, just ponds, partly to sustain the overall feeling of ruination hereabouts, partly because I felt allowing GMs to add minor brooks wherever might seem interesting, was a better idea. I did add a comment about this in the PDF notes for the Atlas, as well as notes on the various labelled features.

There was one further very late change, following the publication of the latest free Hand-Drawn Fantasy monthly symbols for cliffs, in late January. I toyed momentarily with adding those new cliff symbols along the visible edges of the Canyon, but that proved unworkable, as the mapped edges were already drawn, and the symbols couldn't be easily fitted to them. Instead, I hand-drew some little vertical "cliff-lines" along those same visible edges, which seem to help enhance the existing darker effects shading around the Canyon edges. Many ended-up hidden by the Canyon's label, but at least I know they're there!

With this completed, it was time to head underground (next time)...

The PDF notes are at last ready for these maps, and the whole package has been sent off to Remy for the Atlas now, so I can finally change the topic from being a "WIP" to "Finished"! For those interested, the two PDFs are attached below here as well:

For the next maps, I'm on a return visit to Kumarikandam, and somewhere in the Xinxing Region there, in the central-southern part of that continent...

Four rooms left to complete now. The first two were fairly straightforward, a lower barrack-room for the temple staff and guards below part of Banys Hall on the surface, and a shared space for some of the temple priesthood:

These were followed by combined study and bed chambers for the leading priests, which necessitated adding cross walls to both the last two rooms, and fresh doorways, as well as somewhat more sumptuous furnishings:

That completed the main map drawing, which left the labelling and layout, plus I decided to add a grid, as I often do for dungeon drawings. I tried with a 10-foot grid spacing at first, but the offset walls, and non-standard width areas in places, because of the adjustments to fit to the pre-existing surface features, meant that wasn't helpful, and looked quite messy. So I went with a 5-foot grid instead, although that too looks uncomfortable over that northern segment, where the diagonal floor tile lines clash with the grid in places. It seemed OK for the rest of the map at least, and people can always turn it off, or amend it, in the FCW file if they don't like it.

It only needed adding to selected parts of the whole drawing, and without a walls mask sheet, that meant a grid mask was going to be required, with another chance to break-out the magic of the Color Key sheet effect:

Looks quite impressive here, less so with Color Key off, to show how it was accomplished:

Thanks to the complex and off-axis shapes involved, I'd quickly created a new drawing tool just for this Color Key mask, because that allows the tracing of already-created polygons, of course. And once the remaining strident pink sections were added, the magic was complete:

The perceptive will have noted too that one basic layout action has happened while all this Color Keying was ongoing, moving the map's title. More such juggling followed, as also with the labelling, to reach this final version, gridless, then gridded:

The usual higher-res versions have been added to my Gallery as well today.

The outline arrow for the surface entrance from Maleng Hall was just a little drawn polygon linear shape using the snap-grid, and the upper part of the background map area has been shrunk to better fit the final map's layout, using the Stretch command on the Map Border and Background sheets. 

Not quite ready to submit these maps for the Atlas yet, as the PDF notes are still to complete, so I'll post again here once they're done and the maps have been sent-off to Remy.

With the main surface part completed, it was time to ascend in the properties with rising stairs. A new sheet was added appropriately in the stack to allow the addition of a "haze" blanket, to mist-down the lower level buildings and features. This was achieved very simply by adding a map-sized rectangle of the "Solid White 40" bitmap onto said new sheet.

After that, copies of the full wall lines (from the initial line-tracing, shown back in the second and third posts above, from the 2nd and 5th of November), the floors, and staircases were placed on three more new "Upper Storey" sheets, to give this result:

This illustrates too that higher features, such as the main trees and battlements of the Town Wall, were also set above the "mist" panel. The stairs look very flat at this stage, as they're essentially simply markers for where the stairwells will go.

The next step involved cutting holes to show parts of the existing stairs rising to their landings on this upper level. Of course, the holes had to be cut through not just the new upper-level floors, but that mist panel as well. "Color Key" effects on both sheets provided the mechanism, although to prevent any mishandling, colour 6 (magenta) was used only on the upper floors sheet; colour 4 (yellow) was used on the mist panel sheet:

Further refinements would be needed to make these stairwells look a bit more real (including adding shadow lines and an upper banister rail), which became practical only after the new upper interior walls were in place.

One complication was that because I wanted the final Atlas map to have a toggle to hide or show this new upper level, everything had to be added only onto a new "Upper Storey" layer. That created a few issues later.

Next though was a much simpler step - adding all the new upper storey fireplaces:

They're in the same places as those on the lower level, although some were moved a little subsequently to better fit their new locations.

Then the walls, windows and doors started to be added. This initially took a degree of organising, because to have things like doors and windows cut the wall lines, the walls MUST be on the "WALLS" layer. The wall-cutting tools and symbols don't function otherwise. Only they also have to be on the Upper Storeys layer to work in the final map! So this led to a lot of hiding and showing various sheets and layers at different stages of the process, which all needed to be done in order.

And (of course!) there was a further difficulty, because with identical wall colours and effects for both the upper and lower storeys, wherever the two levels of walling stacked, there were clashes of transparency acne oddities along some of the upper storey walls. So that meant adding yet another sheet, onto which the final cut new wall lines could be copied, with no effects, and their colouring changed, to stop that. Much of this was worked-out using the two west-side buildings, and a heavy use of the "Undo" function:

The process eventually stabilised per building as:

1. Draw new internal walls
2. Add door and window symbols inside (not on) the new wall lines
3. Hide everything but the upper storey walls, window and door symbols
4. Change the wall lines to be on the WALLS layer and unhide it
5. Hide the lower walls (because they're also on the now-visible WALLS layer, so can be cut again too)
6. Add new windows and doors to cut the new upper wall lines; then delete the previous door and window symbol markers
7. Change the wall lines back to the Upper Storeys layer
8. Copy the wall lines to the Walls Upper Mask sheet
9. Change the colour of the wall lines on said Walls Upper Mask sheet
10. Unhide all sheets and layers to check everything works, then turn off the Upper Storeys layer to ensure nothing's been missed that should be on it

One more, variable, interjection of an additional number-point anywhere in this list was:

• Scream in frustration (other options are available...) when something's been done wrongly, stop and redo said problem, possibly more than once.

Eventually, however, this was the result:

As envisaged, most of the upper storeys were to be dormitory-style communal rooms for cult followers, hence the large open spaces, albeit there is also the practical consideration if these were genuine buildings, to help reduce the weight the lower storey needs to support. The first buildings to be furnished show what this meant:

Meeting House is a bit different, with a library and a couple of somewhat higher-ranked cult leaders in separate rooms. As before, the structures not directly connected with the cult on the western map edge, are to be left unfurnished. The remaining three properties were not to be so left alone though, and this is the higher-res final version of this map:

While not mentioned sooner, this view is now hopefully clear enough that the hinted-at connection between the two parts of Banys Hall, is obvious. I'd been intending this ever since deciding to place the two stairwells on the lower floor as they were.

Next time, the delve underground begins!

First task on resuming mapping was to complete the structural building interiors and gardens:

However, while I was "digging" the gardens, it became clear the vague not-path from the road to the back of the inn wasn't clear enough. At first, I tried adding patches to cover the hard-line road edges, and tweaking the effects that created those lines too, but it didn't improve, so ultimately, I redrew the connecting area as a full stretch of the road-style dirt pathway, while retaining its funnel-like appearance as seen from above. Doing this though also made me think further about these roadways, so I also added some more of those little "weed clumps" along all the roads, notably at the junctions, in the places where wheels, hoofs and feet would be less likely to pass frequently, all to make the roads look a bit less maintained. They are beyond the main settlement's boundary wall, after all.

Plus we can see how that mid-property fireplace worked out in the end - a fireplace on one side, a cooking range in the narrow, galley-like kitchen on the other.

With this completed, it was time to begin detailing the internal contents of the central properties, those belonging to the temple and its ancillary elements. Temple access hall and priests' quarters first:

Followed by the dwellings of the lesser clergy and higher-ranked followers:

After which came the rest of the inn:

There were a few other changes made here as well. I wanted some water troughs for the stable block, which were simply drawn using fill polygons, as there aren't any suitable symbols in this style (although I did repurpose some stretched versions of the unlit braziers for the wall-mounted hay baskets in the separate stalls - likely too small to see at this res). It then occurred to me that other troughs could be positioned elsewhere, so I put a couple more in by the main crossroads, not far from the well there, and added a few cauldrons resized as buckets nearby, as already done elsewhere.

In addition, I changed the sheets for some of the larger furnishings, to give them a bit more shadow, and thus presence, when viewing the whole map, as I discovered I'd already done that for the bar furniture at the inn earlier. Not sure now if that was by accident or design though!

Finally, the last row of properties could have their interiors completed:

I did think of furnishing all the buildings, but felt that would draw attention too much away from the more central properties linked to the subterranean map. This does also leave open the possibility to install player-characters in one or other of these should they wish to spy on the temple and its congregation at some point. Plus it was common practice in many of the earliest D&D maps to show no roofs, just walls, stairs, doorways and windows, for surface buildings.

That just left the labelling, for which I chose the default font that comes with the Naomi Van Doren mapping style, the awkwardly-named IM FELL DW Pica PRO. Names for most of the items were predetermined using tables in Mythmere Games' "Nomicon", as noted in the first post above here, and allocated where appropriate. Thus we reach this completed first map, or at least its surface view, now at full Forum res, no less:

I'll spare you details of how much effort went into tweaking the effects, sizing, colouring and placement of the labels, compass rose and scalebar; suffice to say, it was almost a session in itself.

Next will be designing the upper floors of the properties here that have stairs, which may explain how that Banys Hall label applies to what are apparently two separate buildings at present...