Avatar

Wyvern

Wyvern

About

Username
Wyvern
Joined
Visits
3,082
Last Active
Roles
Member
Points
5,301
Rank
Cartographer
Badges
24

Latest Images

  • Community Atlas: Embra - Crossing Places

    The last of the individual Crossing Places maps covers the part of the Twilight Market here, Slateford Market (with a second view below showing just the map, hopefully for a little better clarity at the typical Forum resolution):

    That the road layout and market stall placements look like the wings of a butterfly is not accidental. The original Judges Guild map on which this was based only had the layout on one side of the stream. It was though obvious that a simple ink-blot-style mirror image would produce this more pleasing pattern, thus this segment of the Twilight Market was designed with that in mind. Of course there's a watcher at the ford (from the featured text), and some more of the Mike Schley tree-houses, including an aerial tavern in the bough-structure overhanging the River Clack in the Butterfly Tree, "The Tasty Drop" (also a comment on patrons who miss their footing and end up in the Clack below...).

    There aren't any actual buildings here however, simply tents, stalls, awnings, wagons and several open-plan covered spots (including a pair of green-tiled, circular bandstands). The thatched buildings in the treetops are intended as living parts of the trees, so aren't real buildings as such. Or that was my excuse for not providing interior layouts for them anyway!

    LoopysueJimP[Deleted User]Lauti
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Crossing Places

    The next Place is Dragon Bridge, which of course is a Bridge along the back of a great sleeping Dragon (what else?):

    An explanation for how this works is provided by the featured text alongside the map, and the larger elements from that - rocky mounds, golden discs, trees and coloured boulders - have been placed on the map itself. It's clearly been working for a long time, judging by the wooden village that has grown along the Dragon's back, spilling over onto both river banks.

    Interiors for the buildings should be available via the usual FCW file toggle in the Atlas (next image), with a second toggle for the upper storey interior of the Honeydew Inn (lower next image):

    As commented already, the Dragon is a symbol, from DD3, but greatly enlarged. It's also a varicolor one, with added purple polygons to match the description of the featured text. As ever, there'll be PDF and text file notes available in the Atlas, which will tell you more about those mysterious, subterranean Pixie Roads through Kelliwick Ridge...

    LoopysueJimP[Deleted User]GlitchRicko
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Crossing Places

    The first Crossing Place is Fountain Bridge:

    This has a small, scattered village on its central island, for which a toggle in the Atlas FCW file should allow the simple interior layouts to be seen (all have just a single storey):

    On this somewhat more detailed view, it may be possible to make out that the two bridges seem a little odd - they appear to be translucent. This is not a mistake, as there are no solid, permanent bridges here in fact. Both are literal water-fountain features. The travellers stand atop one of the square stone bridge abutments, and are then catapulted across in a gentle arc by a tremendous pulse of water. They arrive dry and safe a few seconds later on the opposite abutment - unless someone panics, in which case, they may end up getting wet, or even dropping into the river, to be rescued by the omnipresent water faeries, who think such a thing a tremendous joke! Animals - except magical or Faerie types - cannot use the bridges at all, however. Text and PDF files explain a little more, although Eerie Wood and Eerie House remain as mere mysterious names, to be expanded only should GMs wish to do so.

    LoopysueJimP[Deleted User]RickoLauti
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Crossing Places

    Having discussed the design ideas, methods and overall appearances/layouts for the various Embra "Places" maps in the opening Enclosed Places topic, I'll not reiterate those points here, unless relevant. So moving on, the second set of Places of Interest the Embra "Official Guide" map gives access to, are the Crossing Places:

    I thought a simpler criss-cross kind of frame corner decoration might be interesting here, partly inspired by that used for the Official Guide map. While the lines along the map edges are easily drawn in CC3+, there was a more elaborate corner-piece in another of the Dover Clip-Art "Celtic Borders on Layout Grids" hardcopy book designs that I thought would add a little more elegance to this map than my own clumsy efforts were able to achieve. As was established for the first of these "Places" link-maps, the link-spaces themselves are just labelled extracts from the actual maps, with added notes for the benefit of GMs, and further reminders in the accompanying text and PDF files. The seven streets condensed into one map here makes for fewer links than some of the "Places" diagrams, though it did mean making that link point larger, to fit all the names in. As luck had it, I somehow managed to get the dragon in just the right place here to avoid running into problems with it wanting to feature itself in others of the link-squares when I added the Dragon Bridge map extract, as of course it's a complete symbol, considerably enlarged, not something that can be easily dismantled to stop it from doing that otherwise!

    LoopysueJimP[Deleted User]RickoDakLauti
  • Community Atlas: Embra - Enclosed Places

    The final Enclosed Places map condenses the remaining five Places, all streets, into a single drawing:

    Lots to see here, so let's try a closer view of just the streets:

    All the streets had to be designed in a rather different way to the other Places of course, as there were no Judges Guild products that provided plans for such things in isolation. As I noted previously, instead I reworked a set of tables for randomly generating caves and mines from another old Judges Guild text to decide on their lengths, widths, types and layouts, although that system ultimately was more "me" than "JG". Once the base layouts were designed and drawn into the CC3+ map, the streets were redrawn as proper CC3+ streets of the appropriate width and character, and then the CD3 random street options were used to populate them with a range of houses suitable for their overall names and natures.

    The streets I came up with were often quite curvy, and the CD3 random street tool isn't too keen on curves and turns, and it can't really cope with junctions at all, so some of the random properties had to be moved, or removed, or adjusted, and sometimes redrawn using a combination of the base shapes that had been generated. Occasionally, some were swapped out for symbols, particularly where I wanted specific or important structures to be. I also decided early on that it wasn't going to be practical to provide interior drawings for all the properties involved - there were simply too many, and that ran the further risk of making them too much alike without a lot of care. I did contemplate doing interiors for selected properties, only to finally decide against that too. So if you need interiors, you'll have to come up with your own for these!

    I'll not go into detail here as to what some of the items on these mapped streets are. The PDF and text files in the Atlas should help in that respect. However, it is worth drawing attention to the most significant structure, the Thistle Street Barracks, home to the Knights of the Thistle, Embra's military and police-force, in as much as any Faerie settlement needs such things. These Knights are not entirely my own invention either, as real-world Scottish knights of the realm are known as "Knights of the Thistle" too, though Embra's are naturally of a more magically Faerie kind.

    As with all the other individual Places, the idea is these streets can be linked as loosely and in whatever ways GMs may desire to create fresh interpretations of Embra city.

    And this is only the first collection of Places in Embra. There are six more such sets still to come!

    LoopysueJimPMonsen[Deleted User]Mapjunkiepablo gonzalez