As noted when I was leaving the frozen wastes around Seer's Hall in Ezrute last time, I was heading off to somewhere warmer, in the tropics of Artemisia, in fact, around 25°N latitude, the heart of the Demosthenes Swamp no less:

A further change was that this map was to be based on three of the Inkwell Ideas Dungeonmorph Dice designs from the "Adventurer" set, the first from that set I'd be using in this sort-of Dungeon24 (now of course Dungeon25...) project. I'd decided in advance to swap back to colour mapping from the black-and-white styles I'd been using for some months, and also to try out some different random design systems for determining what was to be where among these new maps. This time, I opted for a couple of weighty tomes by Raging Swan Press, delighting in the titles of "Dread Thingonomicon" and "Dread Laironomicon".

Looking over the map notes for the Demosthenes Swamp region, I found the area to be home to Lizardfolk living in smaller settlements, ruled over by a Queen. Quite quickly, a couple of settlement markers in likely spots towards the middle of the swampy region that would work with what the dice had provided became apparent - a surface settlement leading into two separate underground areas, with some of the surface buildings constructed against a right-angled cliff line. The Lizardfolk here were further noted as being the larval stage of dragons (which immediately, and quite naturally, became Swamp Dragons in my mind), the Folk passing through a chrysalis stage to achieve full dragonhood. With what the dice showed, ideas formed rapidly from this framework of notes, and I decided (for reasons that will eventually become clear) that I needed an additional, deeper subterranean map as well. That was determined from a couple of Inkwell dice in the "Lairs" set that showed interesting cavern options, and which weren't already going to be used for later maps in this series.

The site I chose was the settlement marked as "Aenos" on a small island in the near-central swamps, for which I also realised that, much as normal, I'd need a suitable area map. The orange square on this version of the extant Demosthenes Swamp map shows that area, which is 10 miles square:

Setting-up a one-mile square grid over this area, random features were allocated, besides what the parent Swamp map already indicated, again much as normal now. I wanted to try to stick with a similar "green" colour palette to the Swamp map, and soon realised that it would be possible to make use of some of Sue Daniel's Annual styles that fitted together to cover everything I'd need in this three-map group. It occurred to me early on too that as the Lizardfolk had a very different civilisation here to many of the other realms on Artemisia, it would be unlikely they'd persist in using the Greek-style names so frequent over the nearby area. So for a couple of major features - including the settlement, which had now become the Lizardfolk capital - I decided to retain the Greek names, and add local ones, while holding with local names for other places, or simpler descriptive names in English for the sake of clarity.

Since the area map was linked to the Demosthenes Swamp map, it seemed reasonable to retain the Greek-like name in its title, thus it became "Aenos Isle North", as covering more or less just the northern half of the Isle the settlement is set on. For the mapping style, I picked Darklands from the May 2021 Annual:

In general, I retained something akin to the colour scheme from the larger Swamp map, as that helped indicate where the higher, drier ground was, as well as the swampier areas, and the deeper swamps together with the great river that wends sluggishly through these. As normal, there are descriptive texts to accompany the Atlas version of this, but some further notes follow here too.

There seemed little point in trying to illustrate the numerous pools, ponds and streams across even this little zone, as in swamps, these rarely stay the same for long anyway. Looking at the larger map, the river channel - the Paragaino there, the Faroshness here - was shown as about five miles wide, although its indistinct edges create much doubt, just as would be the case in an actual vast swampland like this. So I took it there would be both identifiable rivers channels of varying width, interspersed with pools and marshes of varying depth and difficulty to cross, and which soon became the standard concept across most other places not on the Isle itself.

The woods were then allocated tree types based on the relative depth of swamp nearer to them. These were all assumed to be local tropical varieties, retaining more recognisable names again mainly for clarity. While the larger map does show farmland along the spine of the Isle, again that seemed plausibly more an external imposition by the local Greek-style map-makers, than reflecting the reality of what a Lizardfolk civilisation might have. However, some farming for food and building materials (timber, rushes, reeds) made sense, with a lot more of the drier ground left open for hunting. A random option allowed the inclusion in the text of some ant-nest "towers" here too, that outsiders might mistake for ruins...

I also decided against adding more settlement markers, given the capital of Threshorsh (as Aenos became for the locals) is only village-sized anyway. There is an assumption in the notes that there will be huts, farmsteads and hunting lodges scattered over the drier parts in general, which things like the Wrecked Lodge, Misty Ruins and Tower Hill further hint at/act as reminders. Not to mention the shunned Palace of the Silver Princess (a ruin guarded by a living, solid silver statue of a Lizardfolk Princess; and something else...).

The Moat actually isn't one, but a natural ring of shallower swampy ground that surrounds the highest part of the Isle, while the two Causeways over it also really aren't, instead being ramshackle sort-of bridges, made from tangles of living trees, dead logs and waterlogged old planks, suitable for foot traffic only - with difficulty. Southway was luckier, as it was given the randomly-selected option of running along a slightly elevated ridge, so is a more typical trail.

Happily, the style's cliff options allowed me to create the right-angled setting for Threshorsh the dice designs required, making a rather fun little arrowhead too. I almost thought to use this as the north pointer, although the finally-chosen arrow for that had to be ported-in from another of Sue's Annual styles, Creepy Crypts from 2022, largely because I'd repurposed the skull-and-spear north pointer from Darklands as a marker icon for a couple of mapped sites by then, one for the Banshee Sheenye, the other, at Skull-Pile Hollow, as a former Green Hag's lair-marker. Indeed, that latter, with elements from both Knife Rock and Stingbat Shore - all decided randomly don't forget - helped characterise Spalish Woods as somewhere the locals try to avoid. The Hag is dead. Probably...

Next time, we get up close to Threshorsh.

Yes, that's it Sue. It helps make the water texture look more like broad-scale ocean waves, and the land textures more like the smaller-scale surface undulations you find there, at least to my eye/mind.

[Now just wait for the chorus of disapproval from everyone else 😉]

Not sure if there may be something like this among the free icon resources listed here, though I don't recall an actual Egyptian burial barge from them offhand (I'm not especially familiar with all these options, however).

There is though a specific top-down, ancient Egyptian barge symbol in this paid-for icon pack from Inkwell Ideas, amongst other items. You'll need to convert the PNG artwork from that to symbols you can use in CC3+, if you need the items as symbols, but that's pretty straightforward.

As Sue commented, Remy's notes say it all.

I've been following how things had gone for Jim since his last Forum posting back in April, thanks to Sue and Remy, and indeed it has been a very sad ending to one of the finest fellows in our community.

Jim no doubt has other, greater, adventures to map now. Hopefully, some of his inspiration can live on among all of us. Farewell Rutabagasteu (his YouTube handle).

Third map in this group, for the Hall of the Seer, was actually drafted first, using the same style and look as established for all four underground maps in this "Explorer" dice batch, using the two dice designs involved for the layouts of the above-ground and subterranean segments, as mentioned last time. It was really this map though that led to establishing the "gritty" look of the stone-edged roads and paths outside, largely to help give a better contrast between the outside and inside of this little complex. Originally, I did think of just using gravel-filled polygons for the roads, but that appeared confusing with the similar dot-shading to represent the solid interior of the hill lying adjacent to the entrances. Ultimately, I did use the polygon drawing tool for both, altered by the stone edging outside, which with the trees, buildings and blank ground surface seemed to provide sufficient contrast.

For the internal layout, this was largely what the dice designs provided, omitting the geomorphic connectors in places beyond this layout, and adding one secret door between rooms 9 and 12, as I wanted to provide an inner sanctum as the private domain of the Seer herself. This was chiefly because (and there are hints in the label descriptions) that the Seer had been randomly determined as a Frost Dragon from Shadowdark, modified here to be also an ancient, prophetic creature, able to shapechange to various forms under the local magical influences. There are also three "ordinary" Ice Dwarf Oracles as well (lesser, humanoid seers, in effect), who live in the Village, and provide aid and prophecies here too, when required. I decided to really push the legendary significance, importance and reliability of the Seer - who has the randomly-determined name of Leminsiskiel - to help enhance the significance of this little site overall. After all, there needs to be a serious reason for folks to traipse across the vast, frozen wastes of the surrounding larger region to get here!

As ever, there's more detail in the accompanying notes for the Atlas as to how the set-up here works, as it's not really intended as the traditional kill-the-monsters-and-steal-their-treasure dungeon, more a living place of importance for the lands around - and perhaps even further afield.

Next time, I'm heading off to map somewhere a little more tropical, a site in the Demosthenes Swamp of central-southern Artemisia, according to the random rolls...