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Saturday, December 15, 2012

ONE MAP TWO MAP, RED MAP, BLUE MAP

Actually it's four small maps I drew up mostly as a series of tests for new map fills.

MAP 1 - Bugbear Den
(This map relates to ASE goblins - with their strange alien physiology)

In the forest beyond the low road an enterprising band of goblins, led by a fairly intelligent servitor species goblin (though they have no hive mind) have set up a small defensible village using an ancient bunker as a base.  Using this base they've been successful raiders and scavengers.  The key to their success is the use of a huge hollow tree as a spawning shrine for selected goblin sacks that are then heaped with the bodies of victims and animals the goblins hunt.  As goblin specialists know, rich nutrients and forest air result in bugbears.  Now the tribe has several, and with this added muscle expect to raise an even larger crop of bugbears soon.

Not really a fill map, given it's outdoors - I do like the use of the 20% grey (well now orange) for the trees and think it's a nice way to frame a map when one doesn't have real walls.

MAP 2 - Bleached Harbor

The desert beneath the earth was once a salty underground sea, or what was once a sea is now dry an sunk beneath the earth.  Once a proud trading house the Bleached Harbor is now derelict, with the ruins of a smashed cog and a capsized war galley standing sentry below docks that now raise 15' from hard packed salt flats.  Inside the ruin, carved from the rock of a former sea cliff, its interior walls enriched with fossils the trading house is strangely undisturbed.  Perhaps it's ghosts, ghouls or demons.  Certainly denizens of the salt flats find the shelter of the trading post a welcome respite from the dry scouring winds outside.

Used a hatching technique consisting of spirals - Not sure how I feel about it, it's not slow but it's not especially fast either.  I think the effect is pretty good, but it doesn't fit well in narrow spaces.


MAP 3 - Sacrificial Spiral 

Like a cancerous boil on the face of the mountain the spiral has a slick organic look, though no one alive today remembers it growing. It is home to monstrous cultists, deformed and themselves covered in boils who prey on the weak to sacrifice to their terrible godling.  The godling, a giant, deformed and warped, that may once have been human roams the spiral hunting anyone without his mark who enters.  Beyond a protective grate the cult's high priest sits on a throne of bones and slime surrounded by a harem of insane captives and his mutated band of cultist followers.

Hatching here was pretty successful, admittedly its a really slow technique, and it's not useful for everything.



MAP 4 - Ziggurats of he Serpent Hierophant

The sands of the Certopsian hold many secrets, including the tombs of several lost races and empires.  Recently the nomads of the plain have been waging organized and aggressive war to reach certain ruins, such as these ziggurats.  A nomad war-party is encamped here, within a defensible ring of wagons acting as an escort for their leader, a man-serpent priest who seeks to use the inscriptions on the ziggurats to safely enter the trapped tomb of an ancient serpent man hierophant entombed with mystical knowledge that will allow the priest to raise a pack of undead serpent men and provide aid to the nomad war effort.

The same hatching pattern as map one, but a bit more stylized.  I like this one better for the subject matter and it feels cleaner than the spirals alone.  I also really like what the filters I used on it did.

 

10 comments:

  1. I think you should follow Dyson Logos lead, and put together a book of maps for sale!

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  2. I really like the look of Map 2 man, you should draw up Pahvelon maps like that :D

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  3. Hey Gus, drop me a line - I'm looking at doing a second book of maps in a few months (I've got 60 drawn already that aren't on the blog), and would love to build a book that alternates between our maps because we have similar design aesthetics, but different design styles. I love your work.

    dyson.logos@gmail.com

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  4. Great maps, evocative descriptions. Good stuff!

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  5. All this positive attention is just going to make me draw more maps. If anyone uses one drop me a line and tell me how it went...

    I try to make my maps make sense as far as what the space is or was. For example on the Bleached Harbor one has a central warehouse area, to the right of that are a business office, waiting rooms, lesser guard room and auction space. Up the stairs is a barracks, trader's office and vault for high value item. Now the issue is one gets a pretty open floor plan, so if this is inhabited by humanoids it's going to be a battle from the start with shaman and archers up the stairs and armored mooks pouring from the right. Once it's over it's boring though. Personally because of space constraints I'd use this as either a haunted ruin or lair of something nasty like a pack of manticores.

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  6. new question, are those pretty much 1/4 sheets of graph, drawing tonight on a whole sheet, i think im just giving myself too much space

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    1. 1/2 Sheets actually - that pad has big squares. These are smallish locales though. I generally try to make my spaces small - even megadungeon "areas" because a two to three hour session isn't going to explore much more that 10 rooms if they're occupied/interesting.

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  7. These are all great.- both the maps and the fill.

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