Month: January 2023

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The Elven Citadel of Oakenhold (Work-in-Progress)

Whew, okay. This is all seven floors of Oakenhold. I wasn’t initially planning to make it bigger than the original version, but, well… that happened.

First, let me say a quick word about beds. So, elves in D&D settings meditate rather than sleep and don’t need beds (not for sleeping, anyway). But I want this map to work for other races as well, so I’m drawing the beds in a way that they can be called “meditation mats” for elves or “beds” for other races. Hopefully, that works for most people, but I know it doesn’t for everyone, so I’m going to make a version without the beds as well. Just wanted to let everyone know that up front.

This map is a part of the island of Tir Thelandira and I’ve been thinking about the lore of the place as I’ve been drawing all this. The queen of the wild elves is a ranger and a famous huntress who unified the tribes of the island. Not many elven queens can kill, skin and butcher a deer, but Queen Niamh is a little different. She’s fierce, pragmatic and leads from the front. And when the Dhasrans built their colony on her island and began logging her forest, she fired the first arrow in response.

There’s still plenty more to figure out, but I’ll have the basic lore of the island for you when the map is done.

Okay, I’m gonna start coloring this beast. Wish me luck.

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The Green Eye Oasis

The Green Eye is a village and caravanserai built around a small oasis in a sinkhole. The place has everything a traveling merchant needs: camel parking, a room for the night, baths, a tavern and a provisioner. Oh, and water. Merchants need that to live. I mean, everybody does, but merchants do too.

I think this would be a really great place for a battle, especially if the party was inside the village while getting attacked by archers around the edges of the sinkhole. That’d create a really nasty situation, since the place is kind of… what’s the word? The opposite of defensible. It’s an easy place to attack. Making the party fight their way out of here could be an interesting challenge.

Next, I’ll be getting to work on the second map for Tir Thelandira. I’ve got a few different maps planned for the island, but I really want to draw Oakenhold next. Oakenhold is a giant tree fortress which serves as the wild elves’ capital. This will be the first time I’ve ever redrawn a map. If you want to get an idea of what it’ll look like, here’s the original. I’m fairly confident that the new version will be better than that. It certainly won’t be in black and white, anyway. I’ll also write some lore for Tir Thelandira to go along with it and I’ll make some more concrete plans for the rest of the island as well.

All right, hope that sounds good to you! Let me know what you think of the oasis!

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Desert Sinkhole Village (Work-in-Progress)

This is a desert village with a small oasis and a caravanserai, built into the sides of a sinkhole. The drawing on the top left shows it from the outside and the other two levels are below.

This place is inspired by the cave houses of Cappadocia in Türkiye (I like the new spelling, by the way), which are an idea I’d like to do more with at some point. For example, this is a castle in Cappadocia. I don’t know about you, but I would describe myself as highly into that. God, I have to stop looking at that picture or I’m going to just drop everything and draw a map of it right now.

Okay, one thing at a time. I’m gonna finish my coffee and start coloring this sinkhole. Let me know what you think so far!

I’ll be back for you, insane Turkish rock castle. This I swear.

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Secret Room: Vault

Here’s the last of the secret rooms. Hopefully you’ll find them useful, but I think this is all the one-room maps I can draw before I bore myself to death.

Next up, we’ve got a desert village built inside a sinkhole, with an oasis at the bottom. I haven’t planned it out yet, but I suspect the layout will be a bit like Ollin’s Borehole.

After that, I’m going to get started on the island of Tir Thelandira. The vote on the second civilization has ended and the Dhasran Colony has won! With that decided, I’m ready to start drawing maps of the place. I think I’m going to start with Oakenhold, the big tree fortress at the center of the wild elven kingdom. I expect that to be a pretty enormous map.

Well, this being New Year’s, I’d better leave it at that. If you’re going out, have fun! And if you’re not, don’t feel bad. Neither am I. But have a good night either way!