Month: March 2026

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St. Peter’s Basilica: Roof Level

Here’s another part of St. Peter’s Basilica finished. We’ve still got the grottoes and the Roman necropolis left to draw. And, of course, the rest of Vatican City. For reasons I explained here, I’ll be drawing in the backgrounds and surrounding buildings later. In the meantime, I hope the lack of surroundings doesn’t impede anyone’s ability to run adventures in the land of Catholicism.

By the way, I’m not planning to draw the roof levels of every building in the Vatican. I decided to draw this one because:

  1. There are numerous stairs to the roof.
  2. It’s a cool roof.
  3. The basilica is kind of the centerpiece of the Vatican.

But, like, I don’t think we need a map for the roof of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. If there’s another roof that’s worth drawing, I’ll draw it, but I’ll probably skip it for most places.

Next, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, which is a medieval village built in the ruins of an ancient megastructure. I haven’t decided on the megastructure that the village is built on just yet, but it could be an ancient temple, a huge amphitheater or something like that. If you’ve got any ideas, let me know.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think!

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St. Peter’s Basilica Roof (Work-in-Progress)

Here are the lines for the roof of the St. Peter’s Basilica map. It’s probably a little hard to parse what you’re looking at here, especially since this roof– very unusually– has a number of features that are recessed into the roof (as seen here, on the right). Plenty of roofs have things sticking out, but recesses are pretty rare, since they tend to fill up with water. I’m not sure how they avoided that here, but they seem to have worked something out.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on coloring this tomorrow. At the moment, I am incredibly sick and I’m going to give my disease-ridden body a day to rest. All right, I’m going to go lie down.

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The Town of Chalymn

Chalymn is a small chunk of a city on the world’s surface that rose up into the sky to avoid a coming disaster. The large citadel in the center belongs to Magister Viskand, the powerful mage who ripped Chalymn loose from the earth. It’s not entirely clear if the magister saved everyone else on the rock intentionally, or if he just wanted to bring a little more land with him, but, look, they’re alive and that’s what matters.

If Chalymn demonstrates one thing, it’s that a little, floating rock in the sky can have anything that they have on the surface. The surface has lakes? Chalymn has a lake. The surface has a complex network of tunnels and cities deep underground? Well, Chalymn has one of those, too. It could be a very interesting place to visit if your party happens to get a ride on an airship at some point. Or a spelljammer.

Speaking of which, I’m going to make a spelljammer version of the map with a space background for patrons, which I should have done by tomorrow.

Well, this is the second, or maybe third city map I’ve drawn that I don’t think is garbage, but I’m curious to hear what you think. How’d I do? If you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, let me know!