Category: Annotated – For Patrons

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Driftport 40K: In the grim darkness of the open sea, there is only fog.

The other version of Driftport is a pretty nice place. This is the version for DMs who imagine it as a place where the residents might drink turpentine, engage in cannibalism and sacrifice outsiders to an ancient abomination lurking deep beneath the waves. Or it can just be the night version, I suppose. Your call.

Drawing this gave me an idea for a map of another large, seafaring settlement and I wanted to get your opinions. Imagine a ship, like a galleon or a ship of the line, but much bigger. Bigger than any sailing ship ever built. 400′ (130m) long and 140′ (45m) across the beam. Eight masts, thirty sails. But this isn’t just a ship, it’s a town with hundreds of residents. Across the ship’s 5-6 full decks, there are shops, craftsmen, a marketplace, a tavern, an inn, a temple, gardens, a library, a mill and a lot more. There are cabins for the middle class, luxury apartments for the rich and hammocks for the poor. This is a ship you could get lost in. It could be a community of traders, explorers, pirates or wanderers.

I don’t know what the biggest ship map ever drawn is, but I’m fairly sure this would be larger by an order of magnitude. It would probably take around a month to draw and color. Anyway, is that something you’d be interested in?

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The Floating Town of Driftport

I’m going to say something wildly controversial. I probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway and I hope it doesn’t offend anyone. I liked Waterworld. I haven’t seen it in years, but I watched it a few times as a teenager and I thought it was a pretty good movie. Feels good to get that off my chest.

Driftport was sort of inspired by the town in that movie. It’s the kind of town people might build if there was no land. A collection of salvaged ships and scrap wood Frankensteined together into a floating community.

There are a few things that might need an explanation here. The first is the building at the bottom right. This is a trywork. It’s a stove used to harvest oil from blubber. Since wood, coal and peat are hard to come by in the sea, I’d imagine whale oil would be the common fuel used for cooking and heating.

The other two unusual buildings are a ropemaker and a distillery. Rope and rum seem fairly mission critical for a place like this. You need rope for fishing nets, boats and to hold this place together. And you need rum because… well, in the Age of Sail, every ship brought loads of it on every voyage. They considered it a necessity and I’m going to assume they knew what they were doing.

I’m going to make an alternate version of the map next. It’ll be a grimmer, darker sort of place. I’m just going to adjust the colors, add some fog, stuff like that. Anyway, I’ll have it done by tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll still have patrons at that point after what I said about Waterworld.

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New Giltwater – A Gold Mining Colony

Here’s a version without the mines.

New Giltwater is a gold mining colony in Tir Thelandira. After the last colony was burned to the ground by the island’s native wood elves, the colonists have taken a few more precautions this time around, building a palisade and keeping a few companies of mercenaries close by.

There are only three more maps to draw before Tir Thelandira is finished. After that, I’ve got a few ideas on what to start on next and I’ll probably let patrons vote on which one you want to see first. Here’s what I’m thinking about:

  1. Dhasra. An incredibly wealthy city built across a river delta. The main location on the island would be the White City of Dhasra and I’d draw an overview of the city, then detailed maps of different locations within the city. There might be a couple other locations on the island as well.
  2. A very bleak island whose noble families all became vampires long ago. The peasants are little more than livestock for the nobles, who have established an upper caste of commoners to keep the rest in line. The nobles live in lavish palaces with fountains of blood, while the serfs live as prisoners in their own lands. A few groups of wanderers roam the forests, living free from the predation of the nobility. Deep in the shadows, there is talk of an uprising.
  3. A new version of Tortuga. I’ll redesign it and it’ll probably be a bit smaller, but the same basic idea. Since I’m drawing a world full of islands, it seems like an interesting way to travel between them. It lets the party stay on the move, while also having a community of people they know around them.

By the way, the runoff vote for the next location in Tir Thelandira is open, so if you’re a patron, go over there and participate in democracy. It’s really close right now, so your vote very well might change the outcome.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on those three ideas. What you like, what you don’t or what might make them better. I really want to draw all three, but I’d like to hear your opinions first.

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The Tower of the Moon

The elves of Tir Thelandira don’t know much about arcane magic. The magic that priests and druids can do? They understand that just fine. Basically, god does magic for you*. Simple. But wizard magic is something they don’t understand. And if you don’t understand it, you can’t teach it. And, in a society that can’t teach magic, there’s only one type of mage that can exist: wild mages.

A wild mage named Selaira lives here. She wasn’t the first to be born with an innate gift for magic, but she’s the first to really investigate it, to try to learn how it works. She’s the first to do experiments and write books about her findings. At the moment, she’s teaching other wild mages to better harness their abilities, but she’s starting to suspect that she can teach magic to people without an innate gift. If she figures that out, magic might go from being a rare gift to a widespread ability that affects every part of society.

Considering the major role that magic plays in other elven societies, this is a bit like peanut butter being mere moments away from the discovery of jelly. A very exciting moment in history, to say the least.

Next, I’ll be drawing the Chateau D’If. This is a 16th century island prison just south of France. Part of the book The Count of Monte Cristo takes place there. I’ll be drawing it as best I can with the limited amount of reference material available. Which is to say, I can’t find a proper floor plan, so I’m going to have to make some stuff up. Still, I think it’ll make a great map.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on Classy French Alcatraz. Let me know what you think of the map!

*I know this isn’t how everyone interprets it, but that’s how it works in my games.

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Auld Mithrilsides: A Dwarven Sternwheeled Steamship

This was intended to be the ship from Thanesridge Landing. But that ship was crap, so I redrew it. I like this much better. I will always redraw and rework a map rather than knowingly put out something that sucks, even if it takes a bit longer. Also, I’m going to replace the ship in Thanesridge with this one, but give me till tomorrow to get that done.

So, the map. Dwarves aren’t known for their love of ships, but I felt like this is the kind of ship a dwarf would build. With a coal-fired steam boiler for propulsion, they don’t have to worry about “learning to sail” or whatever. Just fuel it up and point it where you want to go. Which way is the wind blowing? Who cares. Plus, the burning coal makes it smell a bit like home.

I’d like to remind any DMs considering using this map that the ship’s speed is entirely dependent on how hot the boiler can get. So if the party starts summoning fire elementals in the fuelbox, things could get pretty interesting. Of course, the ship is made mostly of wood, so hopefully they don’t get too interesting. Anyway, something to think about.

Next up, I’ll be drawing the next map for Tir Thelandira. This will be the map proposed by Shawn and voted for by patrons. It’s called the Tower of the Moon and I’m imagining it like this: a round, wooden tower that snakes upward, curving and branching off in a few places. It’ll be kind of like a large, hollow tree. I haven’t drawn it yet, but it looks really good in my head.

Anyway, I think that’s it. Let me know what you think of the ship!

 

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Thanesridge Landing: Upper Level

The upper level of Thanesridge Landing is done and there’s only one more part of the map left to draw: the rest of the ship.

By the way, I got an answer about how they pumped the water out of the drydocks back in ancient times: an Archimedes screw. Speaking of Archimedes, did you know he also invented an ancient Greek death laser? Not bad for 200 BC.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on the ship. I’ll have DM notes for patrons once it’s done.

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Thanesridge Landing: A Dwarven Port

Thanesridge Landing is a dwarven port settlement. Dwarves aren’t famous for their love of ships, but they’re pretty fond of money and trade is a proven way to make a lot of it.

This map wasn’t intended to be a part of Brazenthrone, but I’ve started thinking of it like it is. In my head, this is the end of the Bitterwash River that runs through town. I’m not going to add it to the giant map of the city or anything, but you can consider it an unofficial part of Brazenthrone if you want.

The drydock on the right is called a “graving dock” and it’s actually below water level. It’s gated off from the sea and the water is pumped out. Then, when you’re ready to launch the ship, you just open the gate and sail it out. I didn’t find out how the water was pumped out, but these things date back to at least 200BC, so apparently it was possible. If you happen to know how they did it, I’d love to hear.

Anyway, I’ve got two more parts of this map to draw. First, I’m going to make a roof level, which may have some more buildings on top of the mountain ridge at the back. And I’m going to draw the rest of the steamship at the docks and make a separate map of it. It’ll be useful if your party shows up and steals the thing. I mean, they steal everything else, right? Maybe that’s just my players.

Well, I’m going to get to work on the rest of this. It shouldn’t take long. Let me know what you think so far!

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Laon, France

I don’t draw a ton of city maps and this is the first one that I’m really happy with. Hopefully you like it too, or at least agree that it’s less crap than usual.

Laon has been around for a long time and, if you’re going to draw a map of it, you have to pick a specific point in time to depict. Well, in theory you do. I didn’t. I used several maps from various points in time as reference and, as a result, this is a sort of mash-up of several centuries of the city’s history. I don’t think that’ll be a problem for most people, but, you know, don’t use this in your Master’s thesis on the history of the Kingdom of West Francia.

Next, I’ll be drawing another map for Tir Thelandira. This time, it’ll be the Blackboots camp. The Blackboots are a mercenary company with a nasty reputation and they’re basically the other side of the coin from Glaver’s Regiment. Whereas Glaver’s Regiment is well-organized, professional and honorable, the Blackboots are filthy, drunk and cruel.

I don’t know exactly what the Blackboots camp will look like, but I can tell you two things right now:

  1. There will be yurts
  2. You can probably use it as an orc village if you want

After that, I’ll probably draw whichever map wins the vote for Tir Thelandira’s location #1. If you’re a patron and you haven’t voted in the runoff, go do that.

Anyway, I hope you like the map! Also, does Laon look like the Italian Peninsula to anyone else? I just noticed it. The bottom-left part is Sicily, tell me I’m not crazy.

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Ptarmigan Bluff: A Mining Village on a Cliffside

First of all, this is what a ptarmigan is. They live in the mountains. The “P” is silent, but is included in the spelling because the English language is designed to inhibit the spread of literacy at all costs.

I really like the idea of a village built against a cliff, but drawing one turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. Still, I do like a challenge and I think I’m happy with it. The hard part was putting this all together in a way that makes sense.

You see, drawing a five-story building is one thing. But drawing 10 different buildings with five floors among them, all tied together with stairs, walkways and bridges… well, that’s a little more complicated. I numbered the buildings on the sideview to indicate which buildings are on which levels and I hope that’ll make it easier to understand. But if you’ve got any questions, by all means ask.

Next, I’ll be drawing another map for Tir Thelandira. Specifically, I’m going to draw the ruins of the burned mining colony. You can see a list of what’s left to draw in this post.

Speaking of Tir Thelandira, the poll for the first of three undecided locations is still open for patrons who want to cast a vote. Since there were 21 ideas submitted for the first location, I’m dividing them up into three votes of 7, then holding a runoff for the winners to determine what the location will be. I’ll start the vote for the second group of 7 in a day or two.

Well, that’s it for now. If you’ve got any thoughts, let me know!

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The Stonestead

The Stonestead is a broch. They’re a real thing and there are a bunch of them in Scotland. I drew this particular broch for the island of Tir Thelandira, whose wood elf inhabitants have a distinctly Celtic-flavored culture.

The Stonestead is the elves’ first foray into large-scale stone construction. Built to defend a gap between the northern and southern parts of their forest, it’s meant to ensure that, should the Dhasran colonists or their mercenaries decide to march on the elven lands, they have to either fight their way through the fort or venture into the woods, where they’ll be easy prey for elven archers and ambushers. Neither option is great– but, of course, that’s the idea.

I’ve received quite a few proposals for new locations for Tir Thelandira. If you’re a patron who’s got an idea you’d like me to add to the ballot, you’ve still got time to shoot me a message. Just to recap, the proposals are for either the location marked “1” on this map OR the swamp to the east of Oakenhold. I’ll be posting the first vote in a few days.

Next up is an East Asian-style village built into a cliffside. This picture should give you an idea of the sort of thing I’ll be drawing. Personally, I think that’s nuts. I mean, how is that a real place? What happened there? I don’t know, but I’m glad it did. Because that’s awesome.