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Mont-Saint-Michel – The Plan of Attack

So, I’ve gotten some work done on Mont-Saint-Michel. Let’s talk about it.

I always knew drawing this map would be tough, but, after looking into it more seriously, I’ve come to realize that the logistics of drawing this place are insane.

Not that I’d let a thing like that stop me, mind you. I’ve never been the go-to guy for forest clearing battlemaps and I’m not about to back down from this because it’s big or hard to draw. But this is going to take longer than I thought and I want to share some of the reasons why:

  • The island itself is about 900 feet across, meaning the map will be around 200×180 tiles. Per floor.
  • I have about 50 different plans of this place. Some are of the town, some only show the monastery, some are from the past. I’m using about six of these as a reference to draw from, plus Google street view when those don’t give me the information I need. Mont-Saint-Michel is a complicated place.
  • It’s going to have to be drawn on a lot of different sheets of paper. The more you have to split a map across multiple pages, the more planning is required. For this map, I’m not sure how many it’ll take, but… look, some trees are gonna die.
  • The layout of this place is madness. Going into specifics would take way too long. Take a look around in Google street view and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really cool, but drawing it all in a way that makes sense is gonna be tricky.
  • Everything is really densely packed and almost all of the buildings are some strange shape. Hardly anything is just a rectangle.
  • I care about this map. A lot. I think Mont-Saint-Michel is an absolutely stunning place and I want to do this right. I think it’ll be worth it.

So, here’s my plan to slay this beast:

  1. Sketch the whole thing out. Chop it into pieces. (Done)
  2. Draw outlines of the walls and major structures of the town at full size. Make sure everything fits together. (Done)
  3. Draw in the walls, doors, windows, furnishings and other details. I’m starting on this today.
  4. Ink it.
  5. Scan it, assemble the pieces and color it.
  6. Repeat the process for the upper levels and roofs, the abbey and the back part of the island (which is mostly woods).

This is pretty different from my usual process and I don’t really have an ETA for you, but I’d like to think I can get it done in a month. I hope you’re cool with that. It’s a big project, but I think it’ll be pretty epic when it’s done. I’ll post some work-in-progress pictures along the way so you can see how it’s coming.

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Dear Patrons: This is the map you’ve been crowdfunding for the last year.

 

As it stands, the dwarven city of Brazenthrone has 497 buildings with 2,247 rooms across 6 different levels of elevation and has taken around 1,300 hours to draw and color. I hope you like it so far. I don’t know if it’s the largest hand-drawn fantasy map ever made, but I’d say it might be when it’s finished.

There’s still plenty more to do, like the Old Quarter, the mines and a number of residential areas, but this is the core of the map finished and none of the rest will take as long. I mean, I don’t know exactly what the mushroom farms will be like yet, but they’re definitely not going to be six floors high.

 

These are the original hand-drawn copies of all this, which are currently falling off my wall. Yep, there goes another one. Each page is 11″x15″ (A3) in size and there are… I don’t feel like counting them. There’s a lot.

Anyway, next up is Mont-Saint-Michel, a fortified island monastery straight out of fantasy art, except it’s somehow a real place. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it looks like this. Man… everyone, let’s give France a round of applause. Well done, France. That is just… magnifique as hell.

If you’re not a patron and you’re interested in helping me make the rest of this monstrosity of a map, you can check out my patreon here.

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Brazenthrone: History and Lore, 3rd Edition

 

As promised, here’s the 3rd edition of the lore. I added a summary of each of the different districts of the city and some of the more notable buildings, like the Freehammer Forge and the Amethyst Arcade. It’s stuff that I felt like I should explain for people who don’t have access to the DM notes. While I tremendously appreciate the 187 people who are funding the creation of Brazenthrone, I also want it to be usable by people who can’t afford to be patrons and people who won’t discover it until 10 years from now.

If you are a patron and you’ve read through the DM notes, there’s still a few new things here. There’s some advice on using the city under “Notes from the Artist,” there’s an explanation of how the city is lit under “General Information” and the last entries under “Foreign Relations” and “Society” are new as well.

And with that done, I’m going to begin the task of stitching every chamber of every floor of Brazenthrone into a single image. I’d guess that’ll take one day, maybe two, depending on how many times I crash Photoshop in the process. I’ll take a photo of the originals, too, to show you how many trees had to die for all this.

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Brazenthrone – The Noble Quarter – Fourth Level

 

This was going to be the last level, but a few people mentioned that they could use a version without any interiors, so I’m going to do an overview map with roofs on everything. It’ll only take an hour or two and I’ll have it up later tonight. From now on, I’m going to start making those for the remainder of Brazenthrone, as well as other maps when appropriate.

Oh, and I also promised a 3rd edition of Brazenthrone History and Lore. That’ll be up later tonight or tomorrow. Okay, well, I’m gonna get to it.

Here’s the non-annotated version for those of you who don’t want a 1 and a 2 on your map.

 

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Brazenthrone – The Noble Quarter – Third Level

 

There will be one more floor to the Noble Quarter, which– I’m not going to lie– isn’t going to be super exciting unless your favorite part of these is the roofs. But it’ll only take a day or two and, afterwards, I’m finally going to put all of this together. All of Brazenthrone in one image. It’ll be way too big to serve any practical purpose, but I really want to see what that looks like.

What about after that? Well, I promised that once the core parts of Brazenthrone were done, we’d take on Mont-Saint-Michel. And we will.

Okay, here’s the non-annotated version. There are DM notes and a fully-annotated version of this map with all the rooms marked available to patrons.

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The Silent Vaults – A Prison for the Magically Adept

 

When a person of great magical power breaks the rules, you can’t just throw them in the pokey with the cattle rustlers and meth dealers. Imprisoning someone with the ability to fly, teleport, and otherwise bend the rules of reality takes a place like the Silent Vaults.

Enclosed in an antimagic ward generated by a powerful device (in the dungeon, left side), the Vaults nullify the abilities of those contained within. The facility also has a guard barracks, warden’s residence and a chapel that is definitely not dedicated to Mystra.

Floating above the prison is a tiny island with a heavily-warded containment vault, designed to hold a person or entity of incredible arcane power. If you need to make a demon or an archlich sit and think about what they’ve done, this is the place to do it.

There’s an annotated version of this map and DM notes available to patrons.

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Brazenthrone – The Noble Quarter – Ground Level

Here’s the non-annotated version, just to get that out of the way.

The clanhalls are the family estates of Brazenthrone‘s high clans. High clans are basically the nobility of the Kingdom of the Twelve Mountains. You can read more about them here, if you’re interested.

Clans are just extended families. Some clans only have a few members, while others have over a thousand. The clanhall is where the clan’s patriarch or matriarch lives with their immediate family. Some of these are grand manors, while a few are barely bigger than the average commoner’s home.

Regardless, the Noble Quarter is a pretty nice place to live. Unlike most of the city, it’s built in a large, beautiful, natural cavern. The waterfall on the north end makes the air a bit more humid than other parts of the city, allowing mushrooms to grow naturally on the ground.

Of course, it’s not all waterfalls and mushrooms. This was the epicenter of a major catastrophe not long ago. I’ll get into that in the DM notes and the next edition of History and Lore, both of which I’ll put out when the Noble Quarter is finished.

All right, next up is last month’s Cartographic Congress winner: a magical prison. Spellhold, Azkaban… something of that nature. Then we’re coming right back to Brazenthrone to knock out the rest of the Noble Quarter, which will be two more floors. Or maybe three. We’ll see.