Dragons' Den

[Meridius]

This weekend some things in my social schedule changed a bit, so I ended up with some additional time on my hands. I haven't made a map in quite a while, so I figured it was about time I indulged in a little mapping. Also, mapping is quite a good way to spend time

I'm not the best at working with WIP's, but I'll try anyway. If your name is Matrim, you might want to skip the background story (the quote below).

My player characters are currently crossing the 'Verboden pas' (Forbidden Pass) by means of an airship, which they boarded in the Gnomish town of Gnomsulost. Unfortunately they had a little argument with a bunch of Griffon mounted Drow, who punctured the front compartment of the balloon. The remaining Drow are currently being chased off by a rather huge red dragon (no worries, it's a good guy, despite it's colour).

This leaves the captain of the ship with few options. Making an emergency landing (or crash) in one of the most dangerous areas of the known world is everything but an attractive option.

However, one of the PC's spotted an elven female on the head of the dragon, and it seems she's about to jump off the dragon to her death when a much smaller dragon flies into view directly below her. It catches her, and she flies to the airship. Here she will tell the PC's and the captain to head west and try to make it over 'that ridge over there'. Once past that obstacle she points to a lake for the captain to crash in. The ship hits the water and slams into the only island in the lake. The PC's are then brought ashore by fishermen, and have to follow a path to a small but legendary village called 'Dragons' Den'.

The village is located between two mountains, each housing a dragon. Fire Mountain in the north (which is not a real volcano) is the home of the aforementioned Red Dragon. And in the south the White Peak, where a Silver Dragon lives. Both Dragons are the guardians of Dragons' Den, and are in fact good friends.

A lot of inhabitants of Dragons' Den have drakes as mounts.

This map will show Dragons' Den, Fire Mountain and the White Peak, and also the fjord in the west, and the lake where the ship crashed in the south.

I'm still using many elements from Pasis' 'rising up the mountains' tutorial.

I started out with the ground, fully pasis style: one layer of clouds, one layer of monochromatic noise, one texture layer, and a brightness/contrast adjustment layer.



After that I was still going by Pasis and made his mountains, but added snow of my own (layer on top of the mountains with a light marble texture, with the layer mode set to screen). I also made a crater with some rough black marble texture. I believe both textures are standard photoshop textures. I added some orange 1 pixel lines to make the mountain look like a volcano.



I'll continue later...