April 2012 Entry: The Ziggurat of Ages

[Nighthawk]

The Ziggurat of Ages, a tall pyramid-like structure at the edge of a molten lake. At it's summit, the dread wizard [Insert Name Here] has opened a portal to The Abyss... Who knows what creatures will step through to do his bidding?

It's very early in the process - I've spent only about 10 minutes on it - so there's a lot to go. Still need to throw in the molten lake, the portal platform, arcane power sources, etc... When I'm done, I might even stat up a sample D&D 4E encounter for it.

Map is inspired by a scene late in my mega-campaign "The Coming Dark". I've planned it for Chapter 9; considering I've only written up to Chapter 3, it's a long ways out.

### Latest WIP ###

Ziggurat1.jpg

[Bogie]

Classic Idea!

[Nighthawk]

And more progress...

### Latest WIP ###

Ziggurat2.jpg

[Nighthawk]

Not sure what else to put on this map. Might dirty up the ziggurat itself a bit.

I tried changing the surrounding area from rocks and lava to beach and water; I might post that one as well.

Image is done at 50 DPI using Adobe Fireworks CS5.

[Nighthawk]

OK, since I got a bunch of other things on my plate and can't think of what else to do with this one, this is my final WIP.

### Latest WIP ###

ZigguratOfAges_Sample.jpg

I added some masked dirt textures to the ziggurat stone and the path, cranked it up to 100 DPI and replaced the columns with higher resolution versions (since I had created it originally in 50 DPI, they got bad when I enlarged it).

Final version is a bone crunching 3000 x 1900 pixels in full color DPI. Because of the size of the file (1.8+Mb) I didn't know if I should attach it here, so you can download it directly from my site:

http://dnd.brainclouds.net/Downloads...ges_100DPI.jpg

In the near future I might create a D&D 4E encounter with this as the setting; if I can do that before the end of this competition, I'll post it here. I'll also probably release this as a map pack now that I have a fairly high resolution version.

Comments? Suggestions? Gripes?

[Bogie]

Nice! The high res version helps see the details. I like the new columns a lot.

This site can handle posts a bit over 4 MB so you can easily post it here if you want. I think my battlemaps are just over 2 MB each.