The Hawthorn Fort

[Kiba]

So I'm writing an urban-fantasy story about the Fair Folk that's set in Ireland, and the climax involves the human protagonist getting dumped into a hawthorn maze by the Wild Hunt. Her father then kills the Wild Hunt's leader before they can kill the protagonist, and he unintentionally gains the Wild Hunt's title as king of a Fair Folk region. He's not having that after so much fairy-induced trouble, so he refuses the title and heads back to America while his daughter takes on the ruler's mantle because SOMEONE has to rule.

The story ends with her restoring the castle after a thousand years of neglect. It only takes a few weeks to do so, but that's because she calls in about five or six hundred people for the cleanup crew in addition to LOTS of magical repair work.

Basic facts: There's nine towers of drystone connected by bridges, with trees as support (the gates are marked as such). The outermost bridges double as curtain walls, and are also constructed with drystone. Everything is built on the perimeter of a giant 3-acre hawthorn maze that's enchanted to be even larger on the inside, and it extends to form a triskele when viewed from above. The three towers within the spirals are watchtowers.

The throne room is in a cave underneath the keep, and it's somewhere by the moat since people nearly get flooded while tunneling underground to ambush the Wild Hunt's leader.

The directions are intentionally reversed. It's a plot point that my protagonist gets literally turned around in the maze because she doesn't know the Otherworld's directions are the opposite of the human world's.

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Artsy Writer's thoughts: The Hawthorn Fort is meant to feel like Stonehenge: Old and massive, but not too ornate. It would also be impractical to live in without magic because you'd have to be a marathon runner to walk up seven flights of stairs and cross a network of bridges all the time.

I didn't want a standard "square/rectangular castle with a keep and a few towers," so I watched my favorite movie Pan's Labyrinth and went, "THAT. THAT IS MY AESTHETIC. This castle is built around a maze, and the throne room is in a cave under the keep. Everything is twisted and crumbling thanks to the Wild Hunt's neglect, but it's still meant to be beautiful in a primal and nameless way."

My friend saw my sketch of the towers and said it looks like an Elf castle, which tickled me. XD

If it matters to see the intended aesthetic of the Hawthorn Fort, here's a couple sketches of the towers and their bridges, as well as the underground cave of the throne room. (Please ignore the throne room's scribbled walls and ceiling. It's supposed to be covered in cave paintings that record the Fort's history. Not enough space in my sketchbook for that. )




Thoughts on the concept and how to continue with the map?

[Larb]

It sounds like a very nice idea - it has a lot of interesting features. I really like the idea of a maze in the middle of it all too.

Are you doing the map digitally or on paper? And do you want more of a isometric map or a plan view like in the first image?

On a related note in Ireland they have these super interesting round towers (usually associated with monastic sites). I don't know how tall your towers are supposed to be but it looks like they could look similar to yours although with a more twisted, irregular roof like in your drawing. They are mortared though but for a good idea of what a dry stone round tower wall looks like, just look up Mousa Broch - one of my favourite buildings! It is also over a thousand years old too.

[Chick]

Wow, that looks really interesting! And tough! Seems like you have a good start on a map/drawing of it, but a big job ahead of you, too. This will be fun to watch you develop

[Kiba]

I based my concept sketches on round towers and the brochs/duns of the Iron Age. Yay! The towers are all technically seven stories, but the keep is leaning towards dun-sized since it's got the great hall in it, so it's probably somewhere around 80-100 feet high instead of the standard 70 feet. The keep plus a watchtower are also on hills, so that would skew the bridges/curtain-walls accordingly.

As for the map, I'd love to start on a plan map in the medieval style. I'm hand-drawing it, probably in both bird's eye and a 3/4 view so I can get the textures of the drystone and the hawthorn trees in the maze.

[Kiba]

Updates! These took about half an hour.

So I'm building on the plan map and I made a couple of minor but very welcome tweaks! For one, the lake actually looks like water now. Another tweak is that I changed the name of the "Gloaming Gate" to "the Raw Gate." Then I just filled in the curtain-wall detail and the hawthorn maze. Still wondering how that triskele hedgerow is going to get detailed--maybe just some dots or really tiny crosshatching.

In my head I was planning to have the bridges' lines be really thick and heavy to contrast the maze's doomy squiggles, but now that it's on paper there's just a solid block of color. I'm probably leaving the bridges blank again, so there's a little bit of negative space to break up the maze.

I'm thinking of just doing most of the line-work by hand and then using GIMP to color it in.

EDIT: Resized the picture! Don't know how I missed making sure the zoom-in wasn't eight times bigger than my screen.

[Kiba]

Here's draft three with more minor tweaks. I just realized that I forgot to put in kitchens and laundry, so now they're in one of the courtyards by the keep. Also filled in the hedgerows. I'm trying to work out a fancy Celtic-knot styled compass--I might draw it separately and then resize it to fit the actual map. Scale-wise, since the hawthorn maze's physical size is three acres, that's roughly the size of a good-sized city block (600x600 feet) with nine concentrated points for living areas.

Definitely going to be impractical without magic or modern amenities. (In the story, it's basically the same thing.)

[Kiba]

Yay, I finally got a new scanner to replace my broken dinosaur one!

Unfortunately it's still a bunch of small tweaks. I shifted the buildings around, made the dotted lines in the hedgerow more distinct, and plugged in the names for the nearby villages and the forest. I also removed the compass because there's just no freaking room.

Once I'm done with the working draft, I'm going to trace the map onto a non-holed piece of paper sans the compass and title, and then I'll draw those on another sheet and edit them digitally onto the map.

[Larb]

Are you going to label and colour it digitally after scanning the traced version?

[Kiba]

The buildings and towers will have a key and I'll hand-draw the title and compass. I might write out the key by hand since I want a Celtic calligraphy feel. I'll test out digital coloring, but if I don't like the look, I'll use pastel or colored pencil.

[Kiba]

For those curious, here's a link to the Hawthorn Fort's village! Right now it's still in-progress.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...815#post273815