The Hawthorn Fort

[Kiba]

Here's some more updates of the Hawthorn Fort! I basically rounded out the outer-ward, got rid of the badly-placed title, and added the sheep/horse pastures. The pigs would be turned out into the forest.

It occurred to me that I didn't explain why the map is a perfect triskele from a birds' eye view.

Short answer: They're the Fair Folk, and there's a population of bird-spirits in the southeast of fairy-Ireland. A number of said bird-spirits are indeed cartographers (and merchants, and air-force troops). So despite their medieval levels of technology thanks to their inability to use iron, they have a gigantic boost to their societies in many ways. (Plus they've borrowed a crapton of ideas from humans to magic up equivalents of technology.)

[Kiba]

Just letting you know that I'm going to transfer this map to a new piece of paper that hasn't been erased to death.

[Kiba]

And here's the clean new version that I transferred to another two sheets of paper! Just need to get all the little details finished before I start thinking about coloring it in.

I've figured out the scale for the castle itself (1 inch = 80 feet), but I don't think the pastures would be held to that scale since that would only make a few acres for several hundred head of livestock. Since the castle is about 6 inches square, that's 480 feet square and probably 5-600 feet if you include the outer ward around the keep. Just around the size of a city block, which is perfect for being impractical without magic.

[Larb]

You'd be surprised how well pre-modern people were able to accurately construct big monumental images and structures on the ground that are best viewed from the air! A triskele would be perfectly achievable even without fae assistance or magic. I imagine such assistance would simply make it easier and faster.

Do you intend to draw the actual layout of the maze at some point? I have a thing for mazes (I posted one here once) so I am very curious to see it.

[Kiba]

Yes, I'm well aware of all the awesome monuments that ancient people could pull off. I imagine it involved crazy amounts of drafting and shifting stuff around, though. Having sentient birds on the crew would cut down on a lot of that.

I'm liking my mass of greenery for the maze, but I'm definitely thinking of drawing up an actual pathway since it starts in the middle (you get thrown in from the center bridge) and ends... somewhere. Probably at one of the watchtowers. A solid map would be a moot point since the hedges shift around specifically to confuse people.

Also, 80% of the linework is done!

[Kiba]

Mockup of the maze! It was fun and surprisingly quick--I spent maybe half an hour on it. According to my map scale, the maze would be roughly 3-4 acres physically. Going on the real-life mazes, that would mean a good 3 miles of paths, so that's maybe an hour just using the correct path. It would probably be at least two or three hours with a couple of the dead-ends, and if you're REALLY unlucky and get a shift in the path (or four or five dead ends at once), you could be stuck there for a full day trying to reorient yourself.

I might not even need any magical enchantments to multiply the maze's acreage. Although I might, since they use it as a method of execution.

[Kiba]

This week was horrible thanks to losing my dog in the first half, but at least I have nearly complete linework. All I have to do is paste a copy of the bridges over the maze, and then I'll start coloring it in.

The pages didn't quite match after I scanned them. It's strange since I'd taped them together to try and avoid that problem, but it looks like it's just a tiny bit off, so I'll see if I can figure it out later.

[Larb]

Sorry to hear you had an awful week. I know what those can be like.

In your image editor of choice you should be able to just select one half of the canvas and move the selection so that the lines will match up with the other half which should eliminate that small gap.

[foremost]

I'm also sorry to hear about your tough week. I hope you're doing better now, and that working on this [very interesting] project will take your mind off of things. Though the idea sounds very difficult to map out clearly, I'm liking what you've got so far.

You should remember to keep your scale (1 inch = 80 feet) in mind, especially when you're stating the acreage of your pastures. Because I don't know that this image is the actual size of the project, I can't take any reliable measurements, but it is something for you to consider.

If you're coloring by hand, make sure that you stay patient and color within the lines. Same thing goes for digital work, I guess, but in that realm it's easier to make corrections!

[Kiba]

Thanks for the condolences.

As for matching up the canvas, I did paste one half of the map onto the other half's file and tried matching it up. It's that weird little blank line messing it up--that's not in the actual map at all because I'd taped the pages together. Maybe I'll take a pic with my phone again, but then it's going to end up at least a little bit crooked.

I think I'll either have to add a page to the top/bottom left for the correct acreage scale.

Edit: I got rid of the sheep pasture/pen, so now there's just the cow and horse pastures. Also, while the pastures would only be a few acres each at this scale, I'm having the pastures be enchanted to hold many times their normal capacity of livestock. Because fairy-rulers have the resources to defy physics.