Harthill and Catacombs

[soggymuse]

I originally drew the village map on the left-hand page in my Moleskine notebook with pencil and then my Sakura Micron drawing pens, but they hurt my hand when I do too much and I don't like not being able to fix mistakes. (The forest on the right river bank just looked awful on the original.) I switched to Paint Tool SAI, having prepped the basic two-page gridded spread in Photoshop, and tried again, then did the caverns to match. (It's much easier to line things up when you can just copy and paste, too.)

It's only a practice map and not for any specific purpose, but I'm still quite pleased with how it turned out given that I've never done village or dungeon maps before (unless you count my mesa caves, which are so extensive I needed a break with something simpler...) I was going to shade it and add things like roof details, but I actually prefer it without. My water and tree lines could use some work, especially up close, but I really like how SAI renders with the vector pen tools and I've figured out how to draw relatively neat circles, too.



I don't know if this needs a key or labels. I'm hoping I've drawn it well enough for things to be obvious, but just in case:

Harthill is a small farming/fishing village on a broad river and surrounded by lots of forest. Most everything is made of wood (the bridge was originally cobblestone but my hand cramped so bad on the original pen drawing that I decided not to do too much detailing on this one) except the temple, which is made of stone with a tile roof made to look like dragon scales because - you guessed it - there's a dragon living in the caverns beneath the village and the villagers worship it as their god.

There are three ways into the caves: the main and most obvious route is through the temple into the crypts. (I imagine any roleplaying party would need to battle a priest here if they went the obvious route.) The well is another obvious but difficult route; it taps right into the underground lake, so roleplayers could easily (hah!) rappel down it with some rope, but would need to make sure the villagers were distracted so they don't get caught going in. The third option is a shrine in a clearing in the middle of the forest on the right bank of the river. There's a set of stones there (summoning stones, maybe, or an altar for special occasions) with a hole underneath that leads into a different section of tunnel.

Either way, there are several ways to reach the dragon. I haven't drawn any details like loot or traps, but there are a few side caverns and tunnels roleplayers could explore, and I'm sure the dead buried in the crypts would have something valuable buried with them, too.

[Abu Lafia]

Nice little set of maps soggymuse, good job! Only two small suggestions: the boats look a bit "compressed"(?). They could need some stretching Hatching the walls/solid ground on the dungeon map might be a good idea to make the caverns and tunnels stand out a bit more.

[soggymuse]

Ooh, that's a good idea, Abu, and I've gotten started on the hatching. I also stretched the boats a bit. I'm not very good at drawing so I'm kind of amazed they even looked remotely like boats in the first place. xD

[Ilanthar]

I fully second Abu's suggestions. Nice and clean maps btw.

[soggymuse]

Thanks, Ilanthar.

I've been slowly adding some hatching as suggested. It's taking forever, though, so I don't know when I'll be able to update.