The Moonscar

[wdmartin]

I'm running The Moonscar module from Paizo soon, and thought I'd produce a few maps for the purpose. The module describes the Moonscar as:

...a nightmare realm of noise, steamy heat, and danger ... the toxic influence of the Abyss has been particularly strong, and over the millennia has shaped the trees into a twisting mass of bloated flora. The colors are unnatural, changed somehow by the lunar light and the kiss of the Abyss. Pregnant ochre flowers hang from trees made of writhing, vaguely fleshy shapes. Jaundiced, fingerlike leaves hang from thorny growths that resemble blistered limbs a dozen feet long. Liver-colored fungal sacks droop flaccidly above a carpet of sepia rot.

It's also supposed to have a few paths through it, kept clear by a minion of the demons who occupy the area. Here's an encounter map for the Blighted Orchard, the demonic forest on the surface of the moon, with and without grid. 100px to the five-foot square, though you could dial that down to 50 if you wanted more space.

Demon-Forest.jpg

Demon-Forest-with-grid.jpg

[wdmartin]

And here's the Shrine of Rest and Fulfillment, minus the two lower rooms.

Shrine-of-Rest-draft-1.jpg

Shrine-of-Rest-draft-1-grid.jpg

This drove me up the wall. The shape is irregular, but not with any particular purpose in its irregularity. It just feels ... sloppy.

I am going back and forth on decorating the rooms. The adventure gives descriptions of them, and it feels a bit plain with no furniture of any kind. But it'd also take a ton of time.

100px to the five-foot square.

[wdmartin]

Well, here's a revision of the upper level, and a map for the lower level of the Shrine of Rest and Fulfillment.

Shrine-of-Rest-upper.jpg

Shrine-of-Rest-lower.jpg

I'm not entirely satisfied with the lower level. It looks like it's an upper level, not a lower. However, I'm going to need this map in less than 12 hours, so I think it's unlikely to get fixed at this point.

[Jacktannery]

I really like this set of maps. I also really like your bare tower in Post 2 - I think it is great. For your lower level, you might show the upper parts of the tower, currently in shadow, either in pure black or with a dark rock texture? But yeah it looks more like an upper mezzanine or something. I also really like your Post 1 map with the string/rope thing: very evocative and great use of colour.

[wdmartin]

Yay, feedback!

I may try blanking out the upper level with black, or even just making the lower rooms a smaller map not showing the upper areas at all.

Glad you like the first encounter map!

And here's the Ring of Agony, with and without grid:

Ring-of-Agony.jpg

Ring-of-Agony-with-grid.jpg

The grid shows ten-foot squares rather than five-foot. A five foot square grid felt too busy -- it didn't fit the scale. It's still a 100px DPI image, though, so if you need to set a VTT to use a five-foot grid, just use 100px per square.

I'm fairly pleased with how this one turned out, although I'm not entirely sure that it's clear that the cages in the large room are hanging from the ceiling high above.

That just leaves the Rings of Obedience, Seduction, and Ecstasy to go. Fortunately they should be considerably easier. The floor plans are waaaaay simpler, have fewer features, and require less decoration than the earlier levels. They're physically smaller, too.

[wdmartin]

Here's a free-floating version of the lower level of the Shrine of Rest and Fulfillment.

Shrine-of-Rest-lower-free-floating.jpg

[wdmartin]

And here's the Ring of Obedience! With and without grid. 100px to the five foot square, as usual.

Ring-of-Obedience.jpg

Ring-of-Obedience-with-grid.jpg

Compared to the last two levels, this one was absolutely dead simple. The hardest part was finding a suitable statue of a succubus. I toyed with the idea of making my own -- and frankly I still think that would be the best route -- but I do not have any 3D software for rendering out such a thing, and I'm not really sure where to get started with such a thing. So I settled for this one, which came from a pack of assets I purchased on Roll 20 ("Portal Packs - One Minute Maps - Order of the Scion" by Mythic Portal Games).

It came out awfully grey. But I suppose that's a hazard of building a dungeon on the moon out of moon-rock with no carpet or anything.

[wdmartin]

And here's the Ring of Seduction, with and without grid.

Ring-of-Seduction.jpg

Ring-of-Seduction-with-grid.jpg

Another very simple one compared to the earlier levels. Pretty dull in terms of visuals, though. All that grey! But ... moon rock.

Maybe I can get some color into the Ring of Ecstasy, which is the sole remaining level in the adventure.

[Jacktannery]

Yeah it's quite monochrome. I do like the sparse style and limited pallet. My favourite is the Ring of Agony as its the most visually interesting.

[wdmartin]

Here's a draft of the Ring of Ecstasy. More of the same. 100px to the five foot square. Unlike the preceding levels, this one was originally drafted at 1 square = 5 feet, instead of 1 square = 10 feet. So it's not so very large as the others.

Ring-of-Ecstasy-draft.jpg

Ring-of-Ecstasy-with-grid-draft.jpg

Although this is serviceable as-is, I'd like to add at least a little bit of decoration. It needs:

- manacles in the three rooms leading up to the final chamber.
- a bed in the center of the final chamber

It's not canonical to the adventure, but I'd like to do something cool-looking with the floor in the final chamber. The map desperately needs something to add visual interest. I experimented with making it an incredibly deep pit that sank away far out of sight. That was okay but not great. I also experimented with adding a lava floor at the bottom of a vast pit, but since there's a circular floor in the center of the room, it kind of destroyed the illusion of depth. When the lava pool was big enough to be seen around the edges of the bed area, it was too large to be far away.

I'll have to give it some thought.