October Entry - Market square in ancient China

[mogul76]

A beautiful morning, with a light breeze sweeping through the town of Nao, lifting here and there the odd cloud of dust. Today, just like any other day, the heroes were going about their business around the market. A sizeable but not unusually large crowd of people wandered between the stalls of local merchants and the tents of travelling salesmen coming to Nao for a day or two. The air was filled with the cries of storekeepers hawking their wares, and other sights, sounds and smells of the town. Where the street met an alley, not far from the entrance to one of the mansions around the market square, in front of a stall where delicious snacks were being prepared, the small party met up, called out to each other and stopped for a chat. As they wandered round the stalls, they admired the exotic wares from all seven states. Silk robes, colourful fruit, mysterious statuettes, penjing trees... just about anything one's heart desires could be found at the Nao market. Suddenly, they noticed another group arrive. It was Tong, adopted son of the local martial-arts shifu, Left Hand, and ten of his regular drinking companions. They strode into the square, looking for someone, staring impudently at each face in turn, and even knocked some passersby out of their way. Then, they noticed the heroes. Tong led his group slowly but surely toward the heroes and stopped a few meters away. He furrowed his brow, put his hands on his hips and said to them sharply: “For shame! Trying to rob me, taking what is rightfully mine! You think you’re better than me, don’t you? Little ****s, tell me where they are or you’re in for a rough time!” The heroes were about to get into a fight...

(Adapted from Toward a World of Forests and Lakes, Qin the Warring States core book)

The creation of the battle map below involved a lot of rendering, work in Campaign Cartographer / Dungeon Designer 3 and some finishing touches in Photoshop. I hope, you'll like it.

### Latest WIP ###

[Steel General]

Looks pretty nice, you should have the people in it as well...

[Roger]

A little rectilinear for my tastes, but I could see this being useful.


Cheers,
Roger

[Gandwarf]

I think it looks great!

[ravells]

It's got a lovely grainy feel to it. Great work!

[mogul76]

Thank you for your comments

@ Steel General: I'd like to use this battle map in a future campaign. Once combat starts, the PC's and NPC's will be moving around. I therefore prefer not to include any symbols representing the people on the market square. But if desired, I can show you a version of the map with grid and tokens.

@ Roger: I see you point and have therefore decided to slightly rotate the market stalls as well as some other symbols. I hope this helps.

The latest WIP can be found below.

### Latest WIP ###

[mogul76]

Discovered a minor error (shadow on the rooftop in the middle of the map's lower part facing the wrong direction).

Corrected. Next WIP.

Cheers,

Mogul76

[Konrad Oldenhaller]

OMG!!! Thank you!!

I was feeling sorry because I was having a hard time to find battle/campaign maps for my Qin Rpg games... and then I find this.
Its nice and very useful for me. (In fact I´m starting de core rulebook adventure, and this map is perfect for the marketplace in Nao)

Thanks very much. I really hope that you post more asian themed maps in the future