Drow Spelljammer Spider Ship

[Gamerprinter]

I've haven't posted a WIP thread at the CG in years - maybe 10 years. I'm currently working on the deck plans for the last ship in a series that I've created. I'm about to publish my first third party product supporting Dungeons & Dragons 5.1e, which will be released at the Dungeon Master's Guild - Spelljammer is WotC intellectual property, which third party publishers normally cannot create for. The DM's Guild has a special licensing agreement with WotC allowing products only sold there to contain WotC IP.

The product is called Arcane Armada: a collection of 13 custom Spelljammer Ships and full deck plans, a Binary Wildspace star system with stat block, 3 new monstrous species (races), 10 beast 'monsters' of the nebula as a 92 page hard cover and PDF download product.

This ship uses a gigantic dead Astral Spider, a creature which I also created stats for being included in this publication, as the basis of the ship superstructure. Which measures 2000 feet across including it's legs. These creatures live in asteroid belts where they gather smaller asteroids and web them together forming 'Spider Nests'. As a Spelljammer ship, this is massive and perhaps the largest Spelljammer ship known. It was constructed to be used as a colony ship, moving an entire Drow elf, noble house from the Underdark of one world, across Wildspace to the Phoenix Nebula, where a Spider's Nest exists, and a massive geode asteroid as the location for a newly formed Drow city in Wildspace.

Shown below is an illustration of Lolth's Handmaiden Drow Colony Dreadnought ship, as well as a 3D illustration of a astral spider nest in the Briar Ring, the asteroid belt of the Hawk star system.

GP

drow house colony ship.jpgspider nest.jpg

[Gamerprinter]

Note: I created 3D models of these ships, modeled in Wings3D, then textured, lit and rendered in Vue Creator. I create illustrations, as well as both profile and top down views, which I then use Xara Designer Pro, a vector drawing program like Adobe Illustrator, then cut out the deck plans. I sometimes create 'furnishing' content that is actual 3D, sometimes I rely solely on vector, but it emulates 3D in it's style.

First I create a profile view of the ship, so I can cut out shown interior decks, so the viewer can understand the size and number of levels in a given ship. As stated this Drow Colony Dreadnought is the largest Spelljammer ship known...

GP

spider-profile.jpg

[Gamerprinter]

The lowest deck shown in the profile is the ship's water supply, which I didn't make a map of.

The lowest mapped deck is the Lower Ccargo Deck. You'll note 3 red domed towers at the center of the main deck, shown in the illustration. Those areas are separated from the rest of each deck as a part of those structures. The larger central tower is the Temple to Lolth. The top or left side tower is the Fighter Academy, while the other side tower is the Wizard's Academy. In the forward (left side) area are stairs up and down to access other decks. Aft of that access to the tower's cellar levels, a trackway around the circumference of the abdomen. Aft is part of the water filtration system, as the ship's water is 'recycled'.

lower-cargo-deck.jpg

Next deck is the Helm and Main Cargo Deck. Helm at fore (far left side), followed by storage areas for cargo (found across this deck), then Navigation, behind which is the stairs accessing other decks. Following this is secured access to the cellars of the towers (higher level), and at aft is the steering control for the sails. The interior space is 800 feet long, so yes, this is a big ship - I included the grid to show scale...

spider-under-deck.jpg

[Gamerprinter]

I often create 3D top down content to place in these deck plans as map symbols designed specifically for this map, though can later be used in other maps...

I do this for things like cargo and weapon systems...

Shown below is a trebuchet, a Mayan common bed, and an insectoid egg sac - all for different ships in the series of course.

GP

egg-sacs.pngmayan-common-bed.pngtrebuchet.png

[Gamerprinter]

The Gun Support deck is the deck below the main (open deck). The forward area includes a corridor to stairs going up to the thorax ballista, then the stairs access. The 3 towers are closed off from access to the rest of the deck. The flank areas include barracks for deck hands, 50 beds each - hotbunking allows 3 each 8 hour shifts to share the bed, with 3 secure lockers beneath each bed. So 150 deckhands share these 50 beds. In the aft section is the ship's 'farms', 2 chambers contain water-filled stone tanks where shellfish are fed and harvested. 2 larger chambers contain edible mushroom farms. Between them are 2 sets of barracks, each with 63 beds, so 126 total, and hotbunked for 378 laborers. All barracks house the lowest ranking members of the house.

GP

gun-support-farm-deck.jpg

[Simkin]

Really impressive job. Ty for sharing

[Bogie]

Way to go GP!!! Nice work!!