My First Project in Illustrator

[Coyotemax]

Just so you're aware, I do appreciate the long thought out explanations. Usually when I see a post like this, I skim quickly and then go to the next unless something catches my eye. For whatever reason, I can't help but read these in detail.

Reminds me of the kind of things I used to try and take into account for my own campaigns back in the day.

[Ascension]

I agree, I love the philosophy that goes into making things "the way you want it" - why you want it that way.

[arsheesh]

Yeah I'm jotting down notes right now. I especially like the your thoughts on undead, I just might have to borrow from you if you don't mind (I've also never played around with GURPs, gotta check into that now). I'm really impressed with your attention to detail. I really am a novice when it comes to cartography, and I'm not catching allot of the references you discuss regarding your maps, but the outcomes speak for themselves. You've got an attractive and highly photo-realistic looking map there. I look forward to watching it develop further, and reading your further insights into the ecology of your world. This is good stuff, enjoy some rep.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[su_liam]

Hey thanks! A lot of folks from Oregon seem to be popping up lately. Borrow away. Most of my stuff is stolen to start with. Although I try to give attribution to my stolen stuff.

I feel a little guilty about tossing my stream of consciousness stuff onto the site, but I figured I should show that I am still working on this thing and I needed to put that stuff down somewhere... So, hey, two birds, one stone. If nobody objects too strenuously, I'll probably do a couple more of these dumps.

I'm kinda feelin' more Old West at the mo'. I'm thinking that will flavor Desa Hutan and Seberan.

[Ascension]

Dump away I say. I do it too - stream-of-consciousness kind of stuff. I've been feelin Old West-y too lately...want to do that lil town from High Plains Drifter.

[su_liam]

Long ago, well before the humans and allochthons arrived, there was a great and vicious war. Myths vary as to the enemy, maybe it was a cruel and horribly debauched elf, perhaps it was ancestral halflings, bigoted towards the new changed races of elves and dwarves, possibly it was a demon dragged forth from the Underworld of Flowers. In any case this enemy was opposed by all decent folk, with only the most debased, cruel and corrupted following it. At the time, this world was much like our world today, so the fight was pretty evenly matched. This dark enemy captured many decent halflings, elves and dwarves and tortured them brutally, subjecting them to immense pain, indignity, crippling injury, terrifying psychic trauma and horrible physical mutilation. These victims were rendered mad by their horrific treatment, their magical acuities destroyed, their ability to alter their form crippled and their lives truncated. Early on, the elves and others managed to rescue some of these benighted creatures from their captivity, but they could not be restored. Even worse, they bred true, the young they produced from their frantic, mindless ruttings being of the same cruel, physically hideous, and mentally debased nature to which their parents had been reduced. The orcs had been born horribly into this world. The decent folk ultimately destroyed all of the orcs they captured, seeing that as the greatest and only kindness which could be bestowed on such irreparably ruined beings. The enemy found them useful. It began to experiment, torturing even the lower orders of its own allies. These experiments, directed specifically toward the creation of horrific mutations to make superior slaves, led to the creation of the stronger, tougher, yet no more or less vicious and cruel ogres.

This ancient enemy may be gone from the world now.

[su_liam]

This is even rawer and less thought out.

Gargoyles(Troglodytes): Originally hewn from animated stone to guard temples and palaces. These creatures return to stone when exposed to sunlight. As stone, they are completely invulnerable. Gargoyles can only be killed while they are animate. In the daylight they can be ground to dust, cast into fiery pits of lava, and they will crawl out of the flames in the next sunset, unharmed. Even in their animate state, they are very tough and regenerate almost as quickly as trolls, they can only be truly destroyed by immersing their pieces in flame, lightning or acid. Many of them have escaped to live in the sewers, tombs and dungeons of the world.

Minotaurs: It is not accidental that minotaurs are found in labyrinths. These were not magically created from bovine stock just to be big vicious thugs, ogres fill that role just fine. They were created for their magically perfect sense of direction, path and location and their ability to completely obscure those senses in others around them. They are not just useful to pursue unfortunate prisoners through trackless mazes, but also in hunts, to keep the quarry inextricably lost and running in circles without hope of escape.

Fairies, gnomes, demons, leprechauns, angels and such: These critters are completely magical. Probably a natural result of a magical world. These are rarely encountered although probably ubiquitous. They only appear to mortal senses at their own choice or when summoned by powerful magics. Sometimes demons are attracted by terrible magical mishaps.

As with the undead, there are many dumping grounds for errantly created magical monsters. In spite of being magical in nature, many of these have no magical powers beyond their existence. Others continuously and mindlessly alter their surroundings magically in pursuit of some comfort they can never find. Some are basically just people of a different kind.

[su_liam]

¡ I Forgot Gnolls !
¿ How could I forget Gnolls ?

Yeah, homework is drivin' me crazy.

[su_liam]

After two weeks of shear, steaming, concentrated hell, I am now one final away from graduating with a geography degree. I want to make some progress on Burphaban then, tomorrow, back to studying!

[Greason Wolfe]

Just so you're aware, I do appreciate the long thought out explanations. Usually when I see a post like this, I skim quickly and then go to the next unless something catches my eye. For whatever reason, I can't help but read these in detail.

Reminds me of the kind of things I used to try and take into account for my own campaigns back in the day.

I have to agree with Coyotemax 100% It all works to give character to the map, and I find myself doing the same thing on a fairly regular basis. I'll be working on a map and get hit by an idea that I just have to take the time to write down somewhere. An hour or two later, I eventually make it back to working on the map.

GW