Marid Noble's Temple Tower of the Plane of Water

[Gamerprinter]

Nothing to show for it yet, but I need to create a temple map for next weekend's Pathfinder Game. My group is playing an evil party of adventurers in a large city setting, they are fighting various factions and competing guilds for political control of the city. One of my players is a Summoner (using one of the new classes from the upcoming Adanced Players Guide to be released at Gencon, but they have a final Beta version, that we're using for the time being) and kind of plays as an outcast, from one of the poorer ethnic humans in the city, so he needs a powerful sponsor, to give him an equal edge politically as other party members.

I've decided to place a Temple Tower accessed from the last pier of the Harbor Ward. My plan is for it to be 50 feet square at the base, a separate foyer at front protected by two squadrons of sea elves. The Temple Tower serves as hall of the faithful for the Elemental Plane of Water, and as home and fortress for a Marid Noble (exiled from the Plane of Water, but serving as an ambassador to the humans, at this great coastal city.)

The floor of the tower will consist of stone walkways and collonades serving as "walls" between chambers and paths, however, sea water fills most of the areas within the tower, with an invisible barrier (caused by Control Water magic) that keeps the seawater from filling in the open air areas. The seawater starts from below the temple tower and reaches all the way to the domed roof. Denizens of the water include sea elf guards bearing tridents, a giant octopus, sharks, giant moray eels, and normal seawater threats like clouds of box jellyfish, poison barbed sea urchins, colonies of crabs. Walking along a path adjacent to these water filled areas, one can stick your hand through the watery verticle plane and get bit by a shark or stung by a jelly fish.

So the map will have seawater areas in verticle columns surrounding halls and chambers that the PCs may traverse unharmed, as long as they don't threaten their surroundings. The water barriers can be made to drop and fully fill all air filled areas to drown those within and be subject to attack by its live-in defenders.

I'll post something tomorrow and try to get this done in the next day or two.

I also need to build an Efreeti's Sword Smith Workshop on the other side of the city, who has stolen one of the Marid's magical devices and has caused an ongoing feud between these Genies of Fire and Water, that the PCs are going to conduct in an attempt to retrieve the Marid's stolen sword. So I need to create a couple earth-bound operations from both the Elemental Planes of Fire and Water as structures in my home-brew city, the Free City of Zentiir.

The thought just occurred to me, that these might make interesting additions to the Grand City of Calishem, Khanate of Kashya Mal, of the CWBP - I'll donate them there once I'm completed. Haven't given much thought to Calishem in a while. I think making Calishem like my Zentiir might be fruitful - vying political factions between Arabic, Oriental, Mongol, and Western factions, the existence of many outsiders sharing the city with the human/humanoids as well, including Rakshasa varieties, various kinds of Genies, including a Marid and an Efreeti and other exotic denizens (including Azata celestials). Calishem as Zentiir should also be a slave trading capital, though Mongols are its governor and provincial rulers, varying merchant houses actually control the city and its various lucrative markets.

I'll post the maps tomorrow and over the course of next week - I need them for next Saturday.

GP

[tilt]

sounding good ... always fun to work with elements - and I'm looking forward to see what you end up with

[Gamerprinter]

So I used a cel based cartoon filter in my old 3D program (Raydream), after modeling the walkway and columns in Nendo. While I tried to create the chambers of water in 3D, it didn't come out too well (not transparent), so I created the transparent blue water sections in Xara and extruded the object, converted to shapes and applied a 50% transparency. I didn't want to draw all the perspective column detail, so I cheated by keeping the 3D sketch.

I will use this as a base and hand-draw the aquatic flora and fauna. I plan to place vortex of water in the center that acts as an elevator to the water filled dome at the top of this temple structure. Those the Marid doesn't want to use the vortex gets shot to the side to be attacked by the denizens in the watery areas. All others are shot to the dome and given an area of airy water to breathe while visiting her court.

Here's the 3D cartoony sketch base, before hand-drawn detailing...

GP

[Rythal]

looks good!