From WinterSpire to Yoon-Suin - a poster-map

[Dyson Logos]

So, while I'm working away at the November / December Lite Challenge, I'm also in the midst of working on a map that I need to finish within a week so I can get it poster-printed as gifts for the players in one of my Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. The campaign has been running for two years, and it is FINALLY almost over, and I want to make a gift for everyone that is a good reminder of the campaign AND it gets me off the hook for Christmas gifts this year.

The original map we are using (for the last half of the campaign at least) is this one:

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(It is called the Eastern Shore because the region was named by the elves who lived to the west of here and called this the eastern shore of the Purple Sea)

Anyways, I drew that map quickly one afternoon for our next game session back in February, and left it at that. But now I want to make one that is at least four times as big and way more detailed for the poster.

So I started yesterday on it...

[Dyson Logos]

I didn't get a lot done last night as I was still figuring out exactly how big I wanted this to be (and settled on roughly 4 letter sized sheets, in portrait mode, in a 2 x 2 grid).

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Basically I drew the first city and some of the surroundings.

The campaign started with Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure but my aversion to the Forgotten Realms meant mashing and mangling the setting a bit. This is my replacement for Neverwinter.

Winterspire is a city built on the ruins of the old space elevator. The top of the spire is perpetually covered in snow, and living in the upper sections is a sign of abundant wealth because it means you can afford to have coal or firewood shipped up the spire to heat your house year-round.

And here's where I'm at as of tonight as I head for bed:

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Upper left is Winterspire (the replacement for Neverwinter), just to the lower right of Winterspire is Phandalin and the no-longer-lost mine of Phandelver. Two of our characters retired to Phandalin over the course of the adventure - one living in Tressender Manor and the other taking over as the mayor after the old mayor was killed and replaced by a doppelganger that the party had brought back from the mine thinking it was one of the Rockseeker brothers.

Not immediately visible in this photo, but on the map, is the entrance to the goblin cave in the woods, as well as the ruins of Cragmaw castle. (I still need to put the old ash-covered town near the road at the base of space elevator support spire).

At the end of the trail from Phandalin is Javelin Hill, a medium-sized fortified community run by a dwarven duchess with her massive giant companion (A PC and her companion from a prior campaign).

Down the road from Winterspire we come to the small farming "village" of Kugelburg on the edge of the massive sand dunes between it and the Persimmon Sea. It is a silly place and the player characters do not stop there anymore when travelling through the area.

The penciled box on the lower right is where I need to draw in Fedor's Pass, which distracted the party for a session or two before they ended up financing a dwarven expedition into that megadungeon instead of exploring it themselves.

[ThomasR]

Looks pretty interesting. Good luck on juggling with challenge AND commission, I'm doing my best to fit 35 h in one day at the moment

[kacey]

Looks great like all you're other work, I always look forward to seeing more.

[Tonnichiwa]

this looks fantastic!. I love your art style.

[Dyson Logos]

First page of four is now done - all the areas from our first six months of play are on this map... As well as some stuff that turned up significantly later (like Fedor's Pass).

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[Dyson Logos]

After all the detail work on page 1 of the campaign poster map, I forgot how little actual STUFF there is in the lower-left quadrant of the map. In fact, I ended up extending the land mass a bit and adding extra islands. The lower left side of this area will end up having the legend and notes about the campaign when this is all done.

I was expecting to spend two days on this page like the last one. Already time to start page 3 of 4!

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[Dyson Logos]

Not getting a lot done on the third section today - I'm having furnace problems and there's Rogue One tonight... and it is -16 (feels like -2 outside... so I gotta fix that furnace.


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[Dyson Logos]

And it looks like I fixed the furnace!

To celebrate, here's a quick rough composite of the two finished sections and the one unfinished (and the one untouched) section of the map...

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[Dyson Logos]

Third quadrant of the Christmas Campaign Map is done, I think.

(Well, except labels, those are going on once I've scanned the whole thing).

I'm pretty impressed for the quality of the photo on this. I'm getting the hang of my new phone and the photo quality is getting to the point where sometimes I mistake photos for scans.

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