Volcanic Path, Adept (Patreon)

Hello Adepts! This week you're getting the Volcanic Path (25x25) and its alternate version, the Caustic Path! The Caustic Path is heavily inspired by World of Warcraft's 'fel' magic, which often looks like yellow-green flames or goop, and makes for a neat flavor of hellish terrain, I think. If you're not looking for more hellish maps though, maybe use it as a magical Underdark cavern with acidic water flowing through, or the center of some god's cursed domain. Either way, I think it came out looking incredible (especially the dark version),  so I hope you find an opportunity to use it!

1. At the time of this sketch I was still somewhat tied to this being a remake of my Lava Path map, one of the first I posted on Patreon, but I rapidly decided against it. Partially this is because Lava Path is a little boring, and I liked the idea of the skinny bridges making it difficult for multiple flightless people to cross at once. I think this sort of thing will prompt players to come up with more creative solutions for moving around the terrain while also making solid choke points for melee folks to bunch up in. And, since there's very little solid cover and lots of chasms, this will be a pretty brutal map for anyone facing flying or ranged-heavy enemies. Fun!

2. This week I wanted to be completely finished by Thursday night, leaving me with all of Friday and the weekend to play Animal Crossing. That said, I had quite a bit of fresh rock wall drawn after several recent projects, so I set to work on Monday rapidly stitching together stretches of walls to make up islands. By the end of the day, I had the framework for all of them finished, and I just had to fill in their flat surfaces with rocky details. However, that ended up being a much more time-consuming process than I expected. As it turned out I was finished with all the outlines, including lava, rocks, and bridges by Wednesday afternoon, which is nearly as fast as I used to be when I first started making maps, leaving me with plenty of time to color, shade, and assemble 3 alternate versions. 

3. This map marks my 3rd recent attempt at a lava map, and I think the improvements have been massive. My first recent attempt, the volcanic version of the Sea Cliffs, was a pretty substantial whiff due to poor color choices, but it was good practice nonetheless (maybe I should take a day to fix it, now that I know a little more).  The second try was the Volcanic Dungeon, which turned out very nicely despite convoluted layered color effects making it difficult to replicate. Even so, the colors came out nicely and provided a framework for me to build on quickly for my next attempt. This time I came at it with the process ready to go and another map to take inspiration from, giving me time to tweak the finished effects for longer than I typically have time for.  I think it came out looking great! I'm hopeful that I'll be able to do this environment quickly enough that I can regularly make volcanic versions of some of my older maps featuring water, and maybe I can get started on that for next month's Revisited map.