Astral Ruins, Adept (Patreon)

Hello there, Adepts- this week's map is the Astral Ruins (45x45), a flying ruin in space with a bunch of neat crystals and huge scary chains. Is this a map that I think will fit perfectly into all of your campaigns? No! But did I let that stop me? No! However, I did end up making your alternate version of this map a bit more useful, swapping out the astral void for a pleasant cloudy sky- because I think adventurers are more likely to find themselves falling to their deaths in the sky than floating through the void. 

1. You can't quite tell from this initial sketch, but I intended this map to be more in line with the sky islands from the Tears of the Kingdom. Several sketches preceded this one, ones with broken bridges, ruined buildings, pools of water, and lots of rubble, but none of those designs felt good, and I was already short on time after taking Memorial Day off, so I settled for a nice central island with some arms spinning off for risky parkour. 

At this point I only felt like planning for a big ruined rotunda in the middle, thinking that I'd come up with the specifics later when I had a better feel for the map. Good thing too, I eventually felt that this collection of islands really didn't feel 'sky island-y' enough and panic pivoted into an Astral map. Honestly an easy swap when I wasn't planning on putting any outlines in the background anyway.

2. This one was a real journey. I wish I had put together a timelapse of this one, it would have been a mess. These islands drifted all over the place while I drew them, with all kinds of experimental positioning, only to end up in nearly the same starting positions. Then I played around with all the additional ruins, which could easily have been razed stone buildings, statues, fountains, or giant magic orbs, but eventually I decided that simple stone tiles got the idea across best and left it at that. 

Then I decided that it was too simple and boring. I spent a few hours adding a vortex to the central island ruins, erased it, drew in a pool of magical water, erased it, and drew in a bunch of crazy crystals. The crystals felt the most right, but also felt the most like they needed to be spread out in order to fit the map, so I scattered additional crystals wherever it felt right. And that was great, and I was happy with that, but I figured I'd better go with the rule of threes and add one more item of interest beyond the ruins and crystals. I sketched in a chain, on a whim, my wife thought it looked good, and so I was cursed with drawing chains- just a miserably annoying prop to draw. 

In the end I do think it looks nice, if not a little too busy, but I think that's forgivable considering the Astral setting. 

3. Colors! I didn't think I was going to go hard on the islands' coloring, rather I would put a bunch of effort into the background and let those details carry the map, but I ended up being a little too obsessed with nailing the colors/lighting of the crystals and the rim-lighting on the islands themselves. 

The background actually took significantly less effort than expected, relatively. I copied over the last astral background I drew (from an alternate version of the Lava Lake) and added in a neat little glowing spiral. Then I started tweaking it, endlessly nudging sliders as I experimented with at least a dozen potential Astral backgrounds. I very nearly ended with a more space-y rainbow-colored background, which kinda looked like one of those shots of nebulas you see sometimes- didn't look particularly magical though, just kinda cool.

It didn't help that, about this time, I increased the size of the image by 5 horizontally and vertically, giving me even more inches to paint (it felt too cramped before). Really, this map was just a huge job, I definitely didn't know what I was getting into here.