Haunted Mire Altar, Adept (Patreon)

I return with the most timely of my spooky maps, the Haunted Mire Altar (40x30), just in time for Halloween! This one features a spooky sacrificial altar raised above a misty mire- looks real ritualistic. The scene I'm imagining here involves the sacrifice taking place, and in response zombies begin to rise from the muck surrounding the outcropping. Beyond that however, I'm certain there's a ton you can do with a map like this!

1. I had an idea when I made the Haunted Stream map a few months back, the biggest map I've ever made, big enough that I couldn't realistically make maps that large weekly unless the content were especially simple or straightforward (such as a forest stream). I thought to myself at the time, "this map is SO big at 50x50 inches that I almost could have just made it 2 or 3 maps if I had laid it out a little differently.. and if I did that then they would lead into each other seamlessly. That would be pretty cool actually, I should do that." 

That's exactly what I did this week! This is part 1, the upper portion of a 40x60 map which I've carefully designed to split into 2 Haunted Mire maps. I'm here to tell you that this was a lot more work than usual due to the size/detail and required some particularly careful planning at at the sketching phase to ensure that both maps would meet my standards for map design. My desire for this project was as follows: I wanted both the top and bottom halves to feel complete without the other, with a flow that is enhanced by being combined but not stunted when a half is used alone, also they ought to be similar in environment and theme so that they can be used together but not so similar that they feel like they should have simply been a single map. *Side note: maps that are both huge and detailed would be the ideal here (obviously, who wouldn't want big and interesting maps?) but there's only so much I can do in a week (I'm not a particularly fast artist and I watch my toddler half the day) and I'm dedicated to making weekly maps; this whole project is a sort of compromise for this issue. 

The design I came up with that I felt fit the framework was part 1- journey, and part 2- destination. This map, the Altar, is the destination, with the centerpiece of the map being found at 25% of the way down the full 40x60 map. The next map, the journey, is primarily a path leading to this Altar, with some extra props to ensure that it would be interesting enough to stand alone. I'm looking forward to showing you all what the full map looks like!

2. Between the initial sketch and the outlines I had to make some decisions about what exactly I wanted to place as the centerpiece here. I had played around with demonic spires, hell portals, and spiky stone platforms, but none of those felt like common concepts for encounters and you know how I like to build maps that are useful for the most people possible. A pentagram/altar/ominous tablet setup felt nicely generic and easily removed to create an extra variant of the map that's empty for DMs to play around with. 

3. Yup, after all this talk I did just go ahead and stick with the same ol' palette. The grass is a touch more vibrant than before, the trees a lil darker. I think the only big change I made was scaling back the fog drastically, primarily because I paint it in fairly heavily around the borders of the map and I didn't want to have to erase a bunch of fog where this map will border the conjoining map. Honestly though, even if that was my initial reason, I've been a little iffy on the haunted fog for a few weeks, it usually feels too heavy-handed and makes bits of the map almost unusable. No big loss, I'm trying out alternatives.