Ars Magica Maps

I was working on a fairly large series of maps for our Ars Magica game but my interest has waned a bit in finishing all the maps. Part of it is simply the nature of of trying to illustrate something meant to evolve over the years. Of the four floors, I've done the base and second floor.

The first floor is a stone foundation in order to hold up the floors on top. The grounds are a mostly bare and scratched stone because the covenant is located in the center of a crater which hasn't had enough time to recover a top-soil. The magi discussed performing magic to accelerate the process but the decision ultimately came to putting their farmlands out past the rim of the crater. Easier but more vulnerable to supply disruption.

The large dark hole in the covenant is why the building was located here, the crater's meteor proceeded to sink into the soft rock, creating a kind of sinkhole leading into a labyrinth of natural honeycomb-structured caves. As of yet the magi haven't done any spelunking to investigate the meteor, but the meteor represents a sizeable source of the area's magical aura.

You'll also notice that most of the base floor is filled with a very barracks-like setup. These rooms are for the servants and laborers of the covenant and the space is actually mostly occupied. A cellar with stairs up to the kitchens is one of two ways to and from the second floor. The main stairway at the bottom actually proceeds directly to the second floor.

The second floor represents much of the day to day of the mundane people who live at the covenant. This floor isn't finished artistically, but it holds the kitchens, dining room, mess hall, infirmary, and the various workshops that the craftsmen used to supply the covenant with tools and things. I'm also just now realizing I never got around in drawing in the stairs to lead to the third floor but I guess I would've done that in conjunction with laying out the third floor anyway.

Maybe at a later date I'll hit a nugget of inspiration and decide to finish the manor. Even if only to post it here for all the accolades.

RPG Forum Series

As often happens, my personal work tends to be for games that I'm taking part of. These series of quick scenes were for a forum game I'm running of Ars Magica, a beautiful little game with a very intense ruleset. I had set up multiple forum threads to serve as "locations" on the magi's property and have these little illustrations to spur the roleplaying. I originally was wanting to keep them grayscale but at the very end I just couldn't avoid throwing on a quick gradient map for a bit of pop.

I apologize for the png-sized files but I had done them with a kind of stylized transparency to make it a bit more organic and help the images sort of seep through the forum page.

Council Chamber

Courtyard

Laboratory