Castle Venatris

[wdmartin]

My soloist PC is rapidly approaching Castle Venatris, home to the ruler of the shadowed land of Undrendal, and currently overrun with werewolves. There's going to be a pretty big battle, so something special was called for. Here's what I've come up with so far:



This is very much a work in progress. The floor plan is based on that of Castle Warwick, in England, a beautifully preserved castle that was an active military fortification from the (I believe) 11th century through the end of the middle ages, with the bulk of the work done in the 13th century. I've got the walls and terrain in place, plus some shadows, but there is LOTS to be done yet. Todo:

• It needs vegetation (besides grass)
• Most of the furniture is missing
• The shadows are wonky in places, especially where they overlap
• The windows need glass
• There needs to be light coming in the windows
• Fireplaces need firewood, not just ashes (haven't found suitable imagery yet)
• The bailey on the motte needs windows, stairs, and a door.
• I put in an experimental spiral staircase in the north west gate tower, but it's not right. It looks like it's going down, when it needs to go up. I haven't found a really good "up" spiral staircase overlay that can be made to fit in that spot yet.

The scale of this copy is 50px to the 5-foot-square, and 7,000 x 5,000 pixels. But that's considerably reduced. The original is 100px per square, with a total size of 140 by 100 inches (14,000 x 10,000 pixels). I also had to compress it pretty aggressively to get it under the size limit for attachments. This version is 4.47 MB as a 65% quality JPG; the original Photoshop file is a little over 3 GB.

I'm open to any feedback you all might have. Do note, however, that I'm trying not to go TOO crazy with the details. Making a good, finished map is way better than never finishing a perfect one.