Building a Fantasy Sandbox: Steps 11 & 13 - Step 12 TBAL

There's only a few more steps for the actual mapping to do, so let's move along, shall we:

11. Decide to place Population Locales note their race (species!) this includes social monsters

Okay, well time to place where folks live it seems!

We knew from the outset we were going to have a city set along the edge of the "bay" of the large island. This would be the central place in which everything else was built around. Here airships would come and go, it would be the most technologically advanced and be most likely to have a mixed population. So, city goes there. The two floating rocks along the edge of the "bay" each get a tower to be used as a defense structure against attacks from pirates, other nations, etc.

So, city, mostly human, with good chunks of gnome, lizardfolk, and kobold populations as well. The active airship port means that all the friendly species could be encountered here and you'd see the occasional halfling, minotaur, and dwarf, but none hold enough of a population to be considered part of the community.

South of the large island was clear away for farm lands, but a few communities would have arisen as well. We plop down a village as sort of a communal center for those not into the bustle of the big city, and a few hamlets, particularity two along the wooded edge to act as logging towns. Again, these places would be mostly human with a smattering of kobold, the gnomes wouldn't set up permanent shop in any of these low tech places, and the remaining species may or may not have enough of a population here to note.

These are all connected by a well maintained roadway that meets in the center of the farmlands. A keep sits at this crossroads, a place that can be used as refuge by the noncity folk in case of disaster (both monstrous and natural) as well as a place where the watch that patrols the farmlands and roads stay.

Next, there's a town set up on the southern island, along the shores of the vast lake that comes off the mountain. Enjoy good fishing, mostly because of the lake's nature (to be discussed later) Undecided if they have always been there or were built up from people coming off the larger island when they realized there was a water source there (and the reasons for not having a settlement by the water source on the larger island has to do with something nasty living around there. Perhaps the heroes can cleanse that area so construction can begin... ah, but I get ahead of myself). Like most of the other settlements it's human centric.

Finally, there's a small dot on one of those hills in the northern left isle, where most of the water meets. This denotes entrance to a dwarven settlement, one that's in the middle of heavy warfare against the goblinoids over the tiny amount of space they have. Both feel that the island belong to them and refuse to move to the spacious mountains on the other islands (could you image how long it would take to carve out a new home?!).



13. Decide to place Ruins (locales that revolves around a site)

Ruins were dropped wherever I thought it would be fun. The weird looking structure on the desert island shows just how different the culture that existed (or still exists????) in the area where it originally came from is. The ruins nestled in the mountain range near the active volcano shows that the volcano couldn't have always been active, and finally the lone ruined keep on the very untamed wilderness of the other northern island is just waiting for someone to find out why it's there.

You'll see that I skipped one of our steps:
12. Decide to place Lairs (locales tht revolves around a home of monsters)

That's because I did most of the town/ruin drops on my own and wanted Sean to have some fun input on this step. After all, this leads writing into writing all the hooks revolving around this place and I wouldn't want to take all the fun. So, Sean will pick a few spots and stick nasty creatures into them and get back to me. At which time, I'll put it up here.