Hi steemians.

I have recently finished a cartography fantasy illustration for my websites. It went live today simultaneously in steemit and here https://www.elventower.com/archives/2925

You can also read some background lore and information there that I did not post in complete for here. I work with photoshop and a wacom table tto create these images of evoking cartography.

Below is the finished illustration for reference.

Here's an excerpt of the background lore:

Background Lore

Thanarim is only one of a great number of drow outposts spread all across the Underdark. Drown outposts take many forms. Some of them are small communities hanging from stalactites in great caves. Others are lairs hidden under usual Underdark roads, like a spider lair that waits for the appropriate prey to pass by its entrance. Others, like Thanarim, are simple stone constructions hidden in side-caves no one ever transits. Thanarim is currently being used as a temporary location for prisoners. Prisoners stay here for a while before being transported to Menzoberranzan by a party of drow whose job is exactly that.

Drow societies work like a perfectly oiled clockwork machine. Every drow understands his or her place in the game of hierarchies within their group and the overall society. Their society is a matriarchal one. While females reign and decide the rules, being a female drow is not easy. There is so much pressure put on them to advance in the hierarchal system that they are extremely competitive. The lowest place in the chain is the outposts. A promising female drow warrior or acolyte is always placed in the lowest place possible for her to advance and find her place in the world. The farther the outpost is from Menzoberranzan the lower the perceived rank it conveys upon the people assigned to it. Not only that, but female warriors in charge of these outposts are so competitive they do not last long in the farthest outposts before either being promoted or demoted into oblivion. Some of the worst are condemned to judgment by the spider matron herself. Many driders owe their deformed shape to failing to uphold a drow outpost.

Ariella Baenre is a drow priestess of Lolth who recently found herself in a difficult situation. She was assigned a remote outpost years ago when she was just an acolyte and failed horribly. The only thing that saved her from the worst of fates was her family name and a good recommendation by an aunt to be left to train a few more years. Ariella became a priestess in the drow city and was then assigned to lead the Thanarim outpost. Thanarim is nothing but a temporary place for prisoners whose fate is to fight for their lives in a new arena in Menzoberranzan. It is not a complicated place to run at all, a group of male drows could do it by themselves. But the matriarch priests placed Ariella here just to insult her and her family. The work in Thanarim is so dull that it will take Ariella years to prove that she has done a better job than the previous one.

Things changed a few months ago when Ariella and her group of drow patrolled the area surrounding the outpost. A few miles from Thanarim they found a dead illithid. The formidable mind flayers were possibly the strongest foes in the Underdark. The drow were not fond of them whatsoever but Ariella’s group would probably have fled if they had seen it alive. It was no use to try to kill a living illithid and lose some of her guards. It would have been another failure to stain her reputation. But the creature was dead. A quick examination showed it had several sword wounds. The creature had a fight with someone braver than Ariella and fled with deadly wounds. The illithid had nothing on his person except his tunic and a strange necklace with clockwork machinery.

Ariella took the necklace and brought it back to Thanarim for examination. The necklace proved to be a valuable treasure. After months of trial and error, Ariella still ignores the way it works or its purpose. But she has managed to use it. She discovered that if she wore the necklace and then touched it to another creature’s forehead, it could absorb the other creature’s knowledge and sometimes even physical abilities. It did not work all times as intended. Sometimes it would kill the victim or render it mentally impaired permanently.

Ariella Baenre had an unlimited supply of prisoners that came and went every week. She used the necklace many times on the prisoners to absorb their knowledge. She did it for two reasons. First, she hoped she could learn something that could further her reputation. Perhaps an ability, or magic. Second, the necklace’s effect had become an addiction to her. It was not meant to be used by elves. Mind flayer brains naturally accept and absorb the contents of other people’s brains, but elves cannot do that. Ariella now had to do this every few days. For her, it felt like hunger. It was the biological representation of an illithid’s hunger for brain tissue, but in an elven brain. As an additional side effect, Ariella found an academical need to put the things she learned in practice. It was not curiosity, nor was it pride. It was her unprepared brain trying to make sense of knowledge and memories that did not have any backing in real life experiences. Ariella had a section of the outpost remodeled as a laboratory/workshop of sorts. She had many different musical instruments from the surface, she was masterfully proficient with all of them. She also had a small studio with paintings and other graphical art representations. She built a forge there and was good enough making swords and simple armors. The place also holds a small library and a desk where she writes poetry and books, abilities she did not have before. Ariella also now speaks over twenty different languages. She has also learned a few arcane spells from prisoner wizards. She found that, unlike them, the spells stayed ingrained in her mind so a spell book was unnecessary. Revealing her ability to create arcane effects such as those was a tricky subject, however. She knew it could be seen as heresy by the other Lolth priestess.

Here's a step by step by layers in Photoshop:

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I'm a graphic illustrator for tabletop RPG games like Dungeons and Dragons.

If you're interested in my work, take a look at my Patreon page

There is a pledge level that gives access to my photoshop source files, in case you wish to see my workflow and learn in the process.