BLUEHOLME™ Blueholme Brochure

[Vile Traveller]

The past year has been hell (and it ain't over yet), but I'm finally getting some time to work on the Blueholme Brochure. This is a city book - yes, there is a city called Blueholme in the Known World (if you've seen The Necropolis of Nuromen you'll already know this).

The Blueholme itself is carved from Bluestone, a somewhat translucent, luminescent stone ony found in the Blue Mountains. It’s age is unknown, and its fantastical towers do not resemble any architecture in the Realm.

The Old City built on the island is entirely constructed of stone, from its catacombs dug in the bedrock to the tiles on its roofs. It is extraordinarily dense, such that few streets are still open to the sky and many buildings are only accessible by passing through other buildings. The rich built towers to rise above the stale air and darkness, before spilling across the dwarf-built bridge onto the West Bank.

Thick, high walls surround the island, reinforced with numerous and varied towers which barrack the various Guard units. Both towers and walls are provided with steep roofs to protect against aerial attack, as well as the usual battlements, arrow loops, and machicolations. Numerous ballistae stand ready to defend the city, though many have rotten ropes.

"The" Blueholme is a pre-human fortress which the first King of Blueholme made into his stronghold (after clearing out the resident dragon, which handily provided funds for city-building). My inspiration for the Old City was the much-lamented Kowloon Walled City.

[Vile Traveller]

The penultimate Kickstarter stretch goal, the Explorer Encounters book, is almost finished - just one piece of artwork still to go. This book is up next, so it's time to get going on that map. Any guesses as to the Real World inspiration?

Blueholme Brochure 01

[Deleted]

Looks great!

[Vile Traveller]

Time for another update on the Blueholme Brochure. Creating this guide for the eponymous city of the Known World of BLUEHOLME™ is a complex, back-and-forth affair. I started with a broad concept for the city on an island in the Crystalmist River, followed by a few sketches of what it might look like. Like all the city states in the Known World, there are elements of the real world in its architecture. Blueholme is more British Medieval in look, as opposed to the French-inspired Avermere or the pseudo-Russian Urvekos. I hasten to add that, in architecture as in rules, I am not striving for historical authenticity – this is just a springboard for my imagination. The mysterious fortress – the Blueholme itself – is a completely alien artifice.

Step two was to draw a rough map of the place, indicating major buildings and neighbourhoods (the Wards). After that, it’s basically switching between writing and further detailing the map until, eventually, the thing is done. So far there are several iterations of the map, which gets scanned at intervals as it gets more and more detailed. There will be different versions of the map in the Brochure, each providing different information such as Ward boundaries, businesses, the sewers, catacombs, and tunnels in the rock on which the city stands.

Current progress is somewhere in the middle – I am about to finish the final details on the overall map, before jumping back into the text to finish off descriptions. Next will be zooming in to particular Wards or smaller neighbourhoods within them, and working on the plethora of tables needed to bring the place to life.