I'm on a work trip to Hermosillo, MX again, and this time I'm staying over the weekend and all of next week. So, it's Saturday, I don't really have any meaningful work that I want to (or even could) do this weekend, it's in the mid-90s right now and expected to peak at 109º today, and I don't have a car. There isn't really any good reason to go out of my hotel room except to get something to eat, and even then, it's already like an oven at 10 AM (I went out about half an hour to a grocery store a few hundred yards away to get a Coca Cero--which for some reason in Mexico they spell Zero like the English word instead of Cero like the Spanish equivalent, although in my experience, Spanish-speakers are terrible spellers when it comes to letters that have the same sound in their language anyway--and some snacks. When I actually eat a real meal, which I'll probably do only once, I can eat at the hotel restaurant if I really want to, and not go out. Although I had thought about walking maybe a little over a mile to this great taco place, Tacos de Armando. It will be really hot, but today's definitely a shower day after I get back, so maybe it's worth it.
Other than that, I've got my phone, some downloaded podcasts, my work laptop from which I'm posting this, and a bunch of books to read. And there's a decent chance that I'll take a siesta later too. What I did not bring, although oddly enough it did occur to me, was my sketch pad and art pens so that I could make a map. What I'm interested in potentially doing right now is Port Liure, and Bridgetown, my latest obsession. After running many, many iterations of Bridgetown, I've certainly come upon a favorite (maybe two, but one I think I like slightly better still) and as my image generations reset, I'll make a few variations in different seasons and lighting conditions. So I'm thinking maybe a bit more development of the town itself and the surrounding area in a series of posts. And yes, I'll post more images, including some of the ones that I've already posted. I really am liking the idea, so get over it! :) I may even make a YouTube video on the place once I've got some development done, so I can post even more images. But I'll wait until later today when I can generate a few more variations before I do that. I've decided on one architecture that's my favorite, one that's my second favorite, and another that I quite like the images of, but it has a major structural flaw, so I am going to reject it. Oh, well. I'll post images and explanations later in this post. Let me first start with the original image that I decided on for the architecture of the town. It's a bit cool and dim, but on a mostly overcast day, that's OK. I also have a variation in brighter sunlight with more saturated colors, and one in bright fall colors. I'll make a winter, spring, sunset and night time variant before I'm done making images, although I don't know that I can get all four today before I run out for the day again. But this will be a good reference as I talk about the town just a bit.
As you can see, the bridge itself is pretty wide, and well protected by a strong gatehouse and tower that you will need to pass through to actually enter the town (you can presume that it's twin is on the other side), You can also see that the buildings built on the bridge are quite tall; six, seven or even eight stories, not counting the occasional tower or steeple. You can assume that they are multifamily "medieval apartments" more or less. Lacking electricity, as a Medieval-esque fantasy setting would, there are no elevators, so many people who live on the tallest floors, especially if they are older or otherwise somewhat incapacitated, don't often leave their apartments. Each building tends to have a steward and a bailiff who combined act as combination super, security, valet and butler of sorts for the whole building, and all people who live in the building tend to be a bit more community minded of each other, especially helping to take care of the needs of those who maybe live on the top floors. Although that isn't as necessary as a modern person might think; most families live in multi-generational households, so the elderly are, more often than not, cared for by their children or grandchildren. One side effect of this stronger community bond for an entire building, however, is that it is more difficult to take advantage of anyone. Thieves and con artists struggle to make a living in Bridgetown, and usually wander off to more lucrative settings to ply their "trade." The exception to this is some more organized crime, but in general, they do not prey on the residents of Bridgetown itself, being more content with smuggling, extorting or preying on visitors, or other crimes that largely target non-citizens of the town. That said, everyone knows not to cross them, and there is an uneasy recognition on both sides that escalation or upsetting of the current status quo would make things difficult on both sides. They tend to mostly leave each other alone, and it's most believe that the Mayor is aware of this organized crime, and is paid sufficiently well to look the other way rather than crack down on it.
The stewards for the various buildings in a smaller district of half a dozen to a dozen buildings meet together as district leads, and nominate one of their own to represent the district for meetings for all of their colleagues. These stewards have the added role of alderman for the district, and the aldermen meet once a month with the mayor of Bridgetown, Geoffrey Vincent.
Of course, not everyone lives in these types of tenements. More in the middle of Bridgetown, farther from either bank, are much larger homes, where the wealthy or important live, including the mayor, Anton von Lechfeld, and others. Most of them have an entire building to themselves, although there is often little space around the building, and their space is more often measured in going up rather than outward. Professor Anton von Lechfeld is a good example of a retired fairly wealthy man, and his townhome has a modest footprint, but six stories of regular floors, plus a narrow, peak-roofed tower. The farthest shown steeple-like tower in the image above would represent his house, perhaps. The mayor lives in the mayors keep, which is also the administrative center of Bridgetown, and is represented by the blocky keep-looking structure even further beyond.
The town actually has a kink in the course of the bridge; it's not simply a straight line, so you can't see all of it at once. You can presume that there is more that's hidden from view by perspective, but it's also apparent how such a relatively small space can house many thousands of residents; a large city by d20 standards with between 15,000-20,000 people, depending on the season (although some couple thousand of those don't actually live in the city itself, but rather on farms, homesteads, ranches or tiny communities just outside of the city. But mostly, they economically support the city, and that's where they sell, for example, the yield of their farming, crafting or ranching efforts, and where they also depend on for protection and goods and services not available in their rural environment.
Other than the height and cramped conditions of the buildings, you can also see that the "floor" isn't actually the lowest level, especially on the starlings themselves where there are windows with iron bars. These tunnels represent cells, sewers, and other infrastructure, but against the outer walls, there are also relatively nice apartments which is where the reeves and guards live, i.e., the combination pseudo-military and constable forces for the city, with their families. These apartments do tend to be darker, since they are built of heavy stone, and have relatively few and small windows.
As you can also see, there are open air markets and plazas here and there, although they are small, but mostly the lower floors are where shops and other businesses are located.
As you can see, the purpose of Bridgetown is to be a fairly stable and "peaceful" home base of sorts; maybe even a place the PCs would want to set up as their own home. But meanwhile, they can spend more time with Anton von Lechfeld and his daughter, especially in the CULT OF UNDEATH campaign. If I do end up running for either the husband/wife team, or the greater D&D group that they were also part of, I'm probably going to pitch two ideas that they can choose from; Gothic horror, which will be Carrion Crown slash CULT OF UNDEATH and dark pirates, which will be Freeport slash CURSE OF THE CORSAIR COAST. So, I'd also like to do some development of Port Liure in another post, maybe later this weekend or later this week, at least.
Here's my alternate versions of this same Bridgetown image (so far). Later tonight I'll see about getting a sunset, a night time, and a winter variation.
One is fall colors, the other is a similar season as the first image, just brighter and more colorful or saturated.
I also had some great image variations of this second architecture, but when I realized that you could simply walk around the gate, I figured it wasn't going to work. Too bad. Cool design otherwise. I also noticed that it wasn't holding the architecture quite as steady as I initially supposed. But you can see the moods, seasons and lighting that I was going for. The "grimdark" one doesn't really look like winter, though, it just looks desaturated and abandoned. (I actually manually upped the saturation in an image editor a little bit.)
Too bad it didn't quite work, but the other one I have above is a better alternative anyway, assuming I can get the mood, seasonal and lighting variations I want. If there's one thing I've learned with AI images it's that you have to spend several days (at least with a free account that has limited images) doing iterations and modifications on the prompt to get something pretty close to what you really want. Sometimes your early passes will look good but on closer inspection, they have problems that you don't really quite want to mess with.
This is really my runner-up design; a taller bridge that would be easier to pass underneath. The lower bridge looks more realistic. I actually posted a few of these on reddit for the heckuvit, and one guy said he didn't think it was realistic to build buildings on a bridge. What the heck? Do people not remember the historical London Bridge? All I did was take it out of London and make it basically the whole town by itself. Get a hold of Peter Spier's excellently illustrated version of it. But I grew up with Peter Spier books. Here's a (not Peter Spier) image of the old London Bridge.
If anything, my town is modest compared to what London Bridge was like. And maybe prettier because of the planted trees. My starlings are also considerably smaller, but then again, bridges like Karl Most in Prague have starlings more like mine. Anyway, here's the taller alternative. I probably won't continue running alternatives of this one, because I think I like the other one better, but it was a close thing.
When I come back to Bridgetown, I'll detail a few NPCs that can be found there. Plus, a few new variations of images, but just the "winning" model, not the rest.
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