Intermission (with maps!)

Designing a tumbling dungeon is an interesting mental exercise.  I have the bones of it worked out in my head, but fully describing how it works is difficult.  I need the help of pictures.  My whole blog needs the help of pictures.

So, I went off looking for public domain images and wandered the links longer than any sane man should.  Wikipedia has a convenient list of such resources here.  Bloggerstop was kind enough to post this handy list as well.  If any other bloggers out there can suggest other sources, I'd be glad to hear them.

I'll probably end up drawing some pictures of my own in order to show the tumbling dungeon clearly.  Until then, here are some maps I found over at FromOldBooks.org.  Thank you Mr. Liam Quin.

Here we have the plans of a sixteenth-century mansion, Buckhurst House in Sussex. It would be found near Withyham today, but the house is much older than the village.  Withyham is not included in the Domesday Book, although the manor of Buckhurst is, as ‘’Biochest’’ (probably from the Saxon ‘’boc hyrst’’ or beech wood). There have been two houses at Buckhurst for many centuries: the older Buckhurst House, now no more, and the present day ‘’Buckhurst Park’’.  The numbers on the plan are unexplained, but I think it's pretty obvious that some contemporary DM must have gone back in time and started up a game.

Click to Embiggen... twice

This is from the book “Laws and History of the New Forest” (1811).  It is, I think, one of the most lovely maps I've ever seen.  You can see the edge of Salisbury Plain in the West, and Christchurch Bay in the South.  I especially like the all the little details, such as the Hurst Castle Lighthouse marked at the southern edge of the map.