milbysmaps
patreon
Mont-Saint-Michel - Work in Progress 5: The Abbey
🕑 Added 2020-01-20 06:38:14 +0000 UTCThe abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel is both amazing and complete madness. Every map I have of it (and I have a lot) disagrees with the rest about what rooms are on what floor.
The thing is, the floors here don't just neatly stack on top of each other like most buildings. Imagine a house with five basements. Each one has a staircase leading down to it and each one goes to a different depth. One goes 10 feet down, another 15, another 20. Now imagine that the one that goes 15 feet down has two more staircases: one that goes up to the 10 foot basement and another that goes down to some other room 5 feet lower. Now imagine that, because this house is built on a steep rock, some of these basements lead outside. That's what the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel is like.
There's some pretty interesting stuff down there, though. In the lower-left corner is a collapsed building that used to be a hotel. And just north of that, past the toilets, are the dungeons. Yes, this abbey has dungeons. God and the church maintain differing policies on the issue of forgiveness.
To the right of the dungeons is one of the oldest parts of the abbey, a church known as Our Lady of the Underground. You've also got the Crypts of Aquitaine, a disused cistern, a chapel undercroft and an old kitchen which may actually be a toilet (sources disagree).
I'm going to do the rest of the abbey next. I've finally managed to wrap my head around what goes where in this place and I don't want to forget and have to figure it out again. I'll be back with the second level, which has a bunch more underground tunnels, an ossuary, crypts and assorted other dead people storage facilities.
Comments
Milby's Maps
That's a big favor for sure. When people call Warhammer "plastic crack," that's a joke, but, like, it also isn't.
Matt Prigge
I personally have not had the pleasure. I have a friend who did me the profound favor of providing an example of what a dysfunctional 40k mini addiction looks like. So, I've stuck to stuff I can make in photoshop. And... pay people online to make... and.., oh... oh no. xD
Milby's Maps
Kitbashed, huh? That's Warhammer talk. You play Sigmar or 40K?
Matt Prigge
For the little that it's worth, this is exactly how I did a large castle map I kitbashed together a while back. It broke the verisimilitude a little, but it was tactically useful to know that the top of such and such tower is at +50ft elevation and the ground at the bottom of the escarpment below the tower is at -20ft or whatever (in my case, the courtyard within the castle was the reference 0ft). It was often the case during combat that vertical distance was greater than horizontal when ranged attacks were being resolved (or when someone fell, etc). So, it ended up being useful.
Milby's Maps
Sure, I'd say that sounds pretty doable. I'll probably round the numbers to the nearest 5 feet, since I don't know the exact height of the terraces. But yeah, I think that sounds like a good plan.
Anders Bersten
I dig. Elevation or contour lines is for hills, sure, but I meant spot elevation. To me spot elevation starting from an assumed "0" is not only giving you the height from one terrace up or down to another, it also gives you the total height from the assumed "0". Without it on this map you know the height from a terrace below up to the next (telling us how steep/angle etc) but in relation to a terrace a litte bit further away, to which you happen (or wanna know if) to have line of sight one need to calculate distance/LOS etc. Lots of blah from me but you can tell I use kinda involved combat rules (sorry). So, terrace x is at +51 feet (above "0", wherever you decide that is) and reached by a 19 feet long stair to terrace y at +31 below from where one 29 feet long stair leads to "0" and imaginary ground zero plaza and another steep stair raises up 50 feet to tearrace z at +80. Would that work? It does inside my head. But then again Im no mapmaker and not the one doing it <3
Milby's Maps
Yep, I got them, thanks. The thing is, normal elevation lines won't really work on this map. Elevation lines show a slope on a hill, but in Mont-Saint-Michel, almost everything is terraced, so the ground is flat almost everywhere. Wherever you go, it's just flat ground that drops off to other flat ground below. Here's a view that shows what I'm talking about: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.636012,-1.5103588,2a,84.1y,94.55h,67.59t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sB7QXnrCpLH2iKEukbXi9eQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 The terrace in that view overlooks another terrace below it. Then there's the cemetery on another terrace below that and some buildings on another one below that. It's all flat ground and stairs, so nothing slopes up or down (except the stairs, of course). Here's another view from below (the first picture is from near the brown door): https://www.google.com/maps/@48.6358442,-1.5101059,3a,82.7y,325.37h,90.98t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMY5Y5lbGTF8-IYiTY7DKIc8Bo62v6AO_HCMewW!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMY5Y5lbGTF8-IYiTY7DKIc8Bo62v6AO_HCMewW%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya79.02892-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352 So I think the important thing to know is how high each terrace is. What I'm going to do is make a version of the map with notations written on each ledge, saying how high it is from the ground below it. I'll add some elevation lines to show the general height above sea level, but the elevation here changes so sharply and so often that there just isn't an easier way to show it in detail.
Anders Bersten
Seems to me that this whole map, with the abbey in particular, is in pedagogic need of those height elevation indicators that we spoke of around the Assasin’s Keep. Did I send you the map key symbols for Harnworld (Columbia Games)? Renowned for their maps and attention to detail.
