The Apiary on Heather Hill (20x20, 200px) - Free Watermarked Version (Patreon)

You can find the Patron-only watermark-free version of this map, which includes night variants and tiles/tokens for customizing the scene to your liking, here, or you can buy it from Ko-Fi, here.

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As you cross the heath towards the apiary on the hill, you feel somewhat unsettled, though you can't quite place why.

As you draw nearer, it dawns on you - for all the heather on the heath, you can hear no bees, nor do you see any insects at all.

A figure dressed entirely in white stands at the north end of the property, observing the empty log hives there. As you approach, they turn towards you, wordlessly, their face obscured by a wicker mask, before slowly turning back to their hives.

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As long as I've been remotely aware of it, I've always loved folk horror. On May 1st, my fiancé and I watched The Wicker Man, both the original and the 2006 remake, due to the significance of the date in both films. Being able to compare the films so closely is always an experience, and frankly feels a little unfair. This map was partially inspired by one aspect of the remake I do like - the focus on an isolated community that places great significance upon their bees. Unfortunately, I found myself using the map as an opportunity to experiment with a few things, so what should have taken me a couple of days to finish took me most of the last week. Sorry for the delay!

Notable experiments included changing how I tackle the night variants of my maps to improve the lighting, using straw flooring (as most poor households in the medieval period would not have had wood or stone floors), building the hives out of 20 or so triangular pieces of thatched roofing and some scrap wood, and making the small bee smoker on the table outside out of a funnel, a pitcher, a scrap of leather, some random pieces of metal, and a plate. I also felt that the standard fireplaces provided by Forgotten Adventures didn't quite feel right for this location, especially given the straw flooring. So, I combined a few different assets and paths to make a larger hearth that seemed more fitting, which also took a while to figure out.

I've made versions of the map with and without the fire/smoke, but I've also included files for open and closed doors, as I'm also experimenting with providing Foundry modules for my maps. So far I'm still experimenting, but it seems promising, so I'm hoping I can start providing these to the Apprentice tier and higher very soon!

Also, if you're not familiar with medieval beesuits and their wicker masks, I do recommend taking a look at this piece by Pieter Bruegel the Elder - it's much more appropriate for horror than one might imagine at first!

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My maps are made with assets from Forgotten Adventures and AoA (bolstered with assets of my own making here and there), and they usually come with day/night, edited/unedited, and light/lightless variants, plus JPEGs, WebPs with transparent backgrounds, and UVTT (DD2VTT) files for Foundry VTT if the map features buildings or interiors.