Fort Bourtange – Second Update (Patreon)

This is the linework for Fort Bourtange finished and ready for coloring. I'm planning to crop this map to a few different sizes, since I don't think most people will need this much space around the fort. This will be the largest size, however, and is intended for people who want to do something crazy with it, like have a full-on battle between two armies. I'm not gonna lie, the grid size on it is absurd.

I also wanted to mention that I'm not going to draw the upper levels of the buildings here. The best way to explain the reason is that I think including them makes the map worse. They're all small-- mostly attics and lofts-- and there's nothing interesting going on up there. If I include them, that means doubling the size of an already huge map, which means more to load on a VTT or more to print for the table. Mont-St-Michel had interesting stuff on the upper levels, but this place doesn't and I think it's better to just leave it at one floor. Hopefully, everybody's cool with that.

Before I get to coloring this, I want to share a few things I've learned while doing research for this map:

1. William the Silent, who ordered the construction of Fort Bourtange, looked like this. I have never seen a 500-year-old portrait of someone who looks anywhere near as badass as that. Everyone else is a ponce in a wig. But that dude? That dude is serious.
2. Fort Bourtange has three drawbridges. One of them has a bathroom on it and it's still in use. Don't swim in the moat.
3. This is unrelated to the fort, but super interesting: Grutte Pier was an early Renaissance Dutch man the size of Andre the Giant. A mercenary group called the Black Band raided his village and killed his wife, after which Pier started a peasant rebellion. Later, he became a pirate. This guy was the D&D character you created when you were 15, except he was real. This was his sword.