The Riddle of Steel

Back to the shops along the intersection of Market & Random. I’m drawing up individual floor plans for a number of shops, stores, vendors, and businesses along a single market block. As I draw these, I also have the overhead views drawn out on a map of the city block as I go, so when the series is complete you can use them on their own, or as a fully mapped out block of shops.

This is our ninth shop on the street, across from Hammerhead Loans and south of Red’s Leather Works. It is distinctly inspired by Illyra & Dubro’s business setup in the Thieves’ World stories.

This building contains two businesses owned by a couple. On the north side we have a small three-story structure with large colourful awnings and curtains in the front, and on the south side we have a squatter building with a long covered front area where wares are displayed and firewood is stored.

The name of the business is a joke based on the owners’ trades. On the north side the husband runs a fortune-telling business where he has all the regular accoutrements – crystal ball, scrying mirror, decks of cards, a tea service, rune sets from various distant cultures, and so on. On the south side his wife is the local blacksmith – not the biggest nor the best smith in town, but conveniently located along Market & Random and friendly with all the neighbours (even Red’s leatherworks, which on some days stinks up the area so badly that few make it so far as the fortune teller’s, and then they are escorted inside to get away from the wafting acrid stink).

The front room of the fortune-teller’s is set up almost identically to his outside space and is used in bad weather, when dealing with very rich clients, and as mentioned when Red’s Leathers’ tanning processes are at their worst.

The smithy has sliding barn-style doors leading from the covered raised stone terrace out front into the main smithy. Connecting the smithy to the fortune-teller’s is a small kitchen with the stairs up to the apartments above. A small attic on the third floor of the north side is used for storage and also has a small bedroom in the back that occasionally houses a friend in trouble.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 8,400 x 9,600 pixels (28 x 32 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) – so resizing the image to 1,960 x 2,240 pixels.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/09/11/the-riddle-of-steel/