tarnside
1 · What I want to see here
Somebody has been camped at the tarn for a while. It is a small round water in a clearing the pines have left round it. The camp is on the west bank, where the ground has been trodden bare: three tents with their mouths to the fire, a ring of stones with the embers still in it, a split log to sit on, a blanket left out, a sawn round they use for a table. They have been cutting their own wood - there are fresh stumps along the edge of the trees, and boards stacked by the tents - and they have a boat, tied to a post on the near side of the water. A path comes in through the trees from the west and stops at the fire. The far bank is untouched.
2 · How to show it
- A camp and not a village: canvas, no roofs. Everything that could be carried in is here and nothing that could not.
- The fire is the middle: the tents are in an arc north of it with their mouths toward it, the seat and the blanket are on its other side, and the path ends at it.
- A while: the bare patch is big, the stumps are fresh-cut ones, and there are sawn boards, which is more than one night's work.
- By the water, for the water: the patch runs to within a square of the bank and the boat is tied on the camp side.
- Alone: one path, and the east half of the map is water and trees.
3 · What it needs
- a small lake
- tents, three
- a fire ring
- a boat and a post
- a trodden patch and a path
- fresh-cut stumps
- a log seat
- a blanket
- a stump table
- stacked boards
- a barrel
- pines, thick, all round
- Not in the pack: Flame and smoke. The fire ring is embers; the pack animates fire as a separate sprite. A camp reads from smoke before anything else.
- Not in the pack: A shore with any wander in it. The tarn is round now - the renderer learned inside corners on 2026-10-09 - but it is round the way a coin is: every step of the bank is one or two squares, the same on all four sides. No reeds, no stones in the shallows, no beach where the boat is drawn up.
- Not in the pack: A drying rack, a cooking pot over the fire, a lantern on a pole. All three are on the camp sheet and none is catalogued yet.
- Not in the pack: Fishing gear. The reason to camp at a tarn.
- Not in the pack: People, a dog, washing on a line.
4 · The arrangement
A clearing with two things in it side by side: the camp on the west and the water on the east, a strip of grass between them. Inside the camp everything is arranged round the fire. Trees ring the clearing and are thickest at the map edge; the stumps are where the ring has been eaten into, on the camp side only.
5 · What that means in (x, y)
40 x 30 squares. The tarn fills cols 21-33, rows 8-20, thirteen by thirteen, with its corners stepped in: five squares wide on the top and bottom rows, nine on the next, eleven for two rows, and the full thirteen for the five in the middle. Every step is at least two squares long, which is what an inside corner needs. The trodden patch is roughly cols 7-18, rows 12-20, with its edge kept two squares short of the water so there is a bank. The fire is at cols 12-13, rows 15-16. The tents stand north of it with their door rows on rows 12 and 13 - a tent's mouth is its bottom edge, so "mouths to the fire" puts all three above it, in a shallow arc, the middle one a row further back. The seat is south of the fire on row 18. The path is rows 16-17 from the west edge. The boat is at cols 22-23, row 14: col 21 is the bank. Stumps are on the north-west and south-west of the patch, between it and the pines.
7 · What it looks like
Read this against the paragraph at the top. That comparison is the only check that catches a map which is perfectly valid and is of nowhere.
6 · What was actually written
The same two grids as flat colour — earth, grass, and a block for every footprint. Anything in the render that is not here, the translation invented.
....YYYY.......YYYY.......YYYY.......... ..........NNNN..................NNNN.... NNNN..........tt......NNNN.............. ....................tt.................. .....NNNN.......NNNN...........YYYY.NNNN ..tt.....YYYY..............NNNN......... ....................nnnntt........tt.... .............++...ss.................... NNNN.................................... .....**............................NNNN. ...........DDD.......................... .......TTT.DDD.TTT....................tt ..++...TTT.DDD.TTT...................... ss...ppTTT.....TTTb..................... ...............b......BB............NNNN ............FF........i................. ............FF..KK...................... ................KK....................tt ........SS.LLL.......................... .++.....SS.........................NNNN. ....++.................................. ........................................ ...tt....++...**..................tt.... nnnn.............tt..YYYYNNNN.YYYY..nnnn .....NNNN......................NNNN..... ............NNNN...NNNN................. .............................tt......... NNNN..tt..............YYYY..........NNNN ........nnnn....YYYY........nnnn........ ........................................
What is in it
| 24 | tree_pine | tree living conifer large |
| 12 | tree_small_dark | tree living small conifer |
| 9 | tree_green | tree living broadleaf large |
| 5 | stump_cut | prop stump felled |
| 2 | tree_small | tree living small |
| 2 | stump | prop stump |
| 2 | tent | structure tent camp doorway |
| 2 | barrel | prop goods barrel |
| 1 | tent_dark | structure tent camp doorway |
| 1 | planks | prop timber |
| 1 | boat | prop boat |
| 1 | firepit | prop fire camp |
| 1 | mooring_post | prop post boat |
| 1 | blanket | prop cloth camp |
| 1 | stump_table | prop table camp |
| 1 | bench_log | prop seat camp |