toadmoss
1 · What I want to see here
Nobody keeps the shrine at Toadmoss and the wood has almost finished taking it back. A narrow path comes up from the south between trees that stand close on both sides, passes under a red gate that is somehow still standing, then under a second one, and opens into a small court of bare earth. The hall at the back of the court has gone under moss entirely. Two stone beasts, green with it, still sit either side of the way in, and in the middle of the court, where the offerings used to go, a stone toad squats on nothing. There is a broken pillar and a well nobody draws from. Everything else is trees, right up to the edge of the court on every side, and more of them are dead than a wood should have.
2 · How to show it
- A shrine: the two red gates over the path. Nothing else in the pack says it, and they say it at once.
- An approach: you do not arrive at the court, you are led to it - one path, two gates in a line, guardians at the mouth, the hall straight ahead at the far side.
- Ruined by time and not by anyone: the hall is the moss-domed house, the statues are the green ones, the pillar is broken; the gates are the only clean colour on the map.
- In a wood: trees fill every square that is not path or court, so the court is a hole in the canopy and the path is a slot.
3 · What it needs
- two red gates
- a pair of guardian statues gone green
- the toad
- a hall, overgrown
- a path two squares wide and a court
- enough trees to leave no open grass
- a broken pillar
- a mossy well
- boulders
- dead trees mixed through the living
- Not in the pack: Steps. A shrine is up a flight of them and the path here is level earth from the bottom of the map to the hall.
- Not in the pack: Stone lanterns along the path, an offering box, a bell rope, a water trough for washing hands.
- Not in the pack: A shrine hall. The moss-covered house stands in for it: right for "overgrown", but it is a house, with windows.
- Not in the pack: A canopy layer. Trees meeting over a path wants a layer drawn above everything; here a crown can only hang north over what is behind it, so every tree that would have hidden the path, a gate or a statue was left out and the path has a clear slot down its length.
- Not in the pack: Paving in the court.
4 · The arrangement
An axis in a wood. Everything that was built is on one north-south line: path, gate, gate, court, toad, hall. The guardians mirror each other across that line and nothing else is symmetrical. Off the line there are only trees. The court is the single open space and the hall closes its north side.
5 · What that means in (x, y)
30 x 40 squares, portrait, because an approach needs length. The path is two squares wide and wanders a column either way between gates so the axis is felt rather than ruled: cols 13-14 at the bottom, 14-15 from row 31 up, 15-16 from row 24 up, back to 14-15 from row 19 up. The gates stand on it at rows 33 and 21; a gate is two squares wide, exactly the path. The court is cols 9-20, rows 9-15, narrowed by a square at its corners. The hall is cols 13-16, rows 4-8, its door row touching the top of the court. The toad is at the centre, cols 14-15, row 12. The guardians are on row 16 at cols 12-13 and 16-17, flanking the mouth of the path. Trees were then laid on every second row, alternate rows offset by two squares and started with a small tree so the map edge is not a ruled column, kinds in a fixed rotation with one dead pair in every eight; any tree whose crown would cover a square of path or court was dropped, and what is left is in the grid below.
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.
.............................. NNNN.YYYY.nnnn.TTTT.yyyy.NNNN. .............................. ttYYYY.nnnn.NNNN.YYYY.nnnnTTTT .............MMMM............. yyyy.NNNN.ss.MMMMkk.YYYY.nnnn. .............MMMM............. ttNNNN.YYYY..MMMMnnnn.TTTTyyyy .............MMMM............. NNNN.YYYY...........nnnn.NNNN. ..........PP.................. ssYYYY.xx.........WW..nnnnTTTT ..............AA.............. yyyy.NNNN.............tt.YYYY. ...........oo................. ssnnnn.kk.............NNNNYYYY ............LL..LL............ nnnn.TTTT...........yyyy.NNNN. .............................. ttYYYY.nnnn.ss...NNNN.YYYYnnnn .............................. TTTT.yyyy.NNNN.RRxx.YYYY.nnnn. .............................. ttNNNN.YYYY.ss...nnnn.TTTTyyyy .............................. NNNN.YYYY.nnnn...kk.NNNN.YYYY. .............................. ttnnnn.TTTT.ss...yyyy.NNNNYYYY .............................. nnnn.NNNN.YYYY...xx.nnnn.TTTT. .............................. ttyyyy.NNNN......YYYY.nnnnNNNN .............................. YYYY.nnnn.ss.RR..kk.TTTT.yyyy. .............................. ttNNNN.YYYY......nnnn.NNNNYYYY .............................. nnnn.TTTT.ss...yyyy.NNNN.YYYY. .............................. xxnnnn.NNNN......YYYY.nnnnTTTT
What is in it
| 46 | tree_pine | tree living conifer large |
| 34 | tree_green | tree living broadleaf large |
| 12 | trees_dead | tree dead pair large |
| 8 | tree_small_dark | tree living small conifer |
| 8 | tree_small | tree living small |
| 4 | tree_dead_small | tree dead small |
| 4 | tree_fallen | tree dead small fallen |
| 2 | lion_moss | prop guardian stone shrine |
| 2 | torii | prop gate shrine |
| 1 | house_moss | building ruin overgrown window |
| 1 | pillar | prop pillar stone ruin |
| 1 | well | prop well stone landmark |
| 1 | toad_statue | prop statue toad odd |
| 1 | boulder | prop rock large |