Mountains with height, forests with room

Felucca's mountains now rise high above the land around them, forests open into groves and clearings, and the rivers of the towns run between stone quays with steps down to the water.

After last week's dressing of the world, three things stood out: forests were a wall of crowns, the riversides and roads were bare, and the mountains, though you couldn't climb them, were flat. All three are better now. Every picture is the game itself.

Mountains

A mountain used to be a flat field of rock with a line of cliffs around it. Now the ground rises from the foot of a range into ridges and peaks, ten to twenty metres above the land at its feet, and steep slopes show their bare stone in layers. Rivers cut gorges through the ranges and roads cross them in passes. Scree and fallen rocks gather at the foot, and the slopes have crags, spires and boulders.

A mountain range rising from a meadow: steep layered rock at its foot, crags and boulders on its slopes

The foot of a range: the slope climbs straight out of the stony ground

A rocky ridge between the coast and a snowfield

We also tried mountains made of terraces, each with a sheer rock wall. They showed the height very clearly, but looked like steps cut by hand, so we kept the smooth rise.

Forests

Our trees are life-size, ten to seventeen metres tall, and a single crown covers a dozen tiles of the screen. So the forests now grow in groves with open ground between them: ferns, bushes, saplings and fallen logs where the trees thin out, and about a third as many trees as before. Places worth finding, like crypts and shrines, also keep the ground in front of them clear, so the trees don't hide them.

A forest of groves and clearings, ferns and fallen logs between the trees

A crypt in a forest glade, nothing in front of it but grass

Quays and kerbs

Rivers through a town now run a little below the streets between paved quays, with a stone parapet along the water. Here and there steps go down to the water, with a lamp on a post and a boat tied up beside them. Where a street crosses the water it gets a bridge's rails. Every paved street has a kerb where it meets the gardens and yards.

Canals in Skartor between stone quays, a boat moored in the water

Steps down to the river with lamps on posts and a boat, quays along every bank

Roads and banks

Out in the country, river banks near roads and bridges are shored up with stones, and now and then a wooden jetty runs out over the water with stairs down at its end. Roads through farmland and near towns are fenced on the field side, in the way of the realm: dry-stone walls in the Dominion, hedges and wattle in the Concord, split rails elsewhere.

A small stone bridge with a wooden jetty and a boat beside it, stones along the banks

Not there yet

Movement is still flat: you can't climb onto rock, and steps and jetties are scenery until walking up and down lands.