ICE Merp Layouts from the Palantir Quest and Minas Tirith Modules

The first ICE MERP 2nd Edition modules that I did artwork for starting in March of 1994 were the Palantir Quest adventure module and the city module for Minas Tirith.  I was just developing my drawing style at this point and the CAD drawings weren't as nice as the first hand drawn ones so I'm posting the hand drawings here now for this blog post.  I may post some of the CAD drawings from this module at a later date along with some of the other hand drawn illustrations that aren't shown here.  The coolest one of the bunch has to be the town of Larach Duhnnan map that I drew by hand for the Palantir Quest.  I remember spending a lot of time on this one and it shows (there's a lot of ink on the page).

The Town of Larach Duhnnan Map from ICE's MERP 2nd Edition module for the Palantir Quest

The next illustration is also from the Palantir Quest and depicts an architectural floor plan of the ruins of the Royal Library at Annuminas.  The ruined portions are represented by the dash-dot line hatch and the intact portions are represented as solid walls by the black poche (the solid black fill).  Again, there is no text on these pre-press layouts as it was added later for the area/room keys, the graphic scale, the north arrow and the legend which is typical of most of these scans.

Palantir Quest ruins of the Royal Library at Annuminas

The final drawing I'm posting here from the Palantir Quest is the Smuggler's Cave and Lake Town hideaway where some important clues for completing the quest are located.  Note the larger scale waterfront lake town location map at the top and the close up view of the Ruins and Smuggler's Cave below.

Palantir Quest Lake Town Smuggler's Cave and ruins with water front site plan

All of these layouts were drawn using ink on vellum which was my usual medium for the hand drawn illustrations that I did back then.  The next illustrations were done for the MERP Minas Tirith Module.  I did quite a few more city dwellings and other structures for that module but these were the two nicest ones of the bunch.

Minas Tirith Walled Manor House

The final layout in this series is an upscale dwelling with a pool on the first floor and elaborate rooftop gardens above the second floor accessed from the spiral staircase.  I did a number of other simpler dwellings for this module but none quite as elaborate or interesting as these two.

Minas Tirith upscale dwelling

Copyright notice:  All original artwork on this page is displayed for self promotion purposes only and is copyrighted by the original artist, Daniel Cruger.  This artwork may be downloaded and used for personal use only and may not be reproduced for commercial purposes in any way without the express written consent of the owner.