The trees part to reveal the monastery ruins

I took the various elements I liked best from the previous sketches and combined them into a scene. This creates a good establishing shot, I think, of the monastery ruins. Now we can imagine some of the history of the place. Maybe the base of a secret cult under cover as respectable monks. The river provides a transportation system for the hauling of illicit goods, manufactured in the hidden dungeons underneath. Perhaps there are deeper, unimaginable evils, even the secret cult didn't know about. The awakening of horrors that had to be vanquished long ago by brave adventures in ages past. Now those horrors have been stirring again...

Monastery Ruins

The first step in fleshing out The Sample Dungeon is to give it a sense of place. Seeing as it is described as the Monastery Cellars I thought I would start with some concept sketches of monastery ruins, since ruins are the coolest place in the world to set a dungeon. I like to explore a variety of ideas in the early stage, before settling on anything too specific.

1. is inspired by Thai architecture to give it a bit of an exotic feel
2. is a little more typical western looking monastery.
3. is also typically western but this has a bit more feeling of a college or place of learning
4. I'm not sure where I was going with this hodge-podge, there is a bit of Mayan combined with some western shapes.

In each of these I wanted to add a hint of a river, since the map shows an underground stream and I thought it would be a great element for transporting stuff, also a secret watery entrance to the dungeon perhaps? I'm leaning towards further developing #3, but I need to think more about it.