Atlas Artist

A COZY ADVENTURE ACROSS A PAINTED WORLD

The colour has drained from the Great Atlas. Take up the brush-staff and paint the blank world back into being.

PLAY THE EARLY BUILDComing to Steam. The early build needs a password for now.

**PLATE I · THE EDGE OF THE PAINTED WORLD***Whatever she paints becomes real. Whatever she hasn't is still a sketch.*

Renoa at the edge of the painted land, where green hexes, a windmill and a cottage give way to a pencil sketch of hills and forest on parchment. — **PLATE I · THE EDGE OF THE PAINTED WORLD***Whatever she paints becomes real. Whatever she hasn't is still a sketch.*

THE FADING

The land is only as whole as its pages.

Long ago the Wardens painted the world into the Great Atlas. One autumn the colour drained out of it, and everything beyond the village of Kettlebrook faded back to pencil on parchment.

The last Warden, Mistress Hazel, scattered the Atlas's pages into old places across the Vale to keep them safe. Then she vanished. Her apprentice, Renoa, wakes with Hazel's brush-staff and a long way to walk.

Someone else is looking for the pages too.

Renoa raises the rose-bud brush-staff where the painted grass meets the sketched forest. — **RENOA, LAST APPRENTICE OF THE WARDENS***the bud on the staff is the brush*

HOW THE WORLD FILLS IN

Paint, wander, gather, and paint further.

Paint

Sweep the brush-staff across the sketch and the hexes fill in: meadow, river, mill and road.

ii.

Wander

Walk into what you painted. Meet its people, find its cave, and chart the rooms as you go.

iii.

Gather

Every region holds a pigment. Grind it, bind it, and it paints the next region over.

A GAZETTEER OF THE ATLAS

Seventeen places, each with its own colour.

Ren stands in a clearing on a green hex island of pine woods, mossy boulders, berry bushes and a lumber mill. — **PLATE II · THE BRAMBLE WOOD***sap green*

Ren crosses a golden ochre sand island dotted with tall cacti and red rocks. — **PLATE III · THE OCHRE WASTE***ochre*

Ren stands in a small rowing boat on a deep ultramarine sea, with whales swimming nearby and a snowy shore with a pine grove beside her. — **PLATE IV · THE WHALE ROAD***ultramarine*

Ren rows a small boat across violet floodwater past a moored barge and old stones. — **PLATE V · BELLWATER***murex purple*

KettlebrookThe home village, with Atlas House, the market, the mill and the well.
The Bramble WoodDeep green woods, thick with pines and berry bushes.
Hollow MineAn old mine up in the Slate Teeth, explored room by room.
MadderfieldMeadows of flower patches and farm plots.
The Ochre WasteGolden sand and cactus on the edge of the Vale.
The Slate TeethMossy slate hills with ochre seams to dig.
TidewaterA little harbour town with fishing docks and a pebbly strand.
Woadmere FenReedy wetland where the woad grows.
Kestrel KeepA town on the chalk downs, in the shadow of the old keep.
The Ember KilnA great kiln in the snowy hills above a forge town.
Bramwell's BarnA farm over the downs, with copper vats for verdigris.
The Sunken ArchiveAn archive sunk beneath the desert.
Samphire FlatsA town on stilts among salt marsh and winding creeks.
The Coral ShelfA kingfisher-blue lagoon ringed with white sand.
The Whale RoadBlack skerries on a deep sea where whales swim.
The Lantern IslesHeather isles, each with its own lamp, where it is always evening.
BellwaterA whole town drowned beneath the bay.

Kettlebrook's square, with a watchtower, windmill, market stall and townsfolk gathered round Renoa. — **PLATE VI · KETTLEBROOK***six shops, eleven quests, one very loud trumpet*

Lantern-lit rooms of Hollow Mine. Rooms Renoa has walked are coloured; the rest are still a sketch. — **PLATE VII · HOLLOW MINE***caves chart themselves as you walk*

FROM THE MARGINS

Every colour came from somewhere.

Painters once ground their colours from berries, roots, soot and stone. Renoa does the same.

PIGMENT	GROUND FROM	FOUND IN	A NOTE IN THE MARGIN
Sap Green	Ripe buckthorn berries	The Bramble Wood	Pressed from buckthorn berries and kept in small bladders that painters pricked to squeeze out a drop.
Woad Blue	Fermented woad leaves	Woadmere Fen	The same blue dye as indigo, and Europe's main blue until imported indigo replaced it in the 1600s.
Ochre	Iron-rich earth	The Slate Teeth	Earth coloured by iron oxide. People painted cave walls with it tens of thousands of years ago.
Sepia	Cuttlefish ink	Tidewater	Named after the Greek word for cuttlefish, and a favourite brown for drawings in the 1700s and 1800s.
Chalk White	Chalk, from ancient sea shells	Kestrel Keep	Made of tiny plankton shells, and mixed with glue for the white ground (gesso) under a painting.
Verdigris	Copper over vinegar	Bramwell's Barn	Made on purpose by hanging copper plates over vinegar until a green crust formed.
Lamp Black	Soot from oil lamps	The Ember Kiln	Almost pure carbon, which makes it one of the most permanent pigments there is.
Azurite	A blue copper ore	The Ember Kiln	The most widely used blue in medieval European painting, far cheaper than ultramarine.
Ultramarine	Lapis lazuli	The Sunken Archive	Mined in Afghanistan, and it could cost more than gold.
Shell White	Burnt and ground shells	The Coral Shelf	Japanese painters have ground oyster shells into a fine white called gofun for centuries.
Murex Purple	Murex sea snails	The Lantern Isles	It took thousands of snails to make a single gram, which is why it became the colour of emperors.