The gateway to Sibley Castle (after some photoshop work on the flag)

More about The gateway to Sibley Castle (after some photoshop work on the flag)

The entrance to the castle of Abbot Canoby. The name has been changed slightly for publication to protect the innocent, it was originally an homage to the player's favorite character from a popular movie at the time which I'll leave you to guess. He is more or less the leader of the PCs in my long-running D&D campaign. He's a warrior priest of the powerful Knights of Saint Mikhail, leading the effort to reclaim a distant area in the wilderness on the edge of mountains for his adopted kingdom of Kamyrie.

The castle was a ruin manned by goblins when the players reclaimed it many (game) years ago (and even longer in player years, back in the 90's I think). One contingent of starting characters spent a couple of levels sparring with those goblins before finally calling in the Abbot and his original group to take the place by storm. With the help of the church in the years since they've rebuilt it into one of the key defensive sites for the entire settlement effort.

I am still tinkering occasionally with this, just putting out an interim version until I get back to it. I've had the image in and out of DDG and other editing software a bunch, and used other AI image generation to create some elements. Partly to have more control over some of the fine details like the Kamyran flag in the top of the arch. I don't dare touch that with the AI editor if I want the details to remain sharp. I am sure if I knew more I could get past that, but it looks good enough for my purposes at least.

The banners gave me fits, really never did get a lightning bolt stretching down as far on the left hand banner of the church of Belmak as I wanted despite hours of tinkering with wording and styles and every thing else I could think of for the prompt.

And that orange bar on the banner of the Knights of Saint Mikhail banner to the right... sheesh. Darn if I know why but DDG just can not cope with adding an orange stripe, bar, or whatever to the underlying blue field with a vertical red stripe. I finally had to just photoshop it and then do as much touchup on the hang of the fabric as the AI editor could be wheedled into doing. Apparently there's something about placing orange silk over underlying red silk that just makes it lose its little AI simulated mind.

Among other things I still need to build up that view through the gate into something that makes sense, probably a view across a green stretch of lawn to a high wall with mountains in the background, and maybe a small chapel tucked against the wall. Fortunately the way the arch is set up it's easy to change whatever you want in there within reason, I had loads of fun putting all sorts of improbable images in there. For my final needs, though, I just can't get enough control on that small a part of the image to manage anything that looks nice with DDG. I'm intending to eventually create a full size image of the view to the far wall of the keep and just photoshop a section cut out of it into that archway.