Ravens Bluff easter eggs

Posts: 577 · Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:11 pm

I was just browsing my copy of LC1, and took a look at the fold-out map. It's not properly a map, it is more like a drawing of a dragon's-eye view of the city, much like the one in the Forgotten Realms City System. The artist is Valerie Valusek.

I found some interesting things hidden in there:

the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There is no mistaking it, I live a short walk away from the tower. It is on the first lower panel;

a MacDonalds' sign. It is on the second upper panel;

a Norwegian wooden church. Most of these churches were built during the 13th century, and many have been burned down during the 19th century to build bigger ones made of stone. In the drawing, it is on the third lower panel;

several "trulli", a type of building originating from the south-western region of Italy, especially in the city of Alberobello. One can be seen right below the Tower of Pisa, but there are at least 5 or 6.

I'm sure there's plenty of things I don't recognize. Can anybody notice any other things?

Posts: 577 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:35 pm

I'm a bit disappointed... If I were to make a similar point on a 1st Edition hardcover, tons of people would tell me the dark of it, but when it comes to some 2nd Edition stuff*, no replies at all. It would seem there is almost only one type of collector here!

*Not belonging to Greyhawk or Planescape.

Posts: 1431 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:51 pm

I read your post and found your observations quite interesting, but not having a copy of LC1, I have nothing to add......

Could you post a picture of the map?

Posts: 1104 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:09 pm

guerret wrote:

I'm a bit disappointed... If I were to make a similar point on a 1st Edition hardcover, tons of people would tell me the dark of it, but when it comes to some 2nd Edition stuff*, no replies at all. It would seem there is almost only one type of collector here!

*Not belonging to Greyhawk or Planescape.

Would love to comment, but of all the 2e stuff the Realms is one of the few ones I just don't ever tend to pick up.

(Oddly enough, the other is Greyhawk. Never appealed to me in any edition. Wink

)

Posts: 577 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:14 pm

Aneoth wrote:

I read your post and found your observations quite interesting, but not having a copy of LC1, I have nothing to add......

Could you post a picture of the map?

Now that's the right mood. Scanning that map would be quite difficult, but fortunately my PDF backup copy comes in handy. I apologize if I am posting separate pictures of the 8 panels, but I hate working with pictures and cutting and pasting and so on...

Sorry for the horizontal scrollbar!

Posts: 1431 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:27 pm

Well, nice scans (PDF's).
I saw the Tower of Pisa and Mickey D's sign below the coloseum.

The Norwegian Church and "trulli" I would not reccognize if they hit me on the head.

Posts: 2269 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:30 pm

You can't miss the Coliseum in the second panel on top either. Although I can't remember how many levels the one in Rome is.

Posts: 577 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:38 pm

Aneoth wrote:

Well, nice scans (PDF's).
I saw the Tower of Pisa and Mickey D's sign below the coloseum.

The Norwegian Church and "trulli" I would not reccognize of they hit me on the head.

The Norwegian church is the large pointed blueish building on the left edge of the 3rd lower panel, just south of the pond. The trulli are buildings composed of several white cylinder joined together, each surmounted by a conical blue roof.

I made some further research with the FR Atlas (which contains a map coming from the later article The City of Ravens Bluff), and discovered that while the most prominent features of the city (temple of Tyr, coliseum, the square park with the statue in the middle...) are identifiable, most minor features like the ones I pointed out are not.

My assumption is that the Living City players tended to place a lot of puns in the city, but when TSR assembled the final product together they removed most of the silly stuff.

Posts: 1238 · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 7:06 pm

Great scans - The Golden Arches blew me away!!

As I remember there were indeed a lot of puns in Ravens Bluff - particularly names - to the point of great annoyance to me I'm afraid. (I'm still looking for LC1, but the sourcebook itself is great - I like the 'walking tour' aspect to it very much)