STEPPE CRAWL // fan guide

the road, as i draw it

The game never shows you the whole road at once, so I drew it. This is a schematic: the ten valleys are always in this order, but the doors to the regions turn up at a different valley each run, inside a range (that's the numbers after each region below). Hand-drawn tiles, one tile = nothing in particular.

• 1Kara-Oi Meadows · home end of the road. Junipers, marmots, jackals. Tökö likes it here.
• 2Besh-Tash Valley · five stones, a loud river. Water snakes in the shallows.
• 3Kara-Koyun Valley · empty yurt rings. Soodagers start here.
• 4Uzun-Akmat · spruce on the north side, wolves on the south. Believe it.
• 5Kara-Suu Canyon · red walls, black water. Archers. My most-died valley.
• 6Chatkal Highlands · where they carry the malka in felt pots. Nobody is carrying anything.
• 7Ala-Bel Pass · wind, almasty, the wind again.
• 8Betpak-Dala · the Hunger Steppe. You see everything and everything sees you.
• 9Aksay Plateau · the Kurultai ground under snow. Feels wrong in a good way.
• 10Under Manas Peak · the cleft. Three tamgas, then in.
• Ythe White Yurts · one level, every patron's altar. Door turns up in valleys 2-4.
• TSmugglers' Tunnels · 2 levels, doors in 3-5. Bakai at the bottom. No tamga, just loot.
• WArslanbob Woods · 4 levels, doors in 4-6. Ak Börü + tamga of the Chubar.
• SMoiynkum Sands · 3 levels, inside the Woods. Sary Chayan + tamga of the Boztorgoy.
• KOld Kurgans · 3 levels, doors in 7-8. Golden Warrior + tamga of the Karakoyun.
• BPass of the Black Blizzard · 3 levels, doors in 7-9. Kara Boran Ene + tamga of the Tanıp.
• HHidden Valley of Janyl · behind the cleft. The Herald. The Ene Malka. Go home.

a valley, explored (Kara-Oi, one of my runs)

What valley 1 looked like in my W44 run, redrawn from memory with my tiles. Every valley is random; this is just to show how to read one. Monsters as letters like ASCII mode.

• 1you start here, on the < from the road
• 2a herders' camp: yurts. Often an item or two inside
• 3the river. Deep water (dark blue) you can't cross; shallows are slow
• 4jackal pack (j j j) by the ford. Pull them back west, between the junipers
• 5the ford, the only shallow crossing. Shallows are slow: never fight in them
• 6a balbal, just decoration up here (in the Kurgans it would walk)
• 7> the way on. Press > to travel, > again to take it

my fan tileset

8×8 pixels each, drawn in a Python script on a laptop with a broken F5 key. The real game uses the Dungeon Crawl tiles plus its own Iradi ones (and an ASCII mode). Mine are only for maps on this site; take them if you want, just say where from.

meadow

meadow, tufts

the road

rock wall

juniper

spruce

shallow water

deep water

sand (Moiynkum)

snow (Blizzard)

canyon wall

yurt

> way on

< way back

altar

balbal

tamga }

the sealed cleft