A Borderland Odyssey

by KVLtv

"THE AQUALONIAN HOST was drawn up..."

"...long serried lines of pikemen and horsemen in gleaming steel, when a giant figure in black armor emerged from the royal pavilion, and as he swung up into the saddle of the black stallion held by four squires, a roar that shook the mountains went up from the host. They shook their blades and thundered forth their acclaim of their warrior king-" Robert E. Howard

This map started out as a modification of "Creep on the Borderlands" in it's debut as a TFL map. This Mii version includes "Creep on the Borderlands". I've always loved playing that map, but I'm not much of a team player. I'm more the lone wolf type, but I love to play with a group of people. With that in mind, I made a 4 team variant which required some changes to the landscape. Some models had to be removed and others exchanged, but basically I opened up the area in the center at the river so that all the combatants could easily approach the favored melee' spot. I didn't add a 5th team because I've found that not many people like to be caught between a rock and a hard place. When I play the 5 starting points games the poor sap in the middle either drops or, like me, just gets slaughtered. 4=good, 5=bad. Well I guess we're all entitled to our own opinions.

This is a recreation, and slight modification, of the very first Myth: The Fallen Lords map I made. It's much better this time around I assure you. I worked very hard to include all the things that made the original so much fun, but I made changes that should eliminate all the problems it had as well. I've included some added variants to make the port more appealing. I 'm always making things for my Myth maps, and this is no exception. Careful attention was paid to the details while making the unit and scenery ports. A great deal of time and frustration was spent on making sure that all the rocks and trees were placed where they originally appeared on the TFL version. It's taken me a considerably long time to achieve the map in this form.

I've made some slight modifications to the trees, and they perform much better than the ones in Amsterdam. I had to do this because they are slightly bigger than their TFL counterparts. I added some graphics to Bungie's frog to make it be able to move about, and included my new pond frog in the Mii style variants as the Stampede! animal/target. The crow that appeared in Amsterdam was origianlly developed for this map and has been scaled down to an appropriate size. I also made the beachball, the one that Bungie had started, a moving netgame ball. Still Life With Warrior's netgame beachball was also originally developed for this map and is used in Nemedian Chronicles for the StB ball.

The main graphic difference in this map is that there is a mountain range around it. I did this to be able to drop the map down to provide a better view of the battle. The Color Map collection only allows for one shadow map, so I opted for the shadow used by the four team variants. I "borrowed" some art work from Frank Frazetta and Ken Kelly for two of the pregame pictures. I've always enjoyed their work. I have had a lot of fun preparing this map and I hope you enjoy it.