This is the setting for the Sugar Shack Slaughter, one of the two adventures in “The Scenario from Ontario“. Written by the remarkably Kiel Chenier, “dungeon” of the adventure is a massive hollow maple tree and tunnels among its roots.
Hollow trees are a favourite “dungeon” environment of mine, so I not only enjoyed working on these, but have a number of alternate uses planned for them for my own campaigns. The main level can work as an elven temple of some kind, with the central pool working as a scrying device or where the priests stand in order to be closer to avalon or the equivalent during their ceremonies. Or in a D&D5e campaign it can be the secret gathering places of the blights who are much more communal creatures than people think them to be…
These maps of the Blood Maple Hollow are redraws based on Kiel’s original maps. I made an effort to make it look as “tree-like” as I could manage for the level on the left, with the lower level on the right still having roots and tendrils to define the grid but being a bit more traditionally cave-like in textures as is my style.
The fortress/dungeon of Quasqueton was not completed before the residents marched off to war against the northern barbarians. While the main floors of the structure are almost finished, the in-progress nature of the structure becomes apparent when descending into the lower level which is still mostly natural caves that remain unworked for the most part.
Access to this level is either via the stairs into the finished structures roughly in the middle of the map, or via the hole that runs down from the smithy on the upper level, through a room on the main level, and down to the small cave with the pool of water roughly 100 feet south of the finished rooms.
I’ve also included the numbered version of the map that links up with the upper level maps. The removal of the pit trap from the main level of the original map meant that I moved the icy-cold pool of water (room 50) from underneath it to being underneath the shaft leading down from the smithy area – they probably used it to get cold water for the smithing process using a now long-missing bucket and rope.
The original cavern level included several caverns that were completely unkeyed – I’ve included roughly as many, but added optional lettered keys to these caverns to make stocking it easier. I’ve also purposefully skipped the letter I to avoid confusion with the number 1 – so the lettering goes from A to H on the upper two levels and from J to L on the lower level.
I drew the Circle of Doom in 2010 (maybe even late 2009) for an old school D&D campaign I was running at the time. I drew it in pencil. Pencil doesn’t scan well. It comes out very light or very jaggy if I enhance the contrast enough to make it dark. Also, I’ve gotten a little bit better at the craft since 2009.
So I redrew it.
I’ve USED it three times now in my games, but always stocking it “on the fly” using random stocking from the various rules we were playing with at the time. The dungeon “level” itself is centred around a massive shaft some 70 feet across spanned by four bridges on four different levels. I’ve run it as a rapid delve through four dungeon levels using level-appropriate encounters at each level (appropriate to the dungeon level, not the character level). In other words, it quickly goes from a team of halflings at the beginning to 8 hungry trolls guarding the exit.
So here's both the original 2009 version (below) and today's redraw (above) of "The Circle of Doom". Enjoy, and please – give your players the shaft!
The sign hanging from the tavern shows a matronly woman carrying a large mug of ale while holding a finger to her lips in the near-universal symbol for being quiet. But the tavern itself is rarely quiet – it is one of the few places in town with a dedicated stage for musicians and entertainers and thus attracts a boisterous if friendly audience.
The Quiet Margose is primarily made of wood, supported by 16 heavy stone pillars. The main structure is flanked by a covered biergarten on one side, and a space dedicated to the owner’s quarters and a covered wagon entry where firewood is stored on the other. The stone pillars predate the Margose and were part of a prior structure here and still bear wards against evil from the older building. The walls are whitewashed wood, and the very high roof is made of heavy beams supporting pitch-black tiles.
The Quiet Margose is purely a tavern and offers no accommodations (although it isn’t uncommon to find or or two people “napping” at the long tables by the banked fire in the early hours of the morning). The owner, Tirril Lor, is the great-nephew of the titular Margose and books the entertainment himself – leaving the acquisition and preparation of food to the Qai twins who work the kitchen and live nearby.
Tarnos Venn had a team of dwarves cut defensive structures into the Dosetlar Cliffs during the great war. The guard tower cut into the jutting edge of the cliff still looks nearly new, but the main entrance shows the damage of war and years - there are no longer any signs of where the great door once stood, instead there is just a rough and shattered-looking entryway into the stone face itself.
Tarnos of course had the dwarves build a secret exit to get out in case the front door was held or the complex was invaded and fell, but that exit has been lost. The exit leads to a few secret chambers (once home to Tarnos' fiancee and most trusted assassin), and then to the caves behind the fortress. Those caves are most often used by those in the fortress to store items that are of low value and high "stinkiness" - particularly pickled fish and such.
Semi-ironically, the most resent residents of the fortress has been considering building their own secret exit between the fortress and the caves, either right near the cave entrance or deeper into the back gallery, where it comes within 30-35 feet of the fortress structures.
For those who are unaware, this very Dyson Logos is the cartographer for the new Waterdeep: Dragon Heist book. Everybody give him love and support -- he deserves it!
For those who are unaware, this very Dyson Logos is the cartographer for the new Waterdeep: Dragon Heist book. Everybody give him love and support -- he deserves it!
Thank you!
Indeed, I drew 24 maps for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to the release in September!
In grand underdark caverns the dark elves build their cities. The oldest families establish themselves in the more defensible positions and as close to the centre of the cavern for defensive advantage against invaders.
Today’s map is a fairly small stalagmite spire fortress. The spire is surrounded on three sides by a small fortress with a spiral ramp leading up from the fortress into and around the stalagmite. The arrows on the ramp lead upwards with a fairly aggressive angle.
One chamber dominates the interior of the spire – Accessed by visitors from the lower portions of the spire ramp, the family head receives guests and talks to them from the balcony on the next level, a good 40 feet above the floor of the chamber. Further up again are a set of galleries for other family members or assassins to listen in on conversations…
Up in the Fox Hills is a small monastic order. They make mead and honey, study liturgical texts, and commune with their god of the harvest. The monastery grounds include a number of stout stone structures of which the Oratory of the Eleventh Blessing is usually the first seen (and typically the only structure visited by outsiders).
The oratory’s main purpose is to provide a worship and study space for the residents as well as a greeting and meeting area for guests. Tucked between these are a small number of cells for scribes to work in (and the heavy stone structure makes these cells plum work spaces in the summer, and harsh punishment in the winter).
Some cities just stink. Built over drained swampland and mostly relying on surface sewers, Uogralas is unfortunately one of the smellier urban centres of the land.
Uogralas is known as the City of the Frogs because of its swampy origins and the city's patron god, Ugrale, a great toad-like deity dedicated to brickwork, construction, and the hearth. The city is ostensibly run by Duke Sooryakan, who in turn basically runs everything past Prefect Sahint of the church of Ugrale because no edict of the Duke's will have any effect without the support and enforcement of the religious police.
Just north of the city is the walled Monastery of Raised Delights, home to a splinter group of the church of Ugrale who are exiled from the city, but otherwise accepted as long as they have no involvement in the city's politics.
Uogralas primarily exports marsh grains, a crisp watery tuber, lizard leathers, bricks, and spices collected from exotic flowers. They import lumber for boats and construction and for use as fuel, as well as meats, cheeses, and metals.
Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of nine different burial mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a a small tomb right now.
The four lower tombs have Greek “Dromos” entrances – an “avenue” cut into the barrow hill leading to the door to the tomb itself. These avenues would be built up in stone to hold back the earth of the mound and to provide a clear route to the door. Often the end of the dromos furthest from the door would be decorated with columns or other decorations, often long gone by the time would-be tomb robbers arrive on site.
To the south of Baraloba are the Eagle Hills and the imaginatively named Eagle Hills River that runs through it from south to north before joining the Hewbank. The Eagle Hills have a mix of chalk and coal deposits that were attractive to miners. Most of the deposits have now been worked, leaving a collection of open mines and shaft mines in the area. The central point of interest in this hex is the old open chalk mine that takes up 11 of the subhexes right in the middle of the map. The hills here are bright white and are a mix of natural hills and tailings from the mining operations.
On the opposite side of the river and small lake from the mines is a boggy marshland slowly being reclaimed by the forest. If one were to dig beneath the immediate mud and water, it would be noted that the reason this area is low and doesn’t drain properly is that it too was an open mine at some point.
Further south along the river is a small drift mine that has become home to a modest group of humanoids. They keep a low profile and farm the area around the minehead, using grain stolen from caravan a decade ago as their original seed stock. There are less than a score of them living here and they take significant pains to not be noticed by the residents of Baraloba only seven miles away.
Southwest of Baraloba, the Eagle Hills continue into heavy forests. The closest thing here to Baraloba itself is yet another of the old giant’s watchtowers – although this one is not as decrepit as most of the other ruined towers in the region. A druid and their apprentice maintain the tower and keep a small herd of goats that keep the grass in the hills and vales of the area nicely clipped. A trail leads from the tower into the woods and to a massive tree in the middle of a clearing where the druids perform their rites and occasionally just engage in silent contemplation.
A little further to the west another trail leads through the woods to a very large farm / small farming community. A couple of large multigenerational families run these farms and generally try to be self-sufficient, only walking to Baraloba when they require supplies they cannot find or make on their own or with the help of the druids in the tower. The rest of the hex is unpopulated wilderness – rolling hills and a few jutting chunks of stone, expanses of dark and heavy forest teeming with wildlife, small bubbling brooks, and a lazy river looping gently through the hills.
I've also included the full set of seven hexes to show how they fit together. On a normal 6-mile-hex map these would be a village hex in the middle with (clockwise from the top) badlands & ruins hex, hills hex, forest hex, hills hex with mine, forest hex, forest hex.
Based on the cave work I did for the Descent into the Depths of the Earth tunnels and passages, here are five cave geomorphs that can be used to link up to any existing tunnels. They are all 2 squares wide at the entrances just like the existing encounter area maps for that adventure, so they mesh best with the secondary tunnels but can be used as constrictions in primary passages or widened areas in tertiary tunnels.
These were my first experiment using a sharpie marker as the foundation of my map drawing – for a number of these geomorphs the outer walls were drawn using a dying marker instead of my usual felt-tipped technical pens. They were drawn using a 07 gel pen for most details and hatching (the same pens I used back when I first started drawing maps), and the sharpie marker for the walls. I used a Squarehex PoGI (Pad of Geomorphic Intent) and drew them while watching “The New Girl” on TV with MissGladiator (and while digging through my Twilight 2000 materials, as you can see in the photo below).
This experiment with a sharpie marker in February (I drew these in February and am finally posting them now? WTH?) is what inspired me to buy a bunch more Sharpies which has lead to my current line of “Daily Doodles” that you can follow along with if you follow any of my social media feeds (on Twitter, FaceBook, or Google+).
Pushing out of the cliff face like a partially exposed egg, this small dungeon complex was evidently not built here but transported in some manner. Either that, or the craftsmen were purposefully annoying in the design as the whole interior structure is at an uncomfortable 7 degree angle with the right edge of the map being slightly more than 36 feet above the height of the entrance doors.
In addition to the awkward angle, the interior of the structure bears a strong scent like a mix of musk and nutmeg. The walls and floors are painted gold, but are scratched up badly enough that most floors and west walls appear to be grey stone with gold streaks on them. Doorways, where open, have golden hair on them from some mighty beast having to squeeze through.
Prowling this space, of course, is the Golden Wolf – an extraplanar beast that must squeeze to push through the 4 foot doorways and is much more comfortable in the wide circular hall of the complex. All doors here open as it approaches, but are often stuck for others. The Golden Wolf guards its treasure jealously – the carcasses of seven platinum geese, each with its neck snapped.
Foul things are afoot in the town of Melad Crossings. One of the two mills has stopped, the smell of death creeps by in the wind from many buildings, the streets are barren, and those who live are not likely to be out of doors except as is necessary.
The water along the west fork of the river is running milky white, and none of the fishermen are among the living, struck dead two weeks ago just as the river began to change. But that doesn’t explain all the deaths – something else must be working it’s way through the townfolk… while the headsman says it is disease and begs for the church to send healers or paladins, others believe something far more sentient and sinister is behind the continued deaths.
Or, you know, it could just be a pleasant little town for your adventuring party to chill out at en route to their next adventure.
I love your work. Thank you for posting. The first adventure I ran with 5e rules was in Goblin Gully (with lots of embellishments). I’m looking forward to your collaboration with WotC.
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"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." – William Gibson, Neuromancer
Two hundred years ago the foul giant Auruxvor terrorized the lands along the western shore of the Krumpt Basin from his fortified lakeside “manor”. Padreth Warcton and a group of mercenaries and adventurers put an end to the giant’s reign of terror and with powerful magics they tore his house asunder.
Two of Padreth’s acolytes remained at the site of the old manor and assisted the locals in building a few small fortifications from the stony debris left behind. Over a few years the fortifications and homes became the southern portion of Warcton Hold. The walls and tower on the south side of the hold have many massive stones that still bear the markings of the giant Auruxvor as well as the magical violence that ended his time.
The hold continued to grow. The initial farmers who moved to the hold would leave the town walls to work their fields and herd their animals. Over the years the hold became the centre of local activity and farmers from further away would come to town to trade goods and eventually to acquire fish for a change in their diet once a few local families moved from agriculture to fishing in the Krumpt Basin.
Today there are few farmers who live within the hold itself. A few families who maintain very large farms that are then worked by local tenants are now ensconced here, along with two merchant clans, the local fisher families (who have to clean their catch at an island in the Basin to keep the smell out of the hold), a retired adventurer or two, and of course a number of worshipers of the church that originally brought Padreth Warcton and company here.
The three most obvious details a traveller notes when visiting Warcton Hold for the first time are the walls, the watchtower and the u-shaped building attached to it.
The walls are of mixed hard stone, much of it worked by the giant Auruxvor and his kin prior to it being repurposed by the locals, and stand fourteen feet tall with battlements mostly along the outer edge. Access to the wall top is via a number of small stone towers built into the wall that are of the same height but have ladders within them to the walls themselves. The walls on the north side of the hold are primarily made of field stone, but share the same construction style.
The octagonal watch tower is a stout four-story affair also primarily made of the giant’s stonework. It is connected by a wall and walkway (with an archway to pass under it) to the large wooden U-shaped structure which acts as the home to the local church and the acolytes sent here to maintain it from the distant capital.
Nestled into the Shadow Woods is Guimond’s Tower – a crumbling multi-story stone and wood structure that looks ready to slide down into the woods at a moments notice. Up on the top of the aged stone is a wooden house-like construction looking down on the tree tops in the area. Some believe that the ageless druid-lich (who goes by various names in various stories) of the Shadow Woods lives in the small house at the top of the tower – which explains both how the wooden structure seems to be outlasting the stone tower, and why the stone tower has not collapsed yet.
Like most rumours and sage’s tales, there is more than a small kernel of truth to this. The wooden house is indeed maintained by an ancient nearly-blind hermit who lives here unmolested because the druid-lich lives quite nearby – under the tower in fact.
The tower’s dungeon cannot be reached from within the tower, but by a secret trap door in the grounds just outside the tower. The druid-lich keeps the trap door well hidden by controlling the growth of grass over it, so it is always entirely overgrown and concealed.
The secret door leads to old stone stairs, and in turn to the crypts under Guimond’s Tower. From the old crypts, caves lead deeper underground towards the sound of dripping water and to earthen and stone caves with tree roots hanging from the ceiling and working down the walls. A small pond is back here, and a smaller altar where the druid-lich worships and works in darkness and near-silence.
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As Canadian as Maple Syrup!
This is the setting for the Sugar Shack Slaughter, one of the two adventures in “The Scenario from Ontario“. Written by the remarkably Kiel Chenier, “dungeon” of the adventure is a massive hollow maple tree and tunnels among its roots.
Hollow trees are a favourite “dungeon” environment of mine, so I not only enjoyed working on these, but have a number of alternate uses planned for them for my own campaigns. The main level can work as an elven temple of some kind, with the central pool working as a scrying device or where the priests stand in order to be closer to avalon or the equivalent during their ceremonies. Or in a D&D5e campaign it can be the secret gathering places of the blights who are much more communal creatures than people think them to be…
These maps of the Blood Maple Hollow are redraws based on Kiel’s original maps. I made an effort to make it look as “tree-like” as I could manage for the level on the left, with the lower level on the right still having roots and tendrils to define the grid but being a bit more traditionally cave-like in textures as is my style.
The fortress/dungeon of Quasqueton was not completed before the residents marched off to war against the northern barbarians. While the main floors of the structure are almost finished, the in-progress nature of the structure becomes apparent when descending into the lower level which is still mostly natural caves that remain unworked for the most part.
Access to this level is either via the stairs into the finished structures roughly in the middle of the map, or via the hole that runs down from the smithy on the upper level, through a room on the main level, and down to the small cave with the pool of water roughly 100 feet south of the finished rooms.
I’ve also included the numbered version of the map that links up with the upper level maps. The removal of the pit trap from the main level of the original map meant that I moved the icy-cold pool of water (room 50) from underneath it to being underneath the shaft leading down from the smithy area – they probably used it to get cold water for the smithing process using a now long-missing bucket and rope.
The original cavern level included several caverns that were completely unkeyed – I’ve included roughly as many, but added optional lettered keys to these caverns to make stocking it easier. I’ve also purposefully skipped the letter I to avoid confusion with the number 1 – so the lettering goes from A to H on the upper two levels and from J to L on the lower level.
What a difference 9 years of practice makes!
I drew the Circle of Doom in 2010 (maybe even late 2009) for an old school D&D campaign I was running at the time. I drew it in pencil. Pencil doesn’t scan well. It comes out very light or very jaggy if I enhance the contrast enough to make it dark. Also, I’ve gotten a little bit better at the craft since 2009.
So I redrew it.
I’ve USED it three times now in my games, but always stocking it “on the fly” using random stocking from the various rules we were playing with at the time. The dungeon “level” itself is centred around a massive shaft some 70 feet across spanned by four bridges on four different levels. I’ve run it as a rapid delve through four dungeon levels using level-appropriate encounters at each level (appropriate to the dungeon level, not the character level). In other words, it quickly goes from a team of halflings at the beginning to 8 hungry trolls guarding the exit.
So here's both the original 2009 version (below) and today's redraw (above) of "The Circle of Doom". Enjoy, and please – give your players the shaft!
The sign hanging from the tavern shows a matronly woman carrying a large mug of ale while holding a finger to her lips in the near-universal symbol for being quiet. But the tavern itself is rarely quiet – it is one of the few places in town with a dedicated stage for musicians and entertainers and thus attracts a boisterous if friendly audience.
The Quiet Margose is primarily made of wood, supported by 16 heavy stone pillars. The main structure is flanked by a covered biergarten on one side, and a space dedicated to the owner’s quarters and a covered wagon entry where firewood is stored on the other. The stone pillars predate the Margose and were part of a prior structure here and still bear wards against evil from the older building. The walls are whitewashed wood, and the very high roof is made of heavy beams supporting pitch-black tiles.
The Quiet Margose is purely a tavern and offers no accommodations (although it isn’t uncommon to find or or two people “napping” at the long tables by the banked fire in the early hours of the morning). The owner, Tirril Lor, is the great-nephew of the titular Margose and books the entertainment himself – leaving the acquisition and preparation of food to the Qai twins who work the kitchen and live nearby.
Tarnos Venn had a team of dwarves cut defensive structures into the Dosetlar Cliffs during the great war. The guard tower cut into the jutting edge of the cliff still looks nearly new, but the main entrance shows the damage of war and years - there are no longer any signs of where the great door once stood, instead there is just a rough and shattered-looking entryway into the stone face itself.
Tarnos of course had the dwarves build a secret exit to get out in case the front door was held or the complex was invaded and fell, but that exit has been lost. The exit leads to a few secret chambers (once home to Tarnos' fiancee and most trusted assassin), and then to the caves behind the fortress. Those caves are most often used by those in the fortress to store items that are of low value and high "stinkiness" - particularly pickled fish and such.
Semi-ironically, the most resent residents of the fortress has been considering building their own secret exit between the fortress and the caves, either right near the cave entrance or deeper into the back gallery, where it comes within 30-35 feet of the fortress structures.
For those who are unaware, this very Dyson Logos is the cartographer for the new Waterdeep: Dragon Heist book. Everybody give him love and support -- he deserves it!
In grand underdark caverns the dark elves build their cities. The oldest families establish themselves in the more defensible positions and as close to the centre of the cavern for defensive advantage against invaders.
Today’s map is a fairly small stalagmite spire fortress. The spire is surrounded on three sides by a small fortress with a spiral ramp leading up from the fortress into and around the stalagmite. The arrows on the ramp lead upwards with a fairly aggressive angle.
One chamber dominates the interior of the spire – Accessed by visitors from the lower portions of the spire ramp, the family head receives guests and talks to them from the balcony on the next level, a good 40 feet above the floor of the chamber. Further up again are a set of galleries for other family members or assassins to listen in on conversations…
Up in the Fox Hills is a small monastic order. They make mead and honey, study liturgical texts, and commune with their god of the harvest. The monastery grounds include a number of stout stone structures of which the Oratory of the Eleventh Blessing is usually the first seen (and typically the only structure visited by outsiders).
The oratory’s main purpose is to provide a worship and study space for the residents as well as a greeting and meeting area for guests. Tucked between these are a small number of cells for scribes to work in (and the heavy stone structure makes these cells plum work spaces in the summer, and harsh punishment in the winter).
Some cities just stink. Built over drained swampland and mostly relying on surface sewers, Uogralas is unfortunately one of the smellier urban centres of the land.
Uogralas is known as the City of the Frogs because of its swampy origins and the city's patron god, Ugrale, a great toad-like deity dedicated to brickwork, construction, and the hearth. The city is ostensibly run by Duke Sooryakan, who in turn basically runs everything past Prefect Sahint of the church of Ugrale because no edict of the Duke's will have any effect without the support and enforcement of the religious police.
Just north of the city is the walled Monastery of Raised Delights, home to a splinter group of the church of Ugrale who are exiled from the city, but otherwise accepted as long as they have no involvement in the city's politics.
Uogralas primarily exports marsh grains, a crisp watery tuber, lizard leathers, bricks, and spices collected from exotic flowers. They import lumber for boats and construction and for use as fuel, as well as meats, cheeses, and metals.
WOW! I have NEVER seen a map drawn so well, I can't imagine how long it takes!
Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of nine different burial mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a a small tomb right now.
The four lower tombs have Greek “Dromos” entrances – an “avenue” cut into the barrow hill leading to the door to the tomb itself. These avenues would be built up in stone to hold back the earth of the mound and to provide a clear route to the door. Often the end of the dromos furthest from the door would be decorated with columns or other decorations, often long gone by the time would-be tomb robbers arrive on site.
To the south of Baraloba are the Eagle Hills and the imaginatively named Eagle Hills River that runs through it from south to north before joining the Hewbank. The Eagle Hills have a mix of chalk and coal deposits that were attractive to miners. Most of the deposits have now been worked, leaving a collection of open mines and shaft mines in the area. The central point of interest in this hex is the old open chalk mine that takes up 11 of the subhexes right in the middle of the map. The hills here are bright white and are a mix of natural hills and tailings from the mining operations.
On the opposite side of the river and small lake from the mines is a boggy marshland slowly being reclaimed by the forest. If one were to dig beneath the immediate mud and water, it would be noted that the reason this area is low and doesn’t drain properly is that it too was an open mine at some point.
Further south along the river is a small drift mine that has become home to a modest group of humanoids. They keep a low profile and farm the area around the minehead, using grain stolen from caravan a decade ago as their original seed stock. There are less than a score of them living here and they take significant pains to not be noticed by the residents of Baraloba only seven miles away.
Southwest of Baraloba, the Eagle Hills continue into heavy forests. The closest thing here to Baraloba itself is yet another of the old giant’s watchtowers – although this one is not as decrepit as most of the other ruined towers in the region. A druid and their apprentice maintain the tower and keep a small herd of goats that keep the grass in the hills and vales of the area nicely clipped. A trail leads from the tower into the woods and to a massive tree in the middle of a clearing where the druids perform their rites and occasionally just engage in silent contemplation.
A little further to the west another trail leads through the woods to a very large farm / small farming community. A couple of large multigenerational families run these farms and generally try to be self-sufficient, only walking to Baraloba when they require supplies they cannot find or make on their own or with the help of the druids in the tower. The rest of the hex is unpopulated wilderness – rolling hills and a few jutting chunks of stone, expanses of dark and heavy forest teeming with wildlife, small bubbling brooks, and a lazy river looping gently through the hills.
I've also included the full set of seven hexes to show how they fit together. On a normal 6-mile-hex map these would be a village hex in the middle with (clockwise from the top) badlands & ruins hex, hills hex, forest hex, hills hex with mine, forest hex, forest hex.
Vault of the Cave Morphs!
Based on the cave work I did for the Descent into the Depths of the Earth tunnels and passages, here are five cave geomorphs that can be used to link up to any existing tunnels. They are all 2 squares wide at the entrances just like the existing encounter area maps for that adventure, so they mesh best with the secondary tunnels but can be used as constrictions in primary passages or widened areas in tertiary tunnels.
These were my first experiment using a sharpie marker as the foundation of my map drawing – for a number of these geomorphs the outer walls were drawn using a dying marker instead of my usual felt-tipped technical pens. They were drawn using a 07 gel pen for most details and hatching (the same pens I used back when I first started drawing maps), and the sharpie marker for the walls. I used a Squarehex PoGI (Pad of Geomorphic Intent) and drew them while watching “The New Girl” on TV with MissGladiator (and while digging through my Twilight 2000 materials, as you can see in the photo below).
This experiment with a sharpie marker in February (I drew these in February and am finally posting them now? WTH?) is what inspired me to buy a bunch more Sharpies which has lead to my current line of “Daily Doodles” that you can follow along with if you follow any of my social media feeds (on Twitter, FaceBook, or Google+).
Pushing out of the cliff face like a partially exposed egg, this small dungeon complex was evidently not built here but transported in some manner. Either that, or the craftsmen were purposefully annoying in the design as the whole interior structure is at an uncomfortable 7 degree angle with the right edge of the map being slightly more than 36 feet above the height of the entrance doors.
In addition to the awkward angle, the interior of the structure bears a strong scent like a mix of musk and nutmeg. The walls and floors are painted gold, but are scratched up badly enough that most floors and west walls appear to be grey stone with gold streaks on them. Doorways, where open, have golden hair on them from some mighty beast having to squeeze through.
Prowling this space, of course, is the Golden Wolf – an extraplanar beast that must squeeze to push through the 4 foot doorways and is much more comfortable in the wide circular hall of the complex. All doors here open as it approaches, but are often stuck for others. The Golden Wolf guards its treasure jealously – the carcasses of seven platinum geese, each with its neck snapped.
Foul things are afoot in the town of Melad Crossings. One of the two mills has stopped, the smell of death creeps by in the wind from many buildings, the streets are barren, and those who live are not likely to be out of doors except as is necessary.
The water along the west fork of the river is running milky white, and none of the fishermen are among the living, struck dead two weeks ago just as the river began to change. But that doesn’t explain all the deaths – something else must be working it’s way through the townfolk… while the headsman says it is disease and begs for the church to send healers or paladins, others believe something far more sentient and sinister is behind the continued deaths.
Or, you know, it could just be a pleasant little town for your adventuring party to chill out at en route to their next adventure.
I love your work. Thank you for posting. The first adventure I ran with 5e rules was in Goblin Gully (with lots of embellishments). I’m looking forward to your collaboration with WotC.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." – William Gibson, Neuromancer
Two hundred years ago the foul giant Auruxvor terrorized the lands along the western shore of the Krumpt Basin from his fortified lakeside “manor”. Padreth Warcton and a group of mercenaries and adventurers put an end to the giant’s reign of terror and with powerful magics they tore his house asunder.
Two of Padreth’s acolytes remained at the site of the old manor and assisted the locals in building a few small fortifications from the stony debris left behind. Over a few years the fortifications and homes became the southern portion of Warcton Hold. The walls and tower on the south side of the hold have many massive stones that still bear the markings of the giant Auruxvor as well as the magical violence that ended his time.
The hold continued to grow. The initial farmers who moved to the hold would leave the town walls to work their fields and herd their animals. Over the years the hold became the centre of local activity and farmers from further away would come to town to trade goods and eventually to acquire fish for a change in their diet once a few local families moved from agriculture to fishing in the Krumpt Basin.
Today there are few farmers who live within the hold itself. A few families who maintain very large farms that are then worked by local tenants are now ensconced here, along with two merchant clans, the local fisher families (who have to clean their catch at an island in the Basin to keep the smell out of the hold), a retired adventurer or two, and of course a number of worshipers of the church that originally brought Padreth Warcton and company here.
The three most obvious details a traveller notes when visiting Warcton Hold for the first time are the walls, the watchtower and the u-shaped building attached to it.
The walls are of mixed hard stone, much of it worked by the giant Auruxvor and his kin prior to it being repurposed by the locals, and stand fourteen feet tall with battlements mostly along the outer edge. Access to the wall top is via a number of small stone towers built into the wall that are of the same height but have ladders within them to the walls themselves. The walls on the north side of the hold are primarily made of field stone, but share the same construction style.
The octagonal watch tower is a stout four-story affair also primarily made of the giant’s stonework. It is connected by a wall and walkway (with an archway to pass under it) to the large wooden U-shaped structure which acts as the home to the local church and the acolytes sent here to maintain it from the distant capital.
Nestled into the Shadow Woods is Guimond’s Tower – a crumbling multi-story stone and wood structure that looks ready to slide down into the woods at a moments notice. Up on the top of the aged stone is a wooden house-like construction looking down on the tree tops in the area. Some believe that the ageless druid-lich (who goes by various names in various stories) of the Shadow Woods lives in the small house at the top of the tower – which explains both how the wooden structure seems to be outlasting the stone tower, and why the stone tower has not collapsed yet.
Like most rumours and sage’s tales, there is more than a small kernel of truth to this. The wooden house is indeed maintained by an ancient nearly-blind hermit who lives here unmolested because the druid-lich lives quite nearby – under the tower in fact.
The tower’s dungeon cannot be reached from within the tower, but by a secret trap door in the grounds just outside the tower. The druid-lich keeps the trap door well hidden by controlling the growth of grass over it, so it is always entirely overgrown and concealed.
The secret door leads to old stone stairs, and in turn to the crypts under Guimond’s Tower. From the old crypts, caves lead deeper underground towards the sound of dripping water and to earthen and stone caves with tree roots hanging from the ceiling and working down the walls. A small pond is back here, and a smaller altar where the druid-lich worships and works in darkness and near-silence.