I gotta admit, I was initially unhappy with seeing this style of map in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. After running one session in it however, I actually really appreciated its lack of clutter and straightforward approach. It reminds me of when we used to just draw on our battlemaps, but you know, done in a vastly more clean way and to a far more professional quality.
I've really come around, I'm legitimately ashamed of my initial reaction, and I'm very grateful that you're putting up these resources. I'm posting mostly as a means of subscribing to the thread, and to remind myself to come back and loot the lot of it. As a relatively new DM, I'm sticking to published adventures but this will be a fantastic resource to add some variety and unique flair to make it more than just a 'by the book' campaign.
A set of small stony islands jut out of the waters near the the northern reach of Alders Bay. They contain a number of small ruins, likely linked to the ruins of the castles and forts that have slowly been overwhelmed by the encroaching swamps on the northwest shore of the bay.
Difficult to land on, the islands are surrounded by ship-killing shoals and much of the land is atop tall red cliffs. Most make landfall on the sandy extension that nearly forms an isthmus between the two eastern islands – although the Oni pirate Vurd Skullbow has been known to bring his vessel in through the southern access and anchor it between the three islands.
Each island has its own point of interest. The large island has a ruined watchtower on its peak, but also has a cave system beneath it that was expanded at some point, likely by the builders of the tower. Those caves are used by Vurd to stash treasure and hostages on occasion.
The northeastern island bears the marks of many landfalls and small campfires. The long beach is littered with detritus – much of it charred firewood and empty bottles and casks. On the rise of the island is a set of fairly recent standing stones – no more than a hundred or so years old – the stones all appear to have been scavenged from the other ruins on the islands.
The small island to the southeast still sports a standing watchtower, although the wooden roof has long rotted away. The island however offers no means to get to it – the top of the island is a solid fifty feet above the waters below, with treacherous cliffs on all sides.
I'm very grateful that you're putting up these resources. I'm posting mostly as a means of subscribing to the thread, and to remind myself to come back and loot the lot of it. As a relatively new DM, I'm sticking to published adventures but this will be a fantastic resource to add some variety and unique flair to make it more than just a 'by the book' campaign.
Thanks! After a month of "toddler-quality doodles and scribbles" remarks, it is nice to read the positive feedback.
Prince’s Harbour is a small bay along the Flindhome River long ago wrestled from control of the local humanoids and now slowly being converted into agricultural land. The community of Prince’s Harbour is self-reliant and independent – a collection of small “outpost” farmers, woodsmen, miners and so on built up around the small community of Prince’s Harbour itself.
This map focuses on a small forested area to the southwest of the community proper and is considered to most to be the furthest point that is still “Prince’s Harbour” instead of the old Flindlands. A small gold mine along the Gnoll’s Ear river is the anchor to this area, with a few supporting farms around it. The road to the east eventually leads to the community proper.
Adventurers are most likely to be interested in this area because the virgin forests still may be home to the remnants, descendants, or lost treasures of the beastmen who once had lordship over the area – or of course because of Jendson’s Mine which is certainly going to attract some attention as last year it looked like they had exhausted their small vein of ore, but are suddenly bringing in more gold than ever.
Each hex on the map is roughly 100 feet face-to-face. This map is also the first full map released on the blog that was drawn entirely digitally in Photoshop – which has been a learning curve for me. One thing I learned was to increase my resolution a lot – this map is only 300dpi and I had to save it as a jpg to keep file size under control, but I’ve learned a lot of tricks in the month since I drew it and any future digital maps will be back at the more recent 600 to 1200 dpi and file sizes are also kept down.
There is already a second map in the set drawn for release next month, and a total of 9 maps will be in the set when it is finished.
The Holy City has a slight necropolis issue. For most of the history of the city, old mines and caverns beneath the hills of the city have been used as crypts and tombs. Some areas were expanded by churches specifically to inter the deceased, others just adapted as the small silver mines that helped found the city were worn out.
The reason it has become a problem is there can be no proper sewer system built beneath the city as long as the churches and temples regard the catacombs as sacred reliquaries. Further, the thieves that used the massive interconnected structures of tunnels and chambers to get around the city have been known to bury their own (and possibly their victims) down here without proper rites and rituals – leading to a small but steady growth of undead prowling the catacombs. The upside of this is few thieves use the catacombs anymore, but the churches have had to start setting guards to watch over their sacred tombs and crypts to keep prowling ghouls away…
Like the Dark Caverns of Turr that I posted last month, this map is one from my history books. I drew this map in December of 2014 while researching the catacombs under Paris and Rome. I really got into it and crammed all this material onto a single letter-sized page. And then never posted it. I did, however, send a scan of it to Mike Monaco and Paolo Greco for use in Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity. So here we are, 4 years later, and I finally dug the original out of my old folders while organizing my office and have scanned it for your games and mine.
I'm very grateful that you're putting up these resources. I'm posting mostly as a means of subscribing to the thread, and to remind myself to come back and loot the lot of it. As a relatively new DM, I'm sticking to published adventures but this will be a fantastic resource to add some variety and unique flair to make it more than just a 'by the book' campaign.
Thanks! After a month of "toddler-quality doodles and scribbles" remarks, it is nice to read the positive feedback.
One of my favorite maps is Dyson’s Goblin Gully. It’s a great map with just enough detail to work in any fantasy RPG system. It’s the adventure I used to introduce myself to 5e to myself and my players. Why? Filling in the details allowed me to really understand the rules and shape the adventure to my players. When you are ready to run something that requires inputting your own creativity, I cannot recommend Dyson’s work enough as a starting place.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." – William Gibson, Neuromancer
Supposedly once home to a demented prince of alien demons, the walls of the cursed galleries are decorated in mad texts painted in bold black on every available inch. These texts speak of other worlds, demonic powers, and foul creatures from “beyond the veil”.
The galleries are beneath the Benmiria Academy of the Arcane, and are not only locked, but boarded shut. Those who try to study the walls often awaken somewhere else with no memories of the intervening time – somehow controlled or possessed by the texts they read, or if one experiment is to be believed, by either the galleries themselves or something foul still within them.
But when the diabolist arrived in Northvale and summoned the demon Xag’tharon to destroy the king’s armies, sages noted Xag’tharon is one of several demons who’s names are known to the Benmirian archives. And the locked texts of course indicate that they were in turn translated from the mad scribings in the galleries.
The kingdom needs a clever wizard or cleric to brave the galleries to find out more – and they should not travel there alone, for who knows what other foul powers the galleries can manifest as you attempt to unlock the secrets contained there.
The lair of Qiroi, scaled wyrm of the Red Fjords, is far from secret. The rocks for a mile around are burned free of all plantlife, the waters tainted, the skies quiet. The entrance to the old dungeons beneath the ruins of Caenleigh Hold are clearly marked with his spoor and shed scales. And within the dungeons you can hear the serpentine slithering of the long monstrous dragon.
Qiroi is no fool or bestial dragon. The sounds and movement within the dungeons east of the entrance cave are those of illusions planted to lure the unwary. For Qiroi lives beneath the dungeon, in a set of chambers reached through the river that feeds the ancient Caenleigh well.
But he is still a dragon, and has little patience for interlopers and would-be dragon hunters. He uses the illusions and distractions to help him get the jump on intruders, to strike them from behind with his corrosive breath and potent magics.
Much of the daily life in Archsford, the City of Glass, is managed by the Council of The Ancient Masters – a collective guildhall representing all the major guilds and many of the minor guilds in the city (Glassblowers, Masons, Cartwrights, Stevedores, Coopers, Merchants, Mourners, Physicians, Scribes, Charcoal-Burners, and a few others).
From the Guildhall, they organize the city watch and defenses, as well as festivals, trade agreements with other cities, tax collection, and many things that one would expect to be handled by the Duke of Archsford and his civil service.
The hub of the Council is the Guildhall and temple of the Ancient Masters – a combined keep, place of worship, and town hall. On entry to the structure, the large main hall is usually populated with small lean-to shops (and the three chambers on the left are more permanent stores selling wares imported by members of the guildhall from strange and exotic lands). The rooms on the right are dedicated to the civil service and records of the guild.
The northern chamber is the main worship hall for the ancient masters themselves, the ancestor-gods of the temple. Most truly important meetings with the senior members of the guild are usually handled in this chamber and the room to the west, pacing around and occasionally intoning chants and rites while engaged in negotiations and power-brokering.
Beneath the temple are the crypts. This well-hidden substructure is only accessible via a secret door under the chair set in front of the statues of the three ancient masters in the main hall. Down here are the three crypts of the masters, who still whisper advice and prophecy to scribes who sit outside the crypts with one ear to the cracked masonry. A larger chamber past the crypts holds the scrolls of what the scribes have gleaned from the masters, as well as a secret door to a deeper crypt where something darker is entombed.
A small keep within spitting distance of the Kearwood Grove - a sanctified grove of the druids of the Somernigan Woods - Sanhelter Keep is essentially a ranger base for keeping an eye on whomever or whatever moves in or our of the woods.
At some point the lords of Sanhelter stopped watching for poachers in the Somernigan, leaving that to the druids (and turning a blind eye to anything the druids may be doing that the Lords of Amargos would not approve of).
Home to foul goblinoids now, the Sapphire Vault appears to have been part of some larger structure at one point – the construction of which is significantly beyond the skills of the current inhabitants. Access to the vault is via one of two small caves on the cliff-face – the smaller cave being about 12 feet above the larger and used primarily as a look-out for invaders, looters, and adventurers.
Once past the rough entrance of the cave, the walls of the vault are covered in bright blue tiles – although many are cracked or missing from ages of abuse. Three major chambers exist within the vault, two of which are used as living areas by the goblinoids and the furthest one from the entrance claimed as the domain of their priest-king.
The goblinoids have not discovered the secret cave and passage from the southern chamber to the base of the cliff face. The cave was obviously used to store provisions by a previous tenant, and the dried remains of foodstuffs and a few now empty casks of water can be found down here along with some tools and other goods.
Above the waterfall on the Azer river is an outcropping of pink granite with a small flat plateau atop it. J’cob Wyvernseeker earned his title here as his travelling companions from Elk Harbor watched him climb the rock and be picked up by a wyvern that he then flew across the sea to the west.
Some say he was just killed up there by a passing wyvern, and the stories of his travelling companions were just fanciful tales to get them an extra drink or two at the tavern.
Regardless, the landmark also marks the location of a small “dungeon” – a set of passages and stairs that are used to cross both the Azer river and avoid the waterfall in the process. The passages of Wyvernseeker Rock are damp and foul – the stonework probably dwarven, but never completed.
This map was inspired by the module “Eye of the Serpent”, an AD&D1e adventure published in 1984 that I recently played through with the Monday Night Labyrinth Lord group. The maps in that adventure were drawn by Geoff Wingate / Paul Ruiz and it is specifically his style of rock face that I’m trying to emulate in this map.
The tomb of the Kirin-Born Prince is one of the older known tombs of the Etturan Dynasty – and one of the few who’s location was not lost with the burning of the Tarek Archives. Many expeditions to seek out the later “shaft-tombs” often use this tomb as a sort of base camp, much to the chagrin of the Etran Cenobites.
A small order of religious monks has sprung up around several of the rediscovered Etturan tombs and attempt to maintain or rehabilitate the structures to worship and seek the gifts of the many god-kings that were entombed in the region. However, their numbers are few and the gifts of god-kings are sparse if not completely non-existent – thus the Etran Cenobites eke out a paltry living, only noticed when they harass would-be tomb-raiders.
This map was inspired by the Empire of the Petal Throne campaign I’ve been playing in – where we recently went exploring an old Engsvanyali-era tomb on the southern continent. The linework was all done on paper, with the shading added digitally afterwards.
Perched out in a small lake in the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams is a small stony island keep only a hundred or so feet from shore. Surrounded by the heavy swamp forests, the island and keep are only visible when you fly overhead or manage to get to the shore of the nameless lake.
Built with a combination of magic and bullywug slave labour, the small keep on the nameless lake was meant to be Greth’s place of refuge as he studied the effects of the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams. But as with most who decide to live in the swamp, Greth long ago ceased to be an impartial observer and has instead found himself in a strange nightmare, no longer remembering why he is here, trapped on this small island refuge surrounded by the timeless swamp and the strange creatures that wander it.
Ever since I started practicing drawing and illustrating, I’ve been enjoying the heavy smooth lines of working with a Sharpie marker. So occasionally I take the marker to my map work. This map is inspired in a large part by the small island keep in the Eye of the Serpent module which I also drew in this style while exploring it in a recent Monday night game session.
This month’s map of Prince’s Harbour is set at the outlet of the Gnoll’s Ear River into the Prince’s Harbour itself off the Flindhome River. Land along the Gnoll’s Ear is rough and rocky, making it poor farmland in most cases except in small stretches where significant soil has built up.
The Gnoll’s Ear has a bad reputation, a rough current, and a lot of rocks, so few homes are built along it proper – instead most people build homes nearby, tucked into the forest or along the roads outside of the main streets of Prince’s Harbour itself just to the north. Properties here are a mix of subsistence farming and lower class residential for those who work for the craftsfolk and richer families in town.
The main reason adventurers may find themselves in this area is a passing interest in the burned ruins of a major structure on the partial peninsula formed by the Gnoll’s Ear, or just when travelling through the area.
The ruins were a three-story stone manor house and outbuildings – there used to be a road between them and Jendson’s Mine on Map 1, but it is almost entirely lost to nature now. The ruins have been used as a meeting place and “haunted ruins” dares by the youth of Prince’s Harbour for a couple of generations now, so everyone would be quite surprised if it turned out that there was indeed a secret haunted basement to the structure that can only be found by someone carrying the magical key to it.
Each hex on the map is roughly 100 feet face-to-face. The Prince’s Harbour maps are the first set of maps on the blog drawn entirely digitally in Photoshop – which has been a learning curve for me. Because I was in the middle of a major learning curve drawing this, they are being released as 300dpi jpgs instead of my usual 1200 dpi pngs. There will be a total of 9 maps in the set when complete.
A dense complex of odd chambers and nonsensical halls, Izzel’s Folly is home to at least one foul fiend normally only found in the third glaucous hell and is in turn overrun with foul little humanoids that seem to spontaneously erupt through from their particular hell to accompany (and feed) the fiend.
Izzel originally built this as part of a larger structure in their research into summoning forth the many alchemical salts of the yellow hells – but at some point everything went wrong. The surface structures are all destroyed and all that remains are these underground areas which were once painted in all imaginable shades of yellow, but which are now a pale blue-grey (and occasionally green-grey where the brightest yellows still cling).
The structures down here include a variety of pseudo-temples (to contact the residents of the yellow hells), strange metamagical machineries, workspaces, grand halls, secret chambers, and even a chamber completely divorced from the rest of the structure, only reachable through passwall, teleportation, and similar magics.
Surrounded by the cyclopean ruins of the Temple of the Abyss, the Prince of Clubs retreats to his green and black granite bastion to while away the ages between the godwars he is forced to fight. A champion of the forces of change & chaos, his own existence seems stolid and phlegmatic – a weapon to be drawn in battle and then carefully returned to the Bastion.
This map of the Prince’s Bastion covers the above-ground structures – a squat dome and towers built of enormous 7 to 12 foot blocks of granite supposedly brought here from the veridian hells to make the structure resistant to most magics of this realm. For decades at a time the Prince of Clubs can be found seated on his throne, pondering the passage of eras and his role therein. The smaller throne at his side is occasionally home to his partner, the Archon Tamaru.
From the throne room of the Bastion, a pair of stairs lead down to the deeper chambers which will be detailed in a later map (or any number of dungeons from the blog can be substituted here as well).
This is the second map I’ve ever stippled. I don’t expect you’ll see many more – even though I love the visual effect, the work involved is… punishingly slow.
Crass Commercialization Time! With extra emphasis on the crass!
Sometimes you just need a dungeon that tells every other dungeon how you feel about them. Or a substitute level in a larger adventure when the original level was just a massive pain in the ass (I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU, “the Nightmare Maze of Jigresh”).
Or perhaps you have learned that your DM is about to run you through the Tomb of Horrors, again, with extra horrors and less treasure.
In that case, I would probably wear the T-Shirt to the session, or perhaps drink from the mug. I’ve stuck this design on a variety of products through Redbubble. (Note that because of RedBubble’s rules regarding the F-word, there’s an adult filter to get through to see the products on the site.)
This dungeon design was triggered by a recent Twitter thread where Gil Ramirez was reminiscing on the classic “Dungeon of FU” I posted almost three years ago.
I gotta admit, I was initially unhappy with seeing this style of map in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. After running one session in it however, I actually really appreciated its lack of clutter and straightforward approach. It reminds me of when we used to just draw on our battlemaps, but you know, done in a vastly more clean way and to a far more professional quality.
I've really come around, I'm legitimately ashamed of my initial reaction, and I'm very grateful that you're putting up these resources. I'm posting mostly as a means of subscribing to the thread, and to remind myself to come back and loot the lot of it. As a relatively new DM, I'm sticking to published adventures but this will be a fantastic resource to add some variety and unique flair to make it more than just a 'by the book' campaign.
A set of small stony islands jut out of the waters near the the northern reach of Alders Bay. They contain a number of small ruins, likely linked to the ruins of the castles and forts that have slowly been overwhelmed by the encroaching swamps on the northwest shore of the bay.
Difficult to land on, the islands are surrounded by ship-killing shoals and much of the land is atop tall red cliffs. Most make landfall on the sandy extension that nearly forms an isthmus between the two eastern islands – although the Oni pirate Vurd Skullbow has been known to bring his vessel in through the southern access and anchor it between the three islands.
Each island has its own point of interest. The large island has a ruined watchtower on its peak, but also has a cave system beneath it that was expanded at some point, likely by the builders of the tower. Those caves are used by Vurd to stash treasure and hostages on occasion.
The northeastern island bears the marks of many landfalls and small campfires. The long beach is littered with detritus – much of it charred firewood and empty bottles and casks. On the rise of the island is a set of fairly recent standing stones – no more than a hundred or so years old – the stones all appear to have been scavenged from the other ruins on the islands.
The small island to the southeast still sports a standing watchtower, although the wooden roof has long rotted away. The island however offers no means to get to it – the top of the island is a solid fifty feet above the waters below, with treacherous cliffs on all sides.
https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/redrock-cays/
Thanks! After a month of "toddler-quality doodles and scribbles" remarks, it is nice to read the positive feedback.
Prince’s Harbour is a small bay along the Flindhome River long ago wrestled from control of the local humanoids and now slowly being converted into agricultural land. The community of Prince’s Harbour is self-reliant and independent – a collection of small “outpost” farmers, woodsmen, miners and so on built up around the small community of Prince’s Harbour itself.
This map focuses on a small forested area to the southwest of the community proper and is considered to most to be the furthest point that is still “Prince’s Harbour” instead of the old Flindlands. A small gold mine along the Gnoll’s Ear river is the anchor to this area, with a few supporting farms around it. The road to the east eventually leads to the community proper.
Adventurers are most likely to be interested in this area because the virgin forests still may be home to the remnants, descendants, or lost treasures of the beastmen who once had lordship over the area – or of course because of Jendson’s Mine which is certainly going to attract some attention as last year it looked like they had exhausted their small vein of ore, but are suddenly bringing in more gold than ever.
Each hex on the map is roughly 100 feet face-to-face. This map is also the first full map released on the blog that was drawn entirely digitally in Photoshop – which has been a learning curve for me. One thing I learned was to increase my resolution a lot – this map is only 300dpi and I had to save it as a jpg to keep file size under control, but I’ve learned a lot of tricks in the month since I drew it and any future digital maps will be back at the more recent 600 to 1200 dpi and file sizes are also kept down.
There is already a second map in the set drawn for release next month, and a total of 9 maps will be in the set when it is finished.
https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/princes-harbour-map-1/
The Holy City has a slight necropolis issue. For most of the history of the city, old mines and caverns beneath the hills of the city have been used as crypts and tombs. Some areas were expanded by churches specifically to inter the deceased, others just adapted as the small silver mines that helped found the city were worn out.
The reason it has become a problem is there can be no proper sewer system built beneath the city as long as the churches and temples regard the catacombs as sacred reliquaries. Further, the thieves that used the massive interconnected structures of tunnels and chambers to get around the city have been known to bury their own (and possibly their victims) down here without proper rites and rituals – leading to a small but steady growth of undead prowling the catacombs. The upside of this is few thieves use the catacombs anymore, but the churches have had to start setting guards to watch over their sacred tombs and crypts to keep prowling ghouls away…
Like the Dark Caverns of Turr that I posted last month, this map is one from my history books. I drew this map in December of 2014 while researching the catacombs under Paris and Rome. I really got into it and crammed all this material onto a single letter-sized page. And then never posted it. I did, however, send a scan of it to Mike Monaco and Paolo Greco for use in Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity. So here we are, 4 years later, and I finally dug the original out of my old folders while organizing my office and have scanned it for your games and mine.
https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/catacombs-beneath-the-holy-city/
One of my favorite maps is Dyson’s Goblin Gully. It’s a great map with just enough detail to work in any fantasy RPG system. It’s the adventure I used to introduce myself to 5e to myself and my players. Why? Filling in the details allowed me to really understand the rules and shape the adventure to my players. When you are ready to run something that requires inputting your own creativity, I cannot recommend Dyson’s work enough as a starting place.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." – William Gibson, Neuromancer
Supposedly once home to a demented prince of alien demons, the walls of the cursed galleries are decorated in mad texts painted in bold black on every available inch. These texts speak of other worlds, demonic powers, and foul creatures from “beyond the veil”.
The galleries are beneath the Benmiria Academy of the Arcane, and are not only locked, but boarded shut. Those who try to study the walls often awaken somewhere else with no memories of the intervening time – somehow controlled or possessed by the texts they read, or if one experiment is to be believed, by either the galleries themselves or something foul still within them.
But when the diabolist arrived in Northvale and summoned the demon Xag’tharon to destroy the king’s armies, sages noted Xag’tharon is one of several demons who’s names are known to the Benmirian archives. And the locked texts of course indicate that they were in turn translated from the mad scribings in the galleries.
The kingdom needs a clever wizard or cleric to brave the galleries to find out more – and they should not travel there alone, for who knows what other foul powers the galleries can manifest as you attempt to unlock the secrets contained there.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/18/the-cursed-galleries/
The lair of Qiroi, scaled wyrm of the Red Fjords, is far from secret. The rocks for a mile around are burned free of all plantlife, the waters tainted, the skies quiet. The entrance to the old dungeons beneath the ruins of Caenleigh Hold are clearly marked with his spoor and shed scales. And within the dungeons you can hear the serpentine slithering of the long monstrous dragon.
Qiroi is no fool or bestial dragon. The sounds and movement within the dungeons east of the entrance cave are those of illusions planted to lure the unwary. For Qiroi lives beneath the dungeon, in a set of chambers reached through the river that feeds the ancient Caenleigh well.
But he is still a dragon, and has little patience for interlopers and would-be dragon hunters. He uses the illusions and distractions to help him get the jump on intruders, to strike them from behind with his corrosive breath and potent magics.
High resolution B&W and shaded versions of the map are at: https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/20/well-of-the-wyrm/
Much of the daily life in Archsford, the City of Glass, is managed by the Council of The Ancient Masters – a collective guildhall representing all the major guilds and many of the minor guilds in the city (Glassblowers, Masons, Cartwrights, Stevedores, Coopers, Merchants, Mourners, Physicians, Scribes, Charcoal-Burners, and a few others).
From the Guildhall, they organize the city watch and defenses, as well as festivals, trade agreements with other cities, tax collection, and many things that one would expect to be handled by the Duke of Archsford and his civil service.
The hub of the Council is the Guildhall and temple of the Ancient Masters – a combined keep, place of worship, and town hall. On entry to the structure, the large main hall is usually populated with small lean-to shops (and the three chambers on the left are more permanent stores selling wares imported by members of the guildhall from strange and exotic lands). The rooms on the right are dedicated to the civil service and records of the guild.
The northern chamber is the main worship hall for the ancient masters themselves, the ancestor-gods of the temple. Most truly important meetings with the senior members of the guild are usually handled in this chamber and the room to the west, pacing around and occasionally intoning chants and rites while engaged in negotiations and power-brokering.
Beneath the temple are the crypts. This well-hidden substructure is only accessible via a secret door under the chair set in front of the statues of the three ancient masters in the main hall. Down here are the three crypts of the masters, who still whisper advice and prophecy to scribes who sit outside the crypts with one ear to the cracked masonry. A larger chamber past the crypts holds the scrolls of what the scribes have gleaned from the masters, as well as a secret door to a deeper crypt where something darker is entombed.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/22/guildhall-and-temple-of-the-ancient-masters/
A small keep within spitting distance of the Kearwood Grove - a sanctified grove of the druids of the Somernigan Woods - Sanhelter Keep is essentially a ranger base for keeping an eye on whomever or whatever moves in or our of the woods.
At some point the lords of Sanhelter stopped watching for poachers in the Somernigan, leaving that to the druids (and turning a blind eye to anything the druids may be doing that the Lords of Amargos would not approve of).
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/25/sanhelter-keep/
Home to foul goblinoids now, the Sapphire Vault appears to have been part of some larger structure at one point – the construction of which is significantly beyond the skills of the current inhabitants. Access to the vault is via one of two small caves on the cliff-face – the smaller cave being about 12 feet above the larger and used primarily as a look-out for invaders, looters, and adventurers.
Once past the rough entrance of the cave, the walls of the vault are covered in bright blue tiles – although many are cracked or missing from ages of abuse. Three major chambers exist within the vault, two of which are used as living areas by the goblinoids and the furthest one from the entrance claimed as the domain of their priest-king.
The goblinoids have not discovered the secret cave and passage from the southern chamber to the base of the cliff face. The cave was obviously used to store provisions by a previous tenant, and the dried remains of foodstuffs and a few now empty casks of water can be found down here along with some tools and other goods.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/10/29/the-sapphire-vault/
Above the waterfall on the Azer river is an outcropping of pink granite with a small flat plateau atop it. J’cob Wyvernseeker earned his title here as his travelling companions from Elk Harbor watched him climb the rock and be picked up by a wyvern that he then flew across the sea to the west.
Some say he was just killed up there by a passing wyvern, and the stories of his travelling companions were just fanciful tales to get them an extra drink or two at the tavern.
Regardless, the landmark also marks the location of a small “dungeon” – a set of passages and stairs that are used to cross both the Azer river and avoid the waterfall in the process. The passages of Wyvernseeker Rock are damp and foul – the stonework probably dwarven, but never completed.
This map was inspired by the module “Eye of the Serpent”, an AD&D1e adventure published in 1984 that I recently played through with the Monday Night Labyrinth Lord group. The maps in that adventure were drawn by Geoff Wingate / Paul Ruiz and it is specifically his style of rock face that I’m trying to emulate in this map.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/05/wyvernseeker-rock/
The tomb of the Kirin-Born Prince is one of the older known tombs of the Etturan Dynasty – and one of the few who’s location was not lost with the burning of the Tarek Archives. Many expeditions to seek out the later “shaft-tombs” often use this tomb as a sort of base camp, much to the chagrin of the Etran Cenobites.
A small order of religious monks has sprung up around several of the rediscovered Etturan tombs and attempt to maintain or rehabilitate the structures to worship and seek the gifts of the many god-kings that were entombed in the region. However, their numbers are few and the gifts of god-kings are sparse if not completely non-existent – thus the Etran Cenobites eke out a paltry living, only noticed when they harass would-be tomb-raiders.
This map was inspired by the Empire of the Petal Throne campaign I’ve been playing in – where we recently went exploring an old Engsvanyali-era tomb on the southern continent. The linework was all done on paper, with the shading added digitally afterwards.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/08/tomb-of-the-kirin-born-prince/
These are very well made and elaborate, nice work
Giant flaming rocks filled with tarrasques fall, everyone dies.
Perched out in a small lake in the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams is a small stony island keep only a hundred or so feet from shore. Surrounded by the heavy swamp forests, the island and keep are only visible when you fly overhead or manage to get to the shore of the nameless lake.
Built with a combination of magic and bullywug slave labour, the small keep on the nameless lake was meant to be Greth’s place of refuge as he studied the effects of the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams. But as with most who decide to live in the swamp, Greth long ago ceased to be an impartial observer and has instead found himself in a strange nightmare, no longer remembering why he is here, trapped on this small island refuge surrounded by the timeless swamp and the strange creatures that wander it.
Ever since I started practicing drawing and illustrating, I’ve been enjoying the heavy smooth lines of working with a Sharpie marker. So occasionally I take the marker to my map work. This map is inspired in a large part by the small island keep in the Eye of the Serpent module which I also drew in this style while exploring it in a recent Monday night game session.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/11/greths-island-keep/
Thanks! They've been a labour of love for almost a decade now as I slowly improve my craft map after map.
This month’s map of Prince’s Harbour is set at the outlet of the Gnoll’s Ear River into the Prince’s Harbour itself off the Flindhome River. Land along the Gnoll’s Ear is rough and rocky, making it poor farmland in most cases except in small stretches where significant soil has built up.
The Gnoll’s Ear has a bad reputation, a rough current, and a lot of rocks, so few homes are built along it proper – instead most people build homes nearby, tucked into the forest or along the roads outside of the main streets of Prince’s Harbour itself just to the north. Properties here are a mix of subsistence farming and lower class residential for those who work for the craftsfolk and richer families in town.
The main reason adventurers may find themselves in this area is a passing interest in the burned ruins of a major structure on the partial peninsula formed by the Gnoll’s Ear, or just when travelling through the area.
The ruins were a three-story stone manor house and outbuildings – there used to be a road between them and Jendson’s Mine on Map 1, but it is almost entirely lost to nature now. The ruins have been used as a meeting place and “haunted ruins” dares by the youth of Prince’s Harbour for a couple of generations now, so everyone would be quite surprised if it turned out that there was indeed a secret haunted basement to the structure that can only be found by someone carrying the magical key to it.
Each hex on the map is roughly 100 feet face-to-face. The Prince’s Harbour maps are the first set of maps on the blog drawn entirely digitally in Photoshop – which has been a learning curve for me. Because I was in the middle of a major learning curve drawing this, they are being released as 300dpi jpgs instead of my usual 1200 dpi pngs. There will be a total of 9 maps in the set when complete.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/13/princes-harbour-map-2/
A dense complex of odd chambers and nonsensical halls, Izzel’s Folly is home to at least one foul fiend normally only found in the third glaucous hell and is in turn overrun with foul little humanoids that seem to spontaneously erupt through from their particular hell to accompany (and feed) the fiend.
Izzel originally built this as part of a larger structure in their research into summoning forth the many alchemical salts of the yellow hells – but at some point everything went wrong. The surface structures are all destroyed and all that remains are these underground areas which were once painted in all imaginable shades of yellow, but which are now a pale blue-grey (and occasionally green-grey where the brightest yellows still cling).
The structures down here include a variety of pseudo-temples (to contact the residents of the yellow hells), strange metamagical machineries, workspaces, grand halls, secret chambers, and even a chamber completely divorced from the rest of the structure, only reachable through passwall, teleportation, and similar magics.
And of course, many foul little demonic beasts.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/15/the-many-chambers-of-izzels-folly/
Surrounded by the cyclopean ruins of the Temple of the Abyss, the Prince of Clubs retreats to his green and black granite bastion to while away the ages between the godwars he is forced to fight. A champion of the forces of change & chaos, his own existence seems stolid and phlegmatic – a weapon to be drawn in battle and then carefully returned to the Bastion.
This map of the Prince’s Bastion covers the above-ground structures – a squat dome and towers built of enormous 7 to 12 foot blocks of granite supposedly brought here from the veridian hells to make the structure resistant to most magics of this realm. For decades at a time the Prince of Clubs can be found seated on his throne, pondering the passage of eras and his role therein. The smaller throne at his side is occasionally home to his partner, the Archon Tamaru.
From the throne room of the Bastion, a pair of stairs lead down to the deeper chambers which will be detailed in a later map (or any number of dungeons from the blog can be substituted here as well).
This is the second map I’ve ever stippled. I don’t expect you’ll see many more – even though I love the visual effect, the work involved is… punishingly slow.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/17/bastion-of-the-prince-of-clubs/
Crass Commercialization Time! With extra emphasis on the crass!
Sometimes you just need a dungeon that tells every other dungeon how you feel about them. Or a substitute level in a larger adventure when the original level was just a massive pain in the ass (I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU, “the Nightmare Maze of Jigresh”).
Or perhaps you have learned that your DM is about to run you through the Tomb of Horrors, again, with extra horrors and less treasure.
In that case, I would probably wear the T-Shirt to the session, or perhaps drink from the mug. I’ve stuck this design on a variety of products through Redbubble. (Note that because of RedBubble’s rules regarding the F-word, there’s an adult filter to get through to see the products on the site.)
This dungeon design was triggered by a recent Twitter thread where Gil Ramirez was reminiscing on the classic “Dungeon of FU” I posted almost three years ago.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2018/11/19/eff-your-dungeon/