From 2008 through to 2013, Sabre Lake was the centre of a number of campaigns that I ran – using B/X D&D, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, and D&D3e. Each campaign focused on different elements of the region – although two of them shared the same intro arc starting with Goblin Gully and then dealing with the horrible thing that was inadvertently released while exploring that site.
The namesake city of this map is a cheap crib of Sanctuary from the Thieves’ World novels – down to it being on a contested border and fairly recently having changed hands from independent to the Satrapy and then to the Allied Empires. It is the last northern city in the civilized lands. Beyond Sabre Lake there are other cities but they are weeks of travel away and remain independent of the various political factions that rule this portion of the land.
The people of Sabre Lake do their best to continue going on as if things hadn’t changed, but the lawless ways of an independent border town don’t mesh that well with the views and laws of the new management. And thus there is strife and friction between the various cults, the Imperial garrisons, the puppet government, and the few remaining citizens with money and clout from the old regime. Throw in the classic feeling of Thieves World to make it a wonderfully crapsack city that you would only love if you were stuck here.
The only element that recurs in every campaign I’ve run here is the Seer. I’ve even had two other campaigns come to Sabre lake over the years to find the Seer of Sabre Lake. To visit the seer, one first visits her shrine in the Citadel, where her acolytes will fill you in on what is needed for you to be granted an audience. Generally it involves renting a nice boat (often from a friend or family member of one of the acolytes), getting it loaded up with expensive or weird things that are useless to you (a samite sail, really? let me guess, your sister weaves samite?) (thirty four feathers from seventeen different swans?), and sailing across the lake to visit.
Those who do not complete the tasks assigned find only a rocky shore and a shallow stony valley. Guests however will find a stony trail at the shore that leads to a much larger valley surrounded by ancient marble ruins. Sometimes there is a test at this point (beat the Seer’s mighty centaur champion at chess!). And then the Seer grants you the assistance of her knowledge and visions.
Ever want to just add a little something when hopping onto a teleportation circle or using some other sort of long distance (or interplanar) portal?
The Portal Nexus was just that for one of my games. A long standing moon gate portal had the destination point obstructed by a group of planetars, so when the PCs jumped through, instead of sending them straight to the destination, they were shunted off to the nearest "portal nexus".
In this case, a weird set of interconnected towers with a number of portals and teleporters throughout, and a small number of stranded extra-dimensional "tourists".
The Portal Nexus is a set of odd interlinked towers with no ground floor entry (but a few upper level doors that lead into the towers from walkways and balconies). Enterprising thieves and those with means of flight can access the nexus via these upper level entries, but the design of the structure assumed that all persons entering and leaving the nexus would be doing so via portals.
The top level (level 4) is two towers connected by a covered bridge. I picture a single portal right in the middle of the bridge, so you can’t actually use the bridge to get from tower to tower without crossing through the portal.
The next level down (level 3) is three towers, two of which are connected by an open-air bridge. The tower on the left I picture as having two portals, at the two dead-end regions of the c-shaped room.
The level just above the ground floor (level 2) is comprised of multiple towers, and also is home to the only open-air portal of the structure. There is a large pillar made of green stone sitting on the roof of one of the smaller towers and reached by a bridge – when activated it calls down a bolt of green lighting from the skies and is open for travel for ten minutes. The spike-sided tower to the left is also home to three more portals (and a balcony overlooking the stone circle on the main level), each embedded in the wall of it’s own chamber, framed in heavy obsidian blocks.
Finally, the ground floor is home to two portals and access to the upper levels.
Originally a small fortification on a rocky outcrop, the Halls of Ghuldesh were magically formed out of the rock beneath the fortification by an order of druids. The old fortifications are but a few stones atop the hill now, but the druids’ work and standing stones remain.
A small settlement in the Thendrake Archipelago, Quellport sits on an unusual lagoon in a cluster of islands. Except for the Isle of Seven Bees (the elongated forested island to the upper left of the map), all the smaller islands are generally just referred to as Quellport or the Quell Islands.
There are a total of four settlements on the Quell Islands as well as a number of towers and smaller edifices –
Quellport itself is essentially in the centre of the map sitting on the gentle waters of the lagoon. With a population of about 1,400, Quellport has grown beyond being a fishing and farming community and supports several churches, guilds, and a “tower of arcane knowledge” where a number of wizards and a few clerics who make excursions out to the cube for research or spiritual reasons.
Quiet Cove on the north side of the same island as Quellport. A small fishing community built up around a couple of large manors established by well-off ex-adventurer types.
Sheep’s Cay on an eastern Quell island specializes in deep sea fishing and also maintains a friendly relationship with the cyclops living in the caves a few islands north of them. They deliver the occasional sheep and large fish to the cyclops, and the cyclops remains generally peaceful in return.
Greenshore is south of Quellport and is known for the excellent shipbuilders who set up their business here. They collect wood from the island across from them and build some of the hardiest fishing and merchant vessels in the region.
The Isle of Seven Bees is home to a strange and massive hive that sits atop a 300 foot amber tower. A number of giant bees (about 20 feet long) live within the hive and occasionally fly over nearby islands. At random intervals every few years or so, they collect upon the cube in the Quellport lagoon – and a local adventurer has regaled visitors and locals alike with tales of liquid gold and other treasures he found within the hive when all the bees were at the cube a few years back.
And finally the cube… In the middle of the Quellport lagoon is a massive cube, sitting at a slight angle in the waters. A deep blue in colour, it seems potentially related to the massive pillars of the “City of Blue”. Small bits of it have been mined and broken off, but those who work the cube itself for more than a few hours find themselves sickening and often dying within a week or two. It is said that whatever god who dropped their die here doesn’t like it when the locals try to break it apart.
The votes for February’s “Release the Kraken” have brought us to a piece that I think would be a perfect fit into any Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign – Paradise Control.
When I was asked for an underground casino map for a D&D game, I immediately had a flashback to the classic Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle adventure that came bundled with the 1980 & 1981 editions of TSR’s Top Secret RPG by Merle Rasmussen. One of the organizations hidden beneath the streets of the city is Pair-a-Dice, a full-fledged secret casino floor set underground.
Now, realistically an underground casino in a faux-medieval environment would most likely resemble a prohibition-era gambling den more than what we think of as a casino – a couple of rooms where people can play their games of chance and maybe store some drinks and a couple of security goons. But this is full on fantasy, so I went with something a little more full-on James Bond, Dragonslayer.
Paradise Control is a small casino when compared to modern mega-casinos, but is quite the underground establishment. It was built out of the basements of multiple structures in town, although disconnected from the actual buildings above during the construction phase. A few disconnected basements remain around the casino, but the only way to the surface is the stairs at the main entrance and a secret sewer escape system.
There are two staircases down to the lobby of Paradise Control from a pair of local businesses. The lobby channels clients towards the main floor with three gambling “pits”, two bars, a linked restaurant and a few halls that can be rented, used for parties, or set up as additional gambling space as needed.
The lower left portion of the map is the service hallways for general staff, including storage space and sewer access (for trash disposal). The upper right passages link the kitchen to the dinning area, and also provide access for security to the various rooms of the establishment (the security room is in the upper right corner and comes with a set of three cells for taking care of problems).
Finally on the lower right we have a pair of offices off the main room, one of which has secret doors to the the southern banquet hall as well as to a secret stairwell down to the sewer area.
Awesome! I can't believe you bring up Top Secret! I had so much fun with game! I've mentioned it to several old school D&D folks and it seems rare people have heard of it. I found that kind of surprising because it was really good! Or at least I thought so when I was, whatever, 11 ish :)
Beautiful work as usual! This would fit right into a campaign I'm currently running that has a rich seedy underground!
Part of a much larger estate that has fallen to advanced decrepitude, Lorean’s Manor sits on a hillside rank with overgrown weeds and brush. Somewhere in the untended brush are a number of collapsed and half-collapsed outbuildings including the kitchens and staff buildings, coach house, and so on.
Standing before these overgrown gardens and ruins is the Lorean’s Manor. The lowest parts of the structure are hidden by errant trees and heavy ground cover, but the high arched roofs and tower make it impossible to miss for now. It is to this decrepit estate that Rosalinde Lorean returned from her studies among the mages of the Hill Islands. With the death of her great aunt, she is now head of the estate and tries to keep things in order while entertaining her great uncle’s delusions that the estate and family are still as important as they were in his youth.
As the estate has almost no money, Rosalinde has replaced the staff with faerie folk that she rescued from a collapsing faerie circle during her time on the Hill Islands. These fae provide the family with food as well as cobbler and seamstress work (although they certainly don’t do any yard work). They flit in and about the old structures where fanciful mushrooms now sprout.
Of course, once the players have met Rosalinde and her fae companions (probably to get some minor MacGuffin), it is time to change things up at the manor. The new circles the fae have been building are invaded by the same dark goblins that overran their previous circle on the Hill Islands, and they establish an unseelie beachhead in our world at the old Lorean estate. Rosalinde and her uncle are locked away in the tower as the goblin king takes up residence in the manor house and his minions spread around the estate and begin to check out the nearby town…
A small fortification near the Hewbank in the Eagle Hills, Brenovale Castle was abandoned a few years ago when plague struck. By the time help arrived, those left behind were dead and bloated, surrounded by foul insects that appeared to carry the infection.
Constructed rapidly through wizardry, the castle remains effectively untouched today – the only sign that anything has changed is the lead plague seals on the front doors have been broken, and no sign of the infected dead can be found within.
But there are weird sloshing sounds coming from behind a collection of barrels in the basement. When moved they expose an old door, sealed not with the lead plague-seals, but with old red wax run through with long strands of human hair. And the sounds from behind the door seem to be receding to some place even deeper…
These lands were once the territories of the god-king Zueshel who was struck down by the Culling Blade wielded by each of the Seven Heretics in turn. Through the blade it is said that they each gained a portion of his power. Modern heretics say that this runs against the very beliefs of the Seven Heretics, who struck down Zueshel while announcing that he was no god to begin with.
Regardless, with the end of Zueshel’s reign, the people turned their worship to the Seven Heretics and a number of temples were built around the land. The greatest of these is said to house their bodies in a secret crypt, where they remain as they were when the heretics died – never decomposing.
Most of the temples of Zueshel were destroyed after the Seven Heretics struck down the God-King – however a few rebuilt into pyramid-temples dedicated to the heretics themselves. Most of these contain (or at least claim to contain) a holy relic of either the death of Zueshel or from the later deaths of the Seven Heretics.
This particular temple claims to have the son of one of the seven heretics entombed in the reliquary below it. It serves both as an administrative centre of the rural province it is in as well as a place of quiet contemplation. Pilgrims carry water to the temple and pour it into the pool in the northeast corner as they silently ask for the intervention of the heretics or the child below into their daily affairs.
Just wanted to say thanks for putting out all this content for the community! It's all so beautiful, and your descriptions really breath life into the designs!!
It should come as no surprise for anyone who has had to deal with the Obsidian Clan bugbears that Nagmer the Terrible meets anyone who requests to parlay with him in the most ridiculously ostentatious cavern setup he could arrange.
Nagmer’s throne cavern is a multi-tiered affair with a natural stone bridge over an underground river. The whole cavern is lit by a massive colony of well-fed fire beetles that crawl along the floor, walls and stalactites. Any discussion with Nagmer is usually conducted by yelling from the stone bridge as his guards block the way onto the north side of the cavern.
The vast majority of these negotiations end without any success, and a fair number end with Nagmer enjoying the envoy for dinner.
The Octopus Sorcerer has been researching and experimenting with some remains of the lost Aemril “technologies” in a cave on Farmrath Summit for the last seven years.
This wouldn’t really matter to anyone except that they are in possession of another Aemril artifact – the White Hadariel Staff. The staff is likely the only remaining key into Aemril sites and your employer has a lead on an unplundered vault in the Dhuurawa Wilds and wants either the Octopus Sorcerer to come along, or even better, that you just bring the White Hadariel Staff without the annoying “this belongs in a museum” octopus.
To meet with (or ambush) the Octopus Sorcerer, you will need to find the cave on Farmrath Summit and wrangle your way past the sorcerer’s guards, workers, and a few clerical staff to interrupt their studies and “acquire” the staff.
The Bitter Minotaur is a roadside inn along a major road within the relatively safe lands of the Satrapy. The roads here aren’t threatened by monstrous incursions and other foul beasts, but as they run through heavy forests they are still prone to a bit of banditry here and there. Thus the Inn serves as a resting point along the route instead of a defensive shelter.
The three-story Inn has a courtyard with wagon gates east and west to allow coaches to roll in, unload passengers and cargo, and then roll out to park the coaches outside the wall for the night. The inn features 21 rooms (a mix of singles and doubles) over two floors above the tavern, as well as a dormitory on the ground floor. The tavern serves food and light drink (ale and wine, but nothing stronger).
Because it is along a major road and almost exactly 1 day’s travel from the capital of the Satrapy, the Bitter Minotaur sees a significant amount of traffic with 2d10+1 rooms booked on the average night, and hires staff from many of the local farms in addition to the small staff that lives on site.
This map is heavily based on the map of the riverside Three Feathers coaching inn from the classic Warhammer Fantasy RPG adventure “Rough Night at the Three Feathers” (seriously, this adventure is incredibly fun - if you haven't played it yet, get a copy and run it now). It started out as a cleaned up version of that map for my online WHFRP campaign, but then sprouted a lot of extra details and a third story as well as a full wall making it a roadside coaching inn instead of a riverside inn.
An exercise in pointless stonecraft, this castle sits abandoned and oft overrun by foul creatures. A dwarven folly – a structure built purely for the sake of building a structure – the castle cuts into and juts over a small canyon in the foothills of Tismar Summit.
When the dwarves left after building the folly, they locked the doors and forgot about it. To this day the front doors remain locked and require Voldrugg’s Key (or magic) to be opened – the current residents got in instead by climbing down on to the bridges over the small river canyon and eventually discovering the mechanisms that open the door on the upper level of the castle.
No one would care about the current residents of the folly if they hadn’t recently gathered a few competing tribes and raided a caravanserai where they looted and burned… and kidnapped the fourth son of Grand Duke Dietmar Stengel. The Grand Duke would really like his son back before they eat him.
Beneath the buckled stone floors of the jungle ruins in the Tempest Gardens is a massive set of catacombs guarded by the eternal vigilance of fifteen deathless minotaurs.
Each minotaur has endured the ages imprisoned within these catacombs in their own way, but none are untouched by time or violence. And they are not alone – while they can barely stand each other’s company, many have surrounded themselves with a few creatures that provide them with entertainment, food, or just the comfort of sharing a living space with others – even if (as in one case) they are little more than psionic protoplasmic slime.
This map was drawn at ledger size (11″ x 17″) at a scale of 6 squares per inch. Part way through drawing it I decided it would be fun to stick in an “easter egg” like the classic Quasqueton map showing up in Undermountain – so I added bits of maps from B2, X1 and T1 as I went. Because the map is so big, it ends up being a very large file. The blog has the map available at 600dpi and 1200dpi, whereas the version posted here is 300dpi.
In a fun twist, this month’s Release the Kraken voting has brought back a classic “joke” map from 2016 – the Tower-Faced Demon!
There are a number of dead gods, demons and other creatures long forgotten who’s planes of existence have ceased to exist and who now float around the astral, petrified with old age and lack of followers.
While most are just ignored, or used as the occasional stopping place or landmark in the infinite phlogiston, the Githyanki are famous for using them as bases of operations, cities, fortresses and so on.
At some point this structure was the head of something large and unpleasant. And at some later time, that head was broken off from the rest of the body and then slowly retrofitted into a small fortress.
Or, if you really want to go weird, get rid of the whole astral plane stuff, and this head fortress floats timelessly 333 feet above the surface of the world, travelling where it is commanded from the spires level of the uppermost tower. It transports a team of violent warlocks and their gnomish strike force, raiding the countryside and seeking untold sources of arcane power that they have become aware of through their dark patrons.
Either way, there are numerous entry points into the head. The mouth is a huge open-air gallery (although the teeth make it difficult to land most flying creatures and craft here), and there are entrances in the right nostril and right cheek, as well as at the tops of the two towers. Thus the inhabitants are always somewhat on edge, expecting attack to come from any side at any time.
They’ve been known to “accidentally” kill each other when surprised.
Tower McDemonFace here was started as a joke really… I posted my demon-faced tower and someone said that they wanted a tower faced demon instead. And one of my patrons asked for “A ‘dungeon’ that’s inside the body of a dead creature, god, etc.”
And here’s where all that wound up… Tower McDemonFace. Who has already become a demon lord worshiped in the Yellow City in a friend’s campaign.
Oh cool, well I have a story of my own Im starting up called planar chaos and this is a summary of it.
Since the dawn of the Nine Hells has been the Tarragan. Tarragan are devils of extreme intelligence loving to torture their victims with puzzles and mind games. Once the Blood war started the Tarragan had been clarified a sub type by Asmodeus. In the Pre-War ages Anarchus the Puzzle King was born. After 4 Milleniums of little us The Puzzle king sent out Puzzlers to the Material plane. Later on a group of adventurers, which are the party members in the campaign based off of this, kill the Puzzle king to stop his torturing in the Material plane. 3 months later Asmodeus contacts the Puzzle king for a use of his army in the Blood war to stop Doresian King of ghouls's army from getting in.
Doresian started over taking the Nine Hells and no one had stopped him yet. Since The Nine Hells are collapsing souls are bouncing every where. This leads to Mount Celestia being over-rided with Sinners. All the sinners in Mount Celestia fall down into fallen angels. One Fallen angel falls in the Negative Plane and has the Energy of death surge through The Fallen angel. This Makes the Fallen Angel The Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper owns now the Negative Plane and Ravenloft. Although Doresian had a plan to take over Ravenloft The Reaper foiled it. Then Doresian attempts to take over the Material Plane and causes a war.
Primus holds a Court session to Help the Leaders reason. As Limbo is the Plane of Chaos and Mechanus is a Plane of Law the Sladdi found a opportunity to invade Mechanus. Now Mechanus is segregated with one half under Sladdi dictator ship and the other half ruled by Primus. Both halves are War Zones.
The Ooze elementals start to go under the Cult of Juiblex and start to eat upon the other elements making the Queen Ooze of all elements rise to power.
In Desperate attempts by the Abishai to bring Devils back to power they arise Tiamat.
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From 2008 through to 2013, Sabre Lake was the centre of a number of campaigns that I ran – using B/X D&D, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, and D&D3e. Each campaign focused on different elements of the region – although two of them shared the same intro arc starting with Goblin Gully and then dealing with the horrible thing that was inadvertently released while exploring that site.
The namesake city of this map is a cheap crib of Sanctuary from the Thieves’ World novels – down to it being on a contested border and fairly recently having changed hands from independent to the Satrapy and then to the Allied Empires. It is the last northern city in the civilized lands. Beyond Sabre Lake there are other cities but they are weeks of travel away and remain independent of the various political factions that rule this portion of the land.
The people of Sabre Lake do their best to continue going on as if things hadn’t changed, but the lawless ways of an independent border town don’t mesh that well with the views and laws of the new management. And thus there is strife and friction between the various cults, the Imperial garrisons, the puppet government, and the few remaining citizens with money and clout from the old regime. Throw in the classic feeling of Thieves World to make it a wonderfully crapsack city that you would only love if you were stuck here.
The only element that recurs in every campaign I’ve run here is the Seer. I’ve even had two other campaigns come to Sabre lake over the years to find the Seer of Sabre Lake. To visit the seer, one first visits her shrine in the Citadel, where her acolytes will fill you in on what is needed for you to be granted an audience. Generally it involves renting a nice boat (often from a friend or family member of one of the acolytes), getting it loaded up with expensive or weird things that are useless to you (a samite sail, really? let me guess, your sister weaves samite?) (thirty four feathers from seventeen different swans?), and sailing across the lake to visit.
Those who do not complete the tasks assigned find only a rocky shore and a shallow stony valley. Guests however will find a stony trail at the shore that leads to a much larger valley surrounded by ancient marble ruins. Sometimes there is a test at this point (beat the Seer’s mighty centaur champion at chess!). And then the Seer grants you the assistance of her knowledge and visions.
Or just tells you useless riddles.
High resolution copy of the map (and a version without tags) can be downloaded from https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/21/the-citadel-at-sabre-lake/
Ever want to just add a little something when hopping onto a teleportation circle or using some other sort of long distance (or interplanar) portal?
The Portal Nexus was just that for one of my games. A long standing moon gate portal had the destination point obstructed by a group of planetars, so when the PCs jumped through, instead of sending them straight to the destination, they were shunted off to the nearest "portal nexus".
In this case, a weird set of interconnected towers with a number of portals and teleporters throughout, and a small number of stranded extra-dimensional "tourists".
The Portal Nexus is a set of odd interlinked towers with no ground floor entry (but a few upper level doors that lead into the towers from walkways and balconies). Enterprising thieves and those with means of flight can access the nexus via these upper level entries, but the design of the structure assumed that all persons entering and leaving the nexus would be doing so via portals.
The top level (level 4) is two towers connected by a covered bridge. I picture a single portal right in the middle of the bridge, so you can’t actually use the bridge to get from tower to tower without crossing through the portal.
The next level down (level 3) is three towers, two of which are connected by an open-air bridge. The tower on the left I picture as having two portals, at the two dead-end regions of the c-shaped room.
The level just above the ground floor (level 2) is comprised of multiple towers, and also is home to the only open-air portal of the structure. There is a large pillar made of green stone sitting on the roof of one of the smaller towers and reached by a bridge – when activated it calls down a bolt of green lighting from the skies and is open for travel for ten minutes. The spike-sided tower to the left is also home to three more portals (and a balcony overlooking the stone circle on the main level), each embedded in the wall of it’s own chamber, framed in heavy obsidian blocks.
Finally, the ground floor is home to two portals and access to the upper levels.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/23/release-the-kraken-on-the-portal-nexus/
Originally a small fortification on a rocky outcrop, the Halls of Ghuldesh were magically formed out of the rock beneath the fortification by an order of druids. The old fortifications are but a few stones atop the hill now, but the druids’ work and standing stones remain.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/25/the-halls-of-ghuldesh/
A small settlement in the Thendrake Archipelago, Quellport sits on an unusual lagoon in a cluster of islands. Except for the Isle of Seven Bees (the elongated forested island to the upper left of the map), all the smaller islands are generally just referred to as Quellport or the Quell Islands.
There are a total of four settlements on the Quell Islands as well as a number of towers and smaller edifices –
Quellport itself is essentially in the centre of the map sitting on the gentle waters of the lagoon. With a population of about 1,400, Quellport has grown beyond being a fishing and farming community and supports several churches, guilds, and a “tower of arcane knowledge” where a number of wizards and a few clerics who make excursions out to the cube for research or spiritual reasons.
Quiet Cove on the north side of the same island as Quellport. A small fishing community built up around a couple of large manors established by well-off ex-adventurer types.
Sheep’s Cay on an eastern Quell island specializes in deep sea fishing and also maintains a friendly relationship with the cyclops living in the caves a few islands north of them. They deliver the occasional sheep and large fish to the cyclops, and the cyclops remains generally peaceful in return.
Greenshore is south of Quellport and is known for the excellent shipbuilders who set up their business here. They collect wood from the island across from them and build some of the hardiest fishing and merchant vessels in the region.
The Isle of Seven Bees is home to a strange and massive hive that sits atop a 300 foot amber tower. A number of giant bees (about 20 feet long) live within the hive and occasionally fly over nearby islands. At random intervals every few years or so, they collect upon the cube in the Quellport lagoon – and a local adventurer has regaled visitors and locals alike with tales of liquid gold and other treasures he found within the hive when all the bees were at the cube a few years back.
And finally the cube… In the middle of the Quellport lagoon is a massive cube, sitting at a slight angle in the waters. A deep blue in colour, it seems potentially related to the massive pillars of the “City of Blue”. Small bits of it have been mined and broken off, but those who work the cube itself for more than a few hours find themselves sickening and often dying within a week or two. It is said that whatever god who dropped their die here doesn’t like it when the locals try to break it apart.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/28/quellport-and-the-isle-of-seven-bees/
With the upcoming Ghosts of Saltmarsh and all the groups getting into nautical adventures that island map is going to be VERY useful!
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
The votes for February’s “Release the Kraken” have brought us to a piece that I think would be a perfect fit into any Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign – Paradise Control.
When I was asked for an underground casino map for a D&D game, I immediately had a flashback to the classic Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle adventure that came bundled with the 1980 & 1981 editions of TSR’s Top Secret RPG by Merle Rasmussen. One of the organizations hidden beneath the streets of the city is Pair-a-Dice, a full-fledged secret casino floor set underground.
Now, realistically an underground casino in a faux-medieval environment would most likely resemble a prohibition-era gambling den more than what we think of as a casino – a couple of rooms where people can play their games of chance and maybe store some drinks and a couple of security goons. But this is full on fantasy, so I went with something a little more full-on James Bond, Dragonslayer.
Paradise Control is a small casino when compared to modern mega-casinos, but is quite the underground establishment. It was built out of the basements of multiple structures in town, although disconnected from the actual buildings above during the construction phase. A few disconnected basements remain around the casino, but the only way to the surface is the stairs at the main entrance and a secret sewer escape system.
There are two staircases down to the lobby of Paradise Control from a pair of local businesses. The lobby channels clients towards the main floor with three gambling “pits”, two bars, a linked restaurant and a few halls that can be rented, used for parties, or set up as additional gambling space as needed.
The lower left portion of the map is the service hallways for general staff, including storage space and sewer access (for trash disposal). The upper right passages link the kitchen to the dinning area, and also provide access for security to the various rooms of the establishment (the security room is in the upper right corner and comes with a set of three cells for taking care of problems).
Finally on the lower right we have a pair of offices off the main room, one of which has secret doors to the the southern banquet hall as well as to a secret stairwell down to the sewer area.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/04/release-the-kraken-on-paradise-control/
Awesome! I can't believe you bring up Top Secret! I had so much fun with game! I've mentioned it to several old school D&D folks and it seems rare people have heard of it. I found that kind of surprising because it was really good! Or at least I thought so when I was, whatever, 11 ish :)
Beautiful work as usual! This would fit right into a campaign I'm currently running that has a rich seedy underground!
That's what happens when you wear a helmet your whole life!
My house rules
Part of a much larger estate that has fallen to advanced decrepitude, Lorean’s Manor sits on a hillside rank with overgrown weeds and brush. Somewhere in the untended brush are a number of collapsed and half-collapsed outbuildings including the kitchens and staff buildings, coach house, and so on.
Standing before these overgrown gardens and ruins is the Lorean’s Manor. The lowest parts of the structure are hidden by errant trees and heavy ground cover, but the high arched roofs and tower make it impossible to miss for now. It is to this decrepit estate that Rosalinde Lorean returned from her studies among the mages of the Hill Islands. With the death of her great aunt, she is now head of the estate and tries to keep things in order while entertaining her great uncle’s delusions that the estate and family are still as important as they were in his youth.
As the estate has almost no money, Rosalinde has replaced the staff with faerie folk that she rescued from a collapsing faerie circle during her time on the Hill Islands. These fae provide the family with food as well as cobbler and seamstress work (although they certainly don’t do any yard work). They flit in and about the old structures where fanciful mushrooms now sprout.
Of course, once the players have met Rosalinde and her fae companions (probably to get some minor MacGuffin), it is time to change things up at the manor. The new circles the fae have been building are invaded by the same dark goblins that overran their previous circle on the Hill Islands, and they establish an unseelie beachhead in our world at the old Lorean estate. Rosalinde and her uncle are locked away in the tower as the goblin king takes up residence in the manor house and his minions spread around the estate and begin to check out the nearby town…
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/05/loreans-manor/
A small fortification near the Hewbank in the Eagle Hills, Brenovale Castle was abandoned a few years ago when plague struck. By the time help arrived, those left behind were dead and bloated, surrounded by foul insects that appeared to carry the infection.
Constructed rapidly through wizardry, the castle remains effectively untouched today – the only sign that anything has changed is the lead plague seals on the front doors have been broken, and no sign of the infected dead can be found within.
But there are weird sloshing sounds coming from behind a collection of barrels in the basement. When moved they expose an old door, sealed not with the lead plague-seals, but with old red wax run through with long strands of human hair. And the sounds from behind the door seem to be receding to some place even deeper…
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/08/brenovale-castle/
These lands were once the territories of the god-king Zueshel who was struck down by the Culling Blade wielded by each of the Seven Heretics in turn. Through the blade it is said that they each gained a portion of his power. Modern heretics say that this runs against the very beliefs of the Seven Heretics, who struck down Zueshel while announcing that he was no god to begin with.
Regardless, with the end of Zueshel’s reign, the people turned their worship to the Seven Heretics and a number of temples were built around the land. The greatest of these is said to house their bodies in a secret crypt, where they remain as they were when the heretics died – never decomposing.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/11/temple-of-the-seven-heretics/
Most of the temples of Zueshel were destroyed after the Seven Heretics struck down the God-King – however a few rebuilt into pyramid-temples dedicated to the heretics themselves. Most of these contain (or at least claim to contain) a holy relic of either the death of Zueshel or from the later deaths of the Seven Heretics.
This particular temple claims to have the son of one of the seven heretics entombed in the reliquary below it. It serves both as an administrative centre of the rural province it is in as well as a place of quiet contemplation. Pilgrims carry water to the temple and pour it into the pool in the northeast corner as they silently ask for the intervention of the heretics or the child below into their daily affairs.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/14/temple2/
Just wanted to say thanks for putting out all this content for the community! It's all so beautiful, and your descriptions really breath life into the designs!!
It should come as no surprise for anyone who has had to deal with the Obsidian Clan bugbears that Nagmer the Terrible meets anyone who requests to parlay with him in the most ridiculously ostentatious cavern setup he could arrange.
Nagmer’s throne cavern is a multi-tiered affair with a natural stone bridge over an underground river. The whole cavern is lit by a massive colony of well-fed fire beetles that crawl along the floor, walls and stalactites. Any discussion with Nagmer is usually conducted by yelling from the stone bridge as his guards block the way onto the north side of the cavern.
The vast majority of these negotiations end without any success, and a fair number end with Nagmer enjoying the envoy for dinner.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/16/throne/
The Octopus Sorcerer has been researching and experimenting with some remains of the lost Aemril “technologies” in a cave on Farmrath Summit for the last seven years.
This wouldn’t really matter to anyone except that they are in possession of another Aemril artifact – the White Hadariel Staff. The staff is likely the only remaining key into Aemril sites and your employer has a lead on an unplundered vault in the Dhuurawa Wilds and wants either the Octopus Sorcerer to come along, or even better, that you just bring the White Hadariel Staff without the annoying “this belongs in a museum” octopus.
To meet with (or ambush) the Octopus Sorcerer, you will need to find the cave on Farmrath Summit and wrangle your way past the sorcerer’s guards, workers, and a few clerical staff to interrupt their studies and “acquire” the staff.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/18/octopus/
The Bitter Minotaur is a roadside inn along a major road within the relatively safe lands of the Satrapy. The roads here aren’t threatened by monstrous incursions and other foul beasts, but as they run through heavy forests they are still prone to a bit of banditry here and there. Thus the Inn serves as a resting point along the route instead of a defensive shelter.
The three-story Inn has a courtyard with wagon gates east and west to allow coaches to roll in, unload passengers and cargo, and then roll out to park the coaches outside the wall for the night. The inn features 21 rooms (a mix of singles and doubles) over two floors above the tavern, as well as a dormitory on the ground floor. The tavern serves food and light drink (ale and wine, but nothing stronger).
Because it is along a major road and almost exactly 1 day’s travel from the capital of the Satrapy, the Bitter Minotaur sees a significant amount of traffic with 2d10+1 rooms booked on the average night, and hires staff from many of the local farms in addition to the small staff that lives on site.
This map is heavily based on the map of the riverside Three Feathers coaching inn from the classic Warhammer Fantasy RPG adventure “Rough Night at the Three Feathers” (seriously, this adventure is incredibly fun - if you haven't played it yet, get a copy and run it now). It started out as a cleaned up version of that map for my online WHFRP campaign, but then sprouted a lot of extra details and a third story as well as a full wall making it a roadside coaching inn instead of a riverside inn.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/21/minotaur/
An exercise in pointless stonecraft, this castle sits abandoned and oft overrun by foul creatures. A dwarven folly – a structure built purely for the sake of building a structure – the castle cuts into and juts over a small canyon in the foothills of Tismar Summit.
When the dwarves left after building the folly, they locked the doors and forgot about it. To this day the front doors remain locked and require Voldrugg’s Key (or magic) to be opened – the current residents got in instead by climbing down on to the bridges over the small river canyon and eventually discovering the mechanisms that open the door on the upper level of the castle.
No one would care about the current residents of the folly if they hadn’t recently gathered a few competing tribes and raided a caravanserai where they looted and burned… and kidnapped the fourth son of Grand Duke Dietmar Stengel. The Grand Duke would really like his son back before they eat him.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/25/the-dwarven-folly-that-is-ruldroc-castle/
Catacombs of the Flayed Minotaurs
Beneath the buckled stone floors of the jungle ruins in the Tempest Gardens is a massive set of catacombs guarded by the eternal vigilance of fifteen deathless minotaurs.
Each minotaur has endured the ages imprisoned within these catacombs in their own way, but none are untouched by time or violence. And they are not alone – while they can barely stand each other’s company, many have surrounded themselves with a few creatures that provide them with entertainment, food, or just the comfort of sharing a living space with others – even if (as in one case) they are little more than psionic protoplasmic slime.
This map was drawn at ledger size (11″ x 17″) at a scale of 6 squares per inch. Part way through drawing it I decided it would be fun to stick in an “easter egg” like the classic Quasqueton map showing up in Undermountain – so I added bits of maps from B2, X1 and T1 as I went. Because the map is so big, it ends up being a very large file. The blog has the map available at 600dpi and 1200dpi, whereas the version posted here is 300dpi.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/28/megamap/
BRUH YO FANTASTIC FANTASTIC BRUH FANTASTIC
In a fun twist, this month’s Release the Kraken voting has brought back a classic “joke” map from 2016 – the Tower-Faced Demon!
There are a number of dead gods, demons and other creatures long forgotten who’s planes of existence have ceased to exist and who now float around the astral, petrified with old age and lack of followers.
While most are just ignored, or used as the occasional stopping place or landmark in the infinite phlogiston, the Githyanki are famous for using them as bases of operations, cities, fortresses and so on.
At some point this structure was the head of something large and unpleasant. And at some later time, that head was broken off from the rest of the body and then slowly retrofitted into a small fortress.
Or, if you really want to go weird, get rid of the whole astral plane stuff, and this head fortress floats timelessly 333 feet above the surface of the world, travelling where it is commanded from the spires level of the uppermost tower. It transports a team of violent warlocks and their gnomish strike force, raiding the countryside and seeking untold sources of arcane power that they have become aware of through their dark patrons.
Either way, there are numerous entry points into the head. The mouth is a huge open-air gallery (although the teeth make it difficult to land most flying creatures and craft here), and there are entrances in the right nostril and right cheek, as well as at the tops of the two towers. Thus the inhabitants are always somewhat on edge, expecting attack to come from any side at any time.
They’ve been known to “accidentally” kill each other when surprised.
Tower McDemonFace here was started as a joke really… I posted my demon-faced tower and someone said that they wanted a tower faced demon instead. And one of my patrons asked for “A ‘dungeon’ that’s inside the body of a dead creature, god, etc.”
And here’s where all that wound up… Tower McDemonFace. Who has already become a demon lord worshiped in the Yellow City in a friend’s campaign.
https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/03/30/release-the-kraken-on-the-tower-faced-demon/
Oh cool, well I have a story of my own Im starting up called planar chaos and this is a summary of it.
Since the dawn of the Nine Hells has been the Tarragan. Tarragan are devils of extreme intelligence loving to torture their victims with puzzles and mind games. Once the Blood war started the Tarragan had been clarified a sub type by Asmodeus. In the Pre-War ages Anarchus the Puzzle King was born. After 4 Milleniums of little us The Puzzle king sent out Puzzlers to the Material plane. Later on a group of adventurers, which are the party members in the campaign based off of this, kill the Puzzle king to stop his torturing in the Material plane. 3 months later Asmodeus contacts the Puzzle king for a use of his army in the Blood war to stop Doresian King of ghouls's army from getting in.
Doresian started over taking the Nine Hells and no one had stopped him yet. Since The Nine Hells are collapsing souls are bouncing every where. This leads to Mount Celestia being over-rided with Sinners. All the sinners in Mount Celestia fall down into fallen angels. One Fallen angel falls in the Negative Plane and has the Energy of death surge through The Fallen angel. This Makes the Fallen Angel The Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper owns now the Negative Plane and Ravenloft. Although Doresian had a plan to take over Ravenloft The Reaper foiled it. Then Doresian attempts to take over the Material Plane and causes a war.
Primus holds a Court session to Help the Leaders reason. As Limbo is the Plane of Chaos and Mechanus is a Plane of Law the Sladdi found a opportunity to invade Mechanus. Now Mechanus is segregated with one half under Sladdi dictator ship and the other half ruled by Primus. Both halves are War Zones.
The Ooze elementals start to go under the Cult of Juiblex and start to eat upon the other elements making the Queen Ooze of all elements rise to power.
In Desperate attempts by the Abishai to bring Devils back to power they arise Tiamat.