Graxworm Map 15 – Lungs Detail

The Graxworm is a massive dead dragon of mythic scale, several miles long and large enough to contain a town in the mouth. Creatures have set up here to “mine” the massive corpse for its valuable materials – leather, scales, ichor, tendons, and more. Practically every bit has some value to someone, and in the long term the expectation is that nothing will remain, not even the massive bones. Today we are deep within the corpse of the graxworm – sections of the lungs reached via Corpsegaard (the secret city at the heart of the fell beast). While most of the lungs are petrified, clever engineering has converted the alveoli within the lungs into the bellows that power the manufacturing and refining capacity of the necro-industrial complex.

Like most of the industrial processes within the Graxworm, the pattern of this map repeats itself with variation from section to section throughout the lungs. An overview of the lungs and how they are accessed will be included in the map of the Bastion city of Corpsegaard. While Corpsegaard has secret accessways into the mountain upon which the Graxworm lies, the bellows here are connected to air shafts that lead to the outside – each shaft opening to a set of a dozen or so fist-sized holes under a scale on the corpse to hide them from view. Observers of the Graxworm have identified that air is taken in beneath the scales by watching how the occasional morning fog that shrouds the mountain is pulled into the chest area.

Many amateur engineers have worked on the various bellows to various effect. This particular example shows three different types, each powered by ropes or chains attached to a wheel rotated by those unfortunate enough to be the workers down here (slaves or the lowest caste of the grubs). The structures to the left of the bellows (cut into the outer wall of the lungs) are used to house these lowly workers – with mustering chambers between their housing area and the bellows themselves.

We have other chambers within this section of the lungs – one with pipes leading to it indicating that it used to have one of the bellows within until the alveoli finally rotted away. Other chambers contain “fresh” air sacs (still filthy with rot and nacreous fluids) to be harvested for the bellows. Finally, a manifold on the far right takes the various bellow inputs and pushes the air out to the city or the industrial processes.

The Graxworm Megadungeon was proposed to me by Gallant Knight Games – a dungeon set within the corpse of a dragon some seven miles in length. If I were to map out the whole thing we’d be looking at a good 100+ maps, so instead we’ll be focusing on points of interest as a sort of “point crawl” megadungeon setting. We’ll be posting a few maps in the set every month for… well… quite some time!

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,200 x 13,200 pixels in size (34 x 44 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,380 x 3,080 or 4,760 x 6,160 pixels, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/10/24/graxworm-map-15-lungs-detail/