Return to the Champion's Retreat

The Champion himself had this dungeon constructed, a strongpoint where he could succour those he was sworn to protect. The entrances to the retreat are three caves that are meant to represent his willingness and ability to confront even death itself. Two of these end in traps, one enters into the retreat itself (and a secret door in one of the trapped caves also leads into the retreat – meant primarily to be an emergency exit, not an entry).

But when the amazons arrived on the shores of this land and proved to be more than a minor challenge to the Champion, his mettle broke, and he ran. He ran straight to the Retreat and frantically barred and sealed the doors, locking his myrmidons outside the retreat in his fear and haste. The amazons pursued but were not in time to prevent the sealing of the retreat – but in their annoyance they captured and castrated the myrmidons who have no reason to love the Champion anymore.

The amazons have pulled back for now, leaving only a pair of lookouts with mighty horns to watch the entrance should the Champion emerge. You have information that both the myrmidons and the amazons do not – both the location and the means to open the secret door from the left-hand cave. Within the Champion’s retreat there are many traps and strange bronze automatons that provide the Champion’s last line of defense. The Champion has hidden in the side chamber of the main hall of the retreat where he cowers in fear.

With this information and access to the retreat, you have a unique chance to plunder it before the amazons do. Will you help the Champion? Or help yourselves to his treasures and leave him cowering and snotty in the corner?

The original version of the Coward’s Retreat was drawn way back in November of 2013. I was recently contacted by Sly Flourish / Michael Shea to use it in an adventure he was writing up, and looking at it I decided I really needed to bring it up to my current style.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 400 pixels per square (I’m not sure why, I usually work at 300 pixels per square and just… didn’t for this one) and are 14,400 x 18,000 pixels in size (36 x 45 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 2,520x 3,150 or 5,040 x 6,300 pixels, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/08/30/return-with-me-to-the-cowards-retreat/