Scavengers’ Deep Map 10

The Scavengers’ Deep is a reminder of the amount of work that went into underground structures during the great war. Generally, the elves only built underground when hiding their breeding and research facilities, whereas the forces of the kingdoms, assisted by the dwarves, were constantly building underground as the elves were unrelenting and would completely raze any surface defences that they defeated.

But the structures now known as the Scavengers’ Deep are atypical, an elven complex mixing some (ruined) surface structures, natural caves, and significant sprawling underground complexes dedicated to research, training, and breeding their slave species.

This is the tenth map in the Scavengers’ Deep series – sitting east of Map 7 (map2 11 & 12 will sit immediately south of this map). We have returned to the outside of the Deep here along the north face, where again we find some fortifications, caves, and a few ruined outer structures.

Unlike the fortifications to the west in map 7, these ones dig much deeper into the Deep and are fully intertwined with the underground caves and complexes.

The ruins here are an old watch tower (with all the upper levels long gone) and a few remnants of ancient walls. A path leads through the ruins and over the small stream via a bridge to a fortified entrance designed to look like an elven knight’s helm (a long, tall variant of a barbute) with the doors set in the base of the T-shaped opening. The ornamentation of the helm hides a series of arrow slits to defend the entranceway. The iron-clad stone doors, however, are currently kept slightly ajar as they have a heavy locking mechanism that engages whenever they are closed. The lock has actually been refitted in the last decade or so, as it does provide for immediate defensive positions when attacked. But the act of unlocking the massive locks from inside is slow and ponderous, so the current residents keep them open.

The residents, in turn, are a small team of dwaves and a couple of halflings who are here to collect loot from the ruins. They have secured a small section of the area for themselves, and keep watch over the halls to the east in case anything nasty comes from deeper within to find out who the new guests are. They snuck past the bandits in Map 7 one night, and have been establishing a camp in the lower portion of the bastion and the main hall at the entranceway. They also keep one halfling on watch in the raised courtyard between the complex and the bastion – but hidden near the back so the bandits won’t spot them.

This map is connected to Map 7 via the exterior of the structures – none of the passages or caves span between the two. In turn it connects to the next map to the east via the surface as well as two passages (one a gallery with windows overlooking the exterior) and a cave. Multiple connections to the south are present – one wide accessway via the elven complex that becomes much more complex and intertwined south of here, and a pair of caves that in turn make their way to the seemingly endless maze of caverns in the Deep.

I've also attached a low-resolution compilation of the ten existing maps of the Scavengers’ Deep set. If printed at miniature play scale (where 1 inch equals 5 feet), each of the individual maps making up the Deep would be 8 feet by 8 feet in size (so once this fourth column is done, it would be 32 feet x 24 feet in size). Expect more maps of the Scavengers’ Deep over the coming months, probably at a rate of one map per month.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 x 14,400 pixels (48 x 48 squares) in size. 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 suggested 10′ squares that this is designed around) – so resizing it to either 3,360 x 3,360 or 6,720 x 6720 pixels in size, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/08/28/scavengers-deep-map-10/