Graxworm Map 14 – “Foundries” 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, not quite at the lungs but at some of the major manufacturing and refining capacity of this necromantic-industrial complex.

A detailed look at one of the sections of Map 13 – this shows a fairly typical “foundry” cluster – many vats where the acid bile, fire spittle, and other elements of the dragon are used to work the bones, scales, and skin of the beast to produce finished material. The vats produce a foul miasma of acidic fumes, poisons, and general nastiness, and the ventilation from the lungs barely does enough to make these areas borderline habitable for workers. The entire area is hot and steamy and carries a strongly acrid taste to the air.

To those who don’t work here (and even for many who do), each foundry cluster like this is a practical labyrinth of brass vats, massive pipes, steam vents, and workshops. They are broken up into these clusters so accidents don’t threaten other foundry clusters, allow various foundries to specialize in one material or one type of war machine, and frankly to reduce the maze-like nature of the whole necromantic-industrial complex.

The ventilation pipes here are about 3 feet in diameter and take the pressurized air from the great bellows in the dragon’s lungs and distributes it at the various vats in an attempt to disperse the foul miasma and give workers access to some fresh air. In many foundries the air flow is used to fan the flames under the massive brass vats to bring the acids to a boil in order to temper the raw materials of the Graxworm.

Every one of these foundry clusters maintains a “garage” where the massive war machines they are building are stored. While a portion of the worked material goes to make personal armor and armaments, as well as to build other structures within the great corpse, the majority is now being put to use assembling these war machines and siege engines – a massive military build-up, and a definite cause for concern to any who discover what’s going on deep within the Graxworm.

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/2024/08/23/graxworm-map-14-foundries-detail/