dysonlogos

December 2025 Cartography Collection

As always, thank you so much for your support. I've actually been offline since the 19th, and won't be coming back for another few days (this post is automated). There's been a family emergency which has, well, taken over Christmas & Solstice.

But I'll be back!

The final Kraken of the year!

Here we go!

Here's the last two maps for 2025 to be re-released under the patron-exclusive commercial license.

After counting your votes, we've packaged up a pair of maps from late 2023 for this release: The Lordling's Hall and Gorgonmouth Mine.

These are available exclusively to patrons for their commercial use.

Thank you once again for your support; you make this all possible.

I hope you had a merry Christmas and the best of the season, and that tonight brings a happy New Year.

-- Dyson

Twin-Thread Grotto

These limestone caves contain the confluence of a pair of small streams that have cut through the rock for untold ages. The streams connect in central cave and then flow down through the wall to enter the southern cave in a narrow deep ravine with narrow and thin natural stone bridges spanning it in a few places. The whole site would be nothing more than a curiosity to spelunkers if it weren’t for the strange creatures that now dwell along the banks of the streams.

Spudlings live along the banks. They are squat, tuberous humanoids with mottled skin and tiny white leaflike hairs. They sit with their toes submerged in the stream and draw nourishment and water through their feet. They are slow to anger and quick to gossip. They trade small polished stones and fermented root paste for stories and songs.

Blind cave fish and pale craylings swim in the streams. Small colonies of glow-silk spiders hang from the ceiling and harvest insects that drift in on the current. A pair of territorial drakes nest in the southern chamber where the water runs far below the floor. Having grown accustomed to the constant chatter of the spudlings, they are more curious than hostile unless provoked.

The spudlings harbour a great treasure. The Glass Heart is a two-inch smooth white crystal that pulses with a pale light like a gentle heartbeat. The heart glows brighter when the spudlings touch it, and it is usually found in the water where many spudlings are gathered, taking turns touching it with their toes to make it glow. When attuned and set into a keystone of a stone bridge, it will slowly mend all cracks and damage to the bridge (the keystone must still be connected to the bridge proper, so this doesn’t work on bridges that have collapsed already, or where the keystone has fallen - unless someone fixes that part of the bridge manually). Sometimes these repairs are accompanied by sprouting pale root-like tendrils within the cracks of the bridge that writhe and twist under moonlight.

The Final Kraken Poll of 2025

The season's upon us, it's that time of year /
Brandy and eggnog, there's plenty of cheer /
There's lights on the trees, and there's wreaths to be hung /
There's mischief and mayhem and songs to be sung!

AND we need to find out where the Kraken will strike for the last time this year.

Every month, you vote on a selection of maps from the blog's archives. The two that receive the most votes will be re-released under a free patron-exclusive commercial use license. So pick a map that you would like to see in an adventure or two!

https://forms.gle/HSvKMeBFRJbHQG827

Saryer’s Overlook & the Sirenhearth Docks

In 2017 I needed a small fortified community for a game set on the Manticore Peninsula. A small fortification that looks down on the ocean to be the first sign of civilization for those arriving to explore the ancient ruins in the deep forests further on to the peninsula.

This became Saryer’s Overlook which I quickly doodled together in 2017 and which I’m revisiting today as I needed it again for a more recent game.

At first the name of Saryer’s Overlook applied only to the small castle and the walls thereof – occasionally called Salyer’s Fort on some maps of the local area. Over the last fifteen years the structures have expanded twice, extending new curtain walls to enclose various structures including guild halls, a church, and mercenary quarters. When the locals learned to tame the giant jungle bats, they built a watchtower down by the docks that serves as a landing area and roosting place for the town’s small number of air cavalry scouts. The tower where the giant bats roost is the tallest structure in the community - rising as tall as the castle towers at at the top of the hill - is ringed with platforms for saddling and training. At dusk the bats wheel out and the older townfolk call to them by name.

The Saryer Market is in the inner ward of the fortifications, behind church. The market is small but lively, with stalls selling preserved fish, salted hides, and crude maps annotated with warnings. Smoke from hearths and the tang of brine mix in the air, and at night the battlements are lit by steady lanterns that mark the town’s slow, watchful pulse.

Farm plots fan out from the walls into a cleared ring of fields where hardy vegetables and barley grow in soil turned by teams of oxen. Farmers bring their harvest to the gate and trade for iron tools and cloth. Children run errands between the keep and the fields, and veterans of the peninsula sit on low walls to trade stories and point out routes through the forest. The town’s defenses are practical rather than grand, built to hold out long enough for relief to arrive and to give travelers a place to gather their courage.Most adventurers coming to the Manticore Peninsula arrive by boat and land just downhill from the fortified town in the small dockside community of Sirenhearth Docks.

Aside from the watchtower and bat roost overlooking the docks, the construction in the Sirenhearth Docks is entirely of wood because they are only minutes down the hill from the safety of the Saryer walls.

The people who live at the docks are a mix of teamsters, fisherfolk, farmers, the owner of the Sirenhearth Inn, and a few folk who try to make a living “assisting” travelers coming through the settlement on their way to and from the Manticore Peninsula.

Madrek’s Descent

This map was drawn as a set-piece for a climactic encounter where the PCs either rush for the ending while being pursued, or their enemies are the ones rushing while the PCs pursue them (in my game, it ended up being the enemies that were in pursuit of the very pro-active party). The Descent itself is a remnant of an earlier civilization and it thrums with magical energies (in reality, it thrums because it sits above a major power plant and controls the energy output to the underground terraforming engines which are central to why the underdark is so livable in my setting). The space where this occurs is known as Madrek’s descent (Madrek being the local administrator of the terraforming consortium who set up these units in the ancient past, who’s name appears on the dedication plate near the entrance to the understructure).

The end-game was to summon a potent demon named C’Tas (the Computerized Terraforming Autonomous System’s holographic interface) to warm up (or cool off, depending on who’s side wins) the inland sea to the north that hosts a massive selection of eggs along the muddy bottom - eggs that will hatch into shapeshifting malevolent creatures that the world already know as doppelgangers and mimics, but connected by a vast hivemind intelligence. The distributed intelligence is already awakening, but the eggs cannot hatch without the water temperature being increased by five degrees - well within the abilities of C’Tas. On the other hand, if the temperature is dropped 2 degrees, the distributed intelligence will return to torpor, and 6 degrees will result in the freezing and eventual death of the eggs.

The structure descends from the entrances on the south side to the lowest chamber in the centre top of the map. This lowest chamber with the three pillars and massive stone plinths is the ritual summoning space needed to bring forth the demon C’Tas and it was here that the party was negotiating with the demon when their enemies rushed to the edge of the upper tier to try to stop them (having to fight their way through the party’s rear-guard team of fighters and mercenaries who were trying to hold that higher ground against the servants of the distributed intellect.)

Scavengers' Deep - Map 26

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 twenty-sixth map in the Scavengers’ Deep series - this map sits directly east of Map 17, and starts a new column along the eastern side of the existing map set.

The main point of interest on this map is the double bastion - one built into the mesa proper (on the south side of the map) and a second built into a smaller stone promontory. Both are two story fortifications with the lower level being slightly higher than the surrounding terrain, and the upper level being a combination of fortified base and parapets along a mezzanine. The two bastions are connected by a stone bridge that passes over the space between them.

The northern bastion has a wooden ladder along the western parapets that the current residents use to climb in and out of the fortification - they are unaware of the secret stairwell that enters the bastion from the north side, and after encountering a few mutant thralls that still live within the structures, they have sealed off the doors across the bridge.

Much of the space on this map is open areas outside of the mesa proper. The area to the left extends down to the fortified defile in maps 18 and 27. The residents of the north bastion use this position to watch the comings and goings of people and... things... especially those using the defile to access the mesa.

Within the mesa proper we have conenctions to the structures south and east of this map. The passage along the southwest side has large 'windows' (without glass) that look out over this portion of the defile.

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/2025/12/19/scavengers-deep-map-26/

The Greystone Ruins

The Greystone Ruins stand on a weathered rise above a wide, rocky plain, several days travel from any settled road. Beyond the rise, the land rolls away in low, scrub-covered hills punctuated by pale boulders, with only scattered trees clinging to the more sheltered hollows. At dawn and dusk, mist crawls up from distant ravines, filling the dips in the land and leaving the ruins like an island of stone adrift upon a gray, rolling sea. Travellers approaching from afar see the place as a jagged crown against the horizon, its broken walls stark and lifeless under a wide, empty sky.

Within the boundaries of these ruins, the faint remains of streets and courtyards can still be traced. A small lane, now choked with rubble and half-buried paving, runs between roofless shells of what were once townhouses, workshops, or modest shrines. Low walls outline former homes, their interiors open to the elements, their mosaics cling stubbornly to some floors, their patterns shattered. In places, the stone has slumped and cracked, suggesting that some calamity shook the neighborhood from below, tilting columns and splitting thresholds.

A few structures stand more intact than others. The central building has thinner walls, but has held up better than the others with portions of the roof still in place. Around these ruins, narrow alleys twist away in unexpected directions, abruptly ending in heaps of fallen masonry or in open, empty spaces where entire buildings have been erased down to their foundations.

The people who built these ruins belonged to the city-state of Thuran Ves’k, a coastal power built upon a foundation of trade, stonecraft, and the worship of a small pantheon of household gods. Their architects favoured hard, pale rock quarried from inland cliffs, carving it into clean-lined dwellings with flat roofs, internal courtyards, and rain-catching cisterns. The Greystone Ruins were neither the richest nor the poorest part of Thuran Ves’k, but a place of respectable artisans: bronze casters, textile dyers, scribes-for-hire, and keepers of modest shrines where day-to-day petitions were offered in exchange for oil and incense.

Now, only the Greystone Ruins and a few scattered blocks still cling to the hill, the rest of the city lost to landslides and the slow grinding of time. Birds roost in the hollows of fallen beams and shattered lintels; lizards sun themselves on warm stone; and at night the hill seems to climb above the mists like broken teeth out of the sea.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 7,200 x 10,800 pixels in size (24 x 36 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 1,680 x 2,520 or 3,360 x 5,040 respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/12/17/the-greystone-ruins/

The Muster Gatehouse

The Muster Gate, on the south side of the city, is where the troops of the Satrapy traditionally mustered when called upon to take action outside the city – such as for the assault on the Knave’s Spire in 1488 or the search for chancellor Kelem last year.

The gate is also one of the main access ways into the city for those coming from the south or east (as the eastern roads avoid the Basilisk Marshes). The twenty-foot-wide gates are a chokepoint for traffic, making it easier for guards to monitor the flow of goods and travellers in and out of town. The gatehouse proper is a sturdy two-story structure with parapets along the second floor connecting to the city’s curtain walls, and further parapets on the roof level.

The main floor of the structure is built up about six feet above street level, with the arrow slits all cut deeply to prevent blind spots at the base of the walls, allowing those inside to see someone trying to sneak past. The west tower is also used as a sort of customs checkpoint – a place for one of the watch to interview suspected smugglers and infiltrators. The upper level of each side is given over primarily to barracks and an elevated mezzanine to look over the approach to the city.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,200 x 10,800 pixels in size (34 x 36 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 2,520 or 4,760 x 5,040 respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/12/15/the-muster-gatehouse/

Fallen Temple of Sekhmet

The old temple of Sekhmet claws at the barren earth like the ossified remains of a primordial beast, its stones worn pale. Approaching from the south is a sea of ruin where great columns lie in chaotic sprawl across what was once a ceremonial entrance, their broken faces still bearing faint hieroglyphs that speak of a grandeur now lost. These limestone sentinels have created a labyrinthine obstacle course of sharp-edged stone and treacherous shadow to the entrance proper which stands half-obscured behind them; a grand doorway that once welcomed countless pilgrims now little more than a mouth agape in silent, eternal protest.

The eastern flank, devastated by some cataclysm when the temple first fell, has surrendered utterly to entropy. The walls have crumbled into navigable slopes, and the ancient stonework has fractured and been dragged away by farmers to make fencelines.

Within the sepulcher of sand and stone, the chambers whisper their secrets to those possessed of sufficient will to listen. The naos – the inner sanctum where the god-queen once held dominion – remains largely intact, a hollow cathedral of echoing emptiness. Here stands the most profound of the temple’s monuments to ruin: the feet of Sekhmet, those massive stone feet that once bore the terrible weight of the lioness-headed goddess in all her divine fury.

The chamber between the sanctum and the entrance sprawls like a yawning throat, its columns still standing in ragged procession despite the weight of ages. Some bear the marks of deliberate violence: deep gashes in the sandstone, evidence of blows struck in fury or desperation. Scattered fragments of decorative stonework litter the floor.

The subsidiary chambers branching from the main structure offer their own mysteries a small sanctuary perhaps once dedicated to lesser deities or serving as repositories for sacred treasures leading to a larger hollow space, echoing voids filled with the weight of abandonment. Some show evidence of habitation: scratches on stone walls, the remnants of crude fires, scattered bones that may or may not be human. Whether these marks are fresh or ancient, whether they speak of desperate refugees, new pilgrims, or bandits, is untold.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 7,200 x 10,800 pixels (24 x 36 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 1,680 x 2,520 or 3,360 x 5,040, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/12/12/fallen-temple-of-sekhmet/

Blackglass Vein – South

This is the second of two linked maps exploring a small abandoned mine. Known as the Blackglass Vein, this was a prosperous obsidian mine abandoned after it was mostly mined out.

The southern map details the areas of the mine that have been made mostly inaccessible by the collapse of the bridges across the rift, and the subsequent cave-in just past the bridge. Accessing this area now involves either climbing through the very small gap left by the cave-in or somehow crossing the rift to the cave mouth on the east side that is about eight feet below the main mine track.

The mine tracks don’t extend far into this section, proceeding along the main dig for a further hundred feet or so, with a spur off to the stalactite cave. This large cave is uneven and damp, with stalactites and stalagmites and trickles of running water across the area. The trickles of water descend down to a ‘sump’ beyond the cave, along the main dig line.

The southern half of the map is where the main mining took place in the last years of the Blackglass vein. There are multiple cuts made here to follow the twisting veins of obsidian through the volcanic rock. A small shrine to a fire demon was built along here, and further into the digs we find a massive vertical shaft – a volcanic vent that descends far deeper underground that still emits foul fumes from the depths of the world.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 4,800 x 14,400 pixels (16 x 48 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 1,120 x 3,360 or 2,240 x 6,720, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/12/10/blackglass-vein-south/

Blackglass Vein – North

This is the first of two linked maps exploring a small abandoned mine. Known as the Blackglass Vein, this was a prosperous obsidian mine abandoned after it was mostly mined out.

The northern map details the entrance to the mine and goes as deep as the “rift”, an underground ravine that only opens to a six-inch wide gap at the top. The gap allows water to enter the rift when it rains, and this eventually rotted away the wooden bridges built to span the rift for the blackglass vein.

The first stretch of the mine includes several side rooms that were dug out to access the first vein of obsidian and then turned into rooms for the miners breaks and for equipment storage. The side door into these rooms has also long rotted away, but the other doors are not exposed to the elements and have survived mostly intact.

While tracks remain from the original mine carts, all the carts were taken when the mine was abandoned. The tracks lead down to the initial areas of the southern portion of the mines (detailed in our next map), but are interrupted on the other side of the rift where the main mine tunnel collapsed, leaving only a small gap that someone could crawl through if they were determined enough (or quite small).

Many of the passages are supported by heavy timber supports that are also showing their age and threaten to collapse at any moment.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 4,800 x 14,400 pixels (16 x 48 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 1,120 x 3,360 or 2,240 x 6,720, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/12/08/blackglass-vein-north/

The Serpent Lands – Map 3

The Serpent Lands are immediately south of the Autumn Lands. There’s no set scale for these maps, and the items on the maps are not to scale with each other so we can see points of interest like towers, cities, and caves. If you really need a scale for this and don’t want to pick one yourself, go with six miles to the hex.

As hinted at in the Autumn Lands, this region was once the heart of a lizard-folk empire lost to antiquity. Many strange ruins can be found around these regions, some long abandoned, others taken over by new residents. While the Autumn and Midsummer Lands are home to many oddities, the sheer number of ruins and strange prehuman constructions in the Serpent Lands make them stand out as a frontier to be explored.

This is the third map of the Serpent Lands, sitting just to the west of Map 2 (and south of the Autumn Lands). We are in the interior for this map, in an area dominated by a large lake that divides the map into four quadrants.

To the northeast we have the continuation of the forests from the coast. The forests here are thick and dark and the hills beneath them gradually subside until the forest gives way to swamp land on the shore of the lake. Just south of the swamp we have a strange magical confluence that, when the ley lines are right, tears open into a portal that leads to another forest, a forest that appears upside down from this side of the portal. A hex away from the portal is a wizard’s tower with a large telescope that watches the forest on the other side, the wizard within collecting notes on what has been observed on the other side.

The southeast quadrant is mostly hills that break down into badlands as we approach the lake outlet to the west, and into strange curving rock formations here and there among them. A ruined city sits beneath a large unnatural curve of stone, and overlooking that is an ancient stone structure built around the top of a massive stone spire that remains uninhabited except for a few flying beasts now.

In the southwest we have a smaller lake that feeds into the great lake, with a city under a bubble dome beneath the lake. A row of massive stone columns leads from the shore of the bubble city towards the plateau to the south which in turn is home to a small forest and some ancient ruins. A fair-sized farming settlement of humans and halflings is nestled into the hills nearby.

The northwest quadrant is home to another forest that seems to press up against the mountains here. At the south end of the mountains there is a massive statue of a lizard-priest in heavy robes pointing in two directions. Following either of those directions leads to other massive statues that sit on other maps – some sort of strange and cyclopean waymarkers. On the shore of the lake here is a massive blackened stone tower wreathed in flames, visible at night from anywhere on the lake. Evidently the flames here sometimes grow more intense, as the whole hex is just ashes and burned tree trunks.

The lake itself has an island on it with the prow of a mighty vessel broken upon it, surrounded by large stone formations that jut out of the water.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/12/05/the-serpent-lands-hex-map-3/

December Backstage Pass

Here is this month's backstage pass with all the maps that will be released on the blog this month.

Thank you again for your support, you make these packages of maps possible.

Release the Kraken!

Here are the two maps that won the voting this month. They are both released under a patron-exclusive commercial use license. We have "An Alien Tower" and "the Deep Vaults of the Lost Queens" this month.

Thank you again for your support. Keep on kicking ass, friends!

Scavengers' Deep - Map 25

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 twenty-fifth map in the Scavengers’ Deep series – this map sits directly east of last month’s Map 24, and south of Map 20.

There’s only one cut-away insert showing a higher level than the baseline on this map (down in the lower right). However, this map contains a significant amount of housing for the lowly (mostly half-elven) workers when this complex was in full operation. The housing area (centre-left) includes stairs up and down to further nearly-identical areas that duplicate these “apartments” without any additional ways in and out besides the stairs. If this is being re-used for a classic fantasy dwarven undercity, these “hab” levels can extend multiple tiers up and down.

A large hall used for gatherings of the inhabitants is just to the south of the main habs.

The area on the lower right is a small secret area in the complex – so secret that the secret passages that access it are designed to go elsewhere, leading those who discover them to other areas in the complex and bypassing this area unless one knows where to look.

Two streams run through this area (if you trace it back through the other maps in the set, both streams are actually the same one. The stream on the upper right is shallow and flows northwest until it connects to the main river which runs much more deeply and flows under the structures on the left side of the map.

Other points of interest are an obvious cinematic encounter location where the bridge crosses over the stream between two large halls on the east side, and the collapsed portion of this “hab” level that were torn apart by potent explosives during the fall of the Deep.

This brings us to a full 5×5 grid, so we can take a look at how the map is coming together. We are nearly halfway done now, over two years into this ridiculous project.

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/2025/11/28/scavengers-deep-map-25/

November Cartography Collection PDF

And here we go, the collected maps and descriptions for this month. This is a Patron-exclusive for at least six months. Please enjoy and thank you again for your support!

The Prism Burrow

Down deep where the miners refuse to return, light seems to take on different forms; to puddle, to glimmer in mid-air, to be colourless, and yet to shine too brightly.

These mines have long been abandoned, and they grow stranger with every passing year. The few miners who worked here in their childhood won’t remember these chambers beyond the old shrine. The rest has warped and changed. Wooden supports have fossilized, reflective salt crystals forming on them to glitter in the dark. Even the water has stopped acting as water should, flowing up walls or crystallizing without freezing.

This warped place is a classic “funhouse” dungeon – little makes sense, but it is all tied together into glittering forms in the dark, odd lights, and twisted physics.

A place like this rarely needs much in the way of a hook to be explored. As things get weirder, most adventurers find themselves unable to NOT continue exploring and seeing how deep the weirdness gets. But there are ways out of here that one might seek out in later adventures. The Aperture Chamber as well as the cave of melted light provide passages to other worlds, other planes, or just slightly twisted alternate realities. And you never know when you will need to go to the city of Charn at the end and beginning of the world…

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 9,600 x 12,000 pixels (32 x 40 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 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,240 x 2,800 or 4,480 x 5,600, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/26/the-prism-burrow/

November Kraken Action!

Every month you vote on which maps we will release from the archives under a patron-exclusive commercial use license.

Here are this month's choices:

https://forms.gle/FfxUw4px7kKGkQb59

Dreamspinner’s Nest

A place of velvet and rot, a palace of sleep where dreams are both banquet and battlefield. Corridors and galleries that breathe like lungs, tapestries that unweave themselves when looked at too long, and a hush so thick it presses the teeth together. The prose that suits this place is elegiac and baroque, a voice that lingers on the scent of incense and the metallic tang of fear; stories of faded grandeur and inevitable decay, of beauty that seduces and betrays. This is a loom of dreams; a place where memory is spun into silk and then cut.

The Nest was once the court of the dreamweavers; seers and artists who traded in visions for coin and influence. Their craft grew arrogant, and in their hubris they sought to bind the act of dreaming itself and somehow their magics did so; but of course not as they intended. A thing of hunger and pattern was born in the dark, a weaver that fed on the raw thread of thought. The court fell silent. The surviving dreamers sealed the doors with velvet and oath.

The Velvet Entry still tempts the unwary. Curtains stir though no wind moves, and the scent of opium and rose oil lures the tired to recline. Two passages lead inward. The Dream Galleries are long halls hung with living tapestries and painted memories. Here, a childhood laughter may be replayed with a knife in the hand, or a lover’s face may melt into a stranger. The Threadbare Passages are corridors that fray into endless repetition, where footsteps return you to the same painted arch until the mind gives up and the body follows.

At the heart lies the Nightmare’s Den, a vaulted chamber where the psychic weaver shapes fear into flesh. It is a place of curtained thresholds and shifting geometry. The weaver is not wholly visible. It is felt as a pressure behind the eyes, a presence that composes terror like music. When pressed, it retreats to the Awakening Chamber, a vast womb of eggsacs that pulse with stolen dreams. Destroy the weaver and the exits do not open. Instead the halls become threadbare, and the only escape is to surrender to sleep and let the Nest unmake you gently, or not at all.

Story Ideas:

A noble’s heir is trapped in a looping memory. Someone must enter the Galleries and cut the thread that binds the child to a false past.

A cult seeks to harvest an intact eggsac to bind a tyrant’s will. Steal it and the Nest will hunt you with stitched nightmares.

A scholar offers coin for the weaver’s pattern, believing it can cure madness. The pattern is a contagion. Study it and the mind unravels.

A rival adventurer returns changed, hollowed of shadow. Follow them back into the Threadbare Passages and learn what the Nest eats when it is hungry.

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 (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 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,380 x 3,080 or 4,760 x 6,160, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/24/dreamspinners-nest/

the Ossuary of Whispers

They built the ossuary where ley-storms gather, in a hollowed cleft between two black spurs of rock, lest the wind carry their voices to more pleasant lands. From the road, it looks like a church of broken teeth rising from the stone, built of bone and carved stone. Its outer walls are banded with funerary reliefs, all worn to the grain of the rock, and the few windows are narrow and seem to drink all light and only whisper back.

The bones are not laid neat as in pious necropoli. They are threaded into the stone of the place and the stonework itself cut to resemble bones again with buttresses like ribs, skulls set like mosaics under vaulted ceilings, femurs stacked as pilings. The dead are architecture and the architecture is the sermon. Those who linger hear names, bargains, last breaths muttered and braided together, a constant litany of claim and counterclaim.

Built by a conclave of mourners and sorcerers who feared that memory itself would rot; they bound the whispered histories to the bones with rites of iron and salt, trading living years for a vault that keeps the past. Power seekers come to pluck useful lies from the walls. Pilgrims come to seek absolution or to bargain back a lost word. And the ossuary answers only at a price, speaking in echoes.

Not quite a five-room dungeon, but hey, six rooms is close enough, no?

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 12,000 x 13,200 pixels (40 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 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,800 x 3,080 or 5,600 x 6,160, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/21/the-ossuary-of-whispers/

The Umbral Hatchery

The Hatchery is a wound in the rock. Light dies here by slow degrees. Torches gutter as if breathed upon by winter. Sound comes hollow, like footsteps in a skull. Those who linger feel the edges of themselves go blunt. Shadows do not merely fall. They test.

This place was grown, not made. Shadows pulled out of the earth through seams of stone until hollows opened like mouths. Men came and tried to seal the place with seals and prayer. Seals rotted, prayers frayed. The brood filled the dark, and the dark answered. Now the wet cavern pulses with the slow hunger of young things.

Light here is a traitor. Flames thin, glow goes ashen, moonbeams draw back as if burnt. The walls sweat an oily film that blackens cloth and dulls metal. Pale motes drift like drowned stars and watch. Within the black waters are things growing and hatching – things that should never come out of the shadows. The “eggs” are half-immersed in the black waters and bleed ink that numbs when struck. Breaking an egg releases a cloud of darkness that swallows all light sources in the room, when the blast of darkness passes, the light sources remain dark.

At the heart she waits. The Broodmother is a smear of coal and tooth, a thing of shadows that should not be. Her eyes are many and reflect nothing. Light bends away from her like a turned head. She unfurls as if waking from a long dream, and when she breathes, the pods shudder and the brood quickens. She is mother and tyrant.

A cult seeks to harvest the brood for a rite that will bind shadow to flesh. Destroying the Broodmother may end the rite but free the brood.

A scholar offers coin for an intact pod. Retrieving one requires cunning and speed and will almost certainly bring a dark curse down upon the treasure hunters.

A child returned from the pit is alive but hollow. Can the party save the soul or is it already too late and the child is now just a vector for darkness to consume the village?

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 7,200 x 10,800 pixels (24 x 36 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 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 1,680 x 2,520 or 3,360 x 5,040, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/19/the-umbral-hatchery-birthing-shadows/

The Mycocrypt Museum

A subterranean marvel curated by deep gnomes to preserve wonders of the Underdark, the Mycocrypt Museum now lies in ruin – a victim of one of its own exhibits. The other exhibits have decayed, the museum’s halls overrun by creeping molds, sentient fungi, and acidic oozes that digest memory as easily as flesh.

When using this map, pick a distance for the various connectors (A, B, and C), this will determine how sprawling of a complex the museum is. A very long B will also make the main exhibit hall of the ruined museum much more impressive. I also heartily recommend the book “Fungi of the Far Realms” by Alex Clements and Shuyi Zhang, published by the Melsonian Arts Council.

1 – Reception Rotunda

A cracked obsidian desk sits beneath a collapsed chandelier of phosphorescent quartz. The guestbook is now a sponge-like growth that records thoughts instead of names. Touching it may reveal past visitors (with a successful save) – but at the risk of erasing your own memories (on a failed save).

2 – Gallery of Forgotten Forms

Display cases once held rare Underdark creatures and treasures, now shattered and dripping with gelatinous remnants. A black pudding sloshes through the room, digesting labels and bones alike. Some plaques still whisper facts when touched, though the facts may now be lies.

3 – The Archive

Rows of shelves hold scrolls and tablets and less exciting exhibits that have been rotated out of the gallery. Most of these shelves are now fused with creeping lichens and a variety of other molds, ranging from powdery to nearly liquid. Perusing these stacks risks inhaling spores that cause vivid hallucinations of the museum in its prime. The hallucinations are shared with those affected seeing each other as gnomes, curators, or exhibits.

4 – The Theatre

A circular amphitheatre previously used for discussions, presentations, and small awards shows. Now the theatre is infested with fungal growths that reenact historical events using puffball explosions and bioluminescent choreography. Sitting in the audience causes spores to root in clothing and whisper commentary for hours afterward.

5 – Curator’s Hollow

A private chamber overtaken by a hivemind campestri colony that believes it is the original curator. It speaks in riddles and offers “tours” through a psychic link. Depending on reaction rolls, it may be helpful or deeply offended by the intrusion.

6 – The Vault

Originally a secure exhibit room for volatile artifacts, this is now a feeding pit for oozes. The main chamber is similar to area 3, but the smaller chamber’s walls and ceiling drip with acidic slime, and a massive ochre jelly guards a half-dissolved relic that still pulses with unstable magic.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 9,000 x 9,000 pixels (30 x 30 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 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,100 x 2,100 or 4,200 x 4,200, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/17/the-mycocrypt-museum/

The Font of Violet Flames

In the twilight of the Third Age, when the small gods walked the Prime and the blood of mortals could stain the weave of fate itself, there stood the Church of Veyl-Karash.

Its curtain wall, now crumbled and moss-choked, once bore the sigils of the Fourfold Concord: a cabal of warlocks who bartered with the small gods for dominion over flame and soul. Within the temple’s shattered nave lies the Font Eternal, a basin hewn from obsidian and veined with veins of amethyst, perpetually burning with a purple fire that neither consumes nor warms.

The flame is no mere enchantment. It is the last breath of the god Yzhal-Thur, bound by the Concord. They lured him from the Violet Hells with promises of worship, then chained his essence to the font, siphoning his power to fuel their rites.

Several ages have passed, and while the temple proper seems impervious to the ages, the curtain wall later added around the courtyard is not handling the weight of ages nearly as well. Various peoples have claimed the church over the ages, but the breath of Yzhal-Thur cursed them all. One congregation of the fifth age attempted to tame the curse of Yzhal-Thur with ritual and song – it didn’t work, but the choir that sang here remains in a ghostly purple form, perpetually singing in silence in the cloister attached to the south side of the church.

In the modern age, the most recent congregation that claimed this space was slain by dark goblins drawn here by the font. Now the structure is claimed by a small group of bandits who have found a dark faith encouraged by the font, and they look to the ghosts of the silent choir as guides, attempting to translate their silent songs back to music in the hope of gaining the favour of Yzhal-Thur.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 13,200 x 10,200 pixels (44 x 34 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 3,080 x 2,380 or 6,160 x 4,760, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/14/the-font-of-violet-flames/

The Spiral Sink – Map Set 2

We descend further into the “Spiral Sink” – a dungeon built around spiral stairs down a central shaft. The Sink has been modified multiple times by groups since it was built, and now it has fallen into decay from disuse. This is the second (and last) map in the set, detailing levels 4 through 7.

Level 4 is where the spiral tightens – the walls encroach in on the central column and beyond this point the stairs are set with the outside of the shaft on one side and the central column on the other. This level has three different rooms with shafts to lower levels. The left side has a small shaft that descends to a room on level 5, as well as the large shaft that spans from level 2 to level 6. On this level the large shaft has three alcoves – one for the doorway, and three hard to access ones with odd contents in them. The right side has a narrow shaft with a ladder that leads down to level 5 and then level 6.

On level 5, the large shaft chamber has a small chamber attached to it that has been used as a private study and research area by some… thing? who would levitate up and down the shaft. For mid-level play, this is a great place for a solitary mind flayer or similar creature to base its operations. Around the main shaft on this level, the alcoves contain sarcophagi again, a final level of ancient tombs (which appears to have been the original intent of the whole structure).

Level 6 is the bottom of the spiral shaft. The contents of this level are in disarray – broken furniture, lots of cobwebs, and debris that has fallen down from above. The base of the large shaft chamber is littered with debris, and is also the accessway to the stairs down to the lowest level.

Level 7 is accessed via stairs on level 6, or by climbing to the bottom of the central ladder. This level appears to have been mostly emptied of furnishings and other items of interest except for a stone table with six circular stone “stools” around it.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,800 x 10,800 pixels (36 x 36 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 2,520 x 2,520 or 5,040 x 5,040, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/12/the-spiral-sink-map-set-2/

The Spiral Sink – Map Set 1

The remains of a low stone structure perches on the edge of a deep shaft. Spiral stairs descend as the shaft gradually becomes narrower. The “Spiral Sink” has been modified multiple times by groups since it was built, and now it has fallen into decay from disuse.

The first level of stairs circles the open pit, with a wide step and an accompanying alcove every 45 degrees around the route. Once we enter the second loop, the alcoves continue, except that the alcoves to the North, South, and East are each an entrance into the structures built behind the walls of the circular shaft. As is the trope, a section of the stairs has fallen away here, making it so most will have to travel through these side passages in order to continue their descent unless they have brought rappelling gear or any number of flying or levitation magics.

At the end of the internal structures on this level there is an open chamber that descends down to level 6, with ledges on each level between.

Level 3 brings us a change in the basic geometry of the structure – a ramp leads across from the stairs to the flat top of a 30 foot wide column that stretches down through the middle of the spiral – on lower levels, the spiral tightens and is effectively “pinned” between the pillar and the walls of the shaft. In the centre of the column is a ladder that extends down to the base of the spiral on level 6.

This level is dedicated to a series of four large tombs. The last of these tombs is (oddly) completely empty, while the others each contain stone sarcophagi. A secret chamber can be reached through a secret panel in the bottom of one sarcophagus, or a secret door in the wall of the next tomb down the spiral.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,800 x 10,800 pixels (36 x 36 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 2,520 x 2,520 or 5,040 x 5,040, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/11/the-spiral-sink-map-set-1/

Serpent Lands – Hex Map 2

The Serpent Lands are immediately south of the Autumn Lands. There’s no set scale for these maps, and the items on the maps are not to scale with each other so we can see points of interest like towers, cities, and caves. If you really need a scale for this and don’t want to pick one yourself, go with six miles to the hex.

As hinted at in the Autumn Lands, this region was once the heart of a lizard-folk empire lost to antiquity. Many strange ruins can be found around these regions, some long abandoned, others taken over by new residents. While the Autumn and Midsummer Lands are home to many oddities, the sheer number of ruins and strange prehuman construction in these regions make them stand out.

This is the second map of the Serpent Lands, sitting just to the west of Map 1 (and south of the Autumn Lands). Here we follow the coast of the Serpent Lands and find the westernmost of the islands known as “the Dragons”. The Serpent Coast here is a large shallow bay, at the head of which stands the remains of a massive ruined city spanning the majority of two hexes – one on each side of the river mouth that feeds into the bay. These ruins are marked as “Dragon’s Bay” on most sea charts, but sees almost no traffic as the ruins are dangerous and occasionally home to lizardfolk nomad tribes who are quite willing to board and rob any merchant traffic foolish enough to try to head upriver along “the Dragon”.

Further up the river are more ruins where a tributary joins the Dragon – and a pair of massive stone bridges span the rivers at this point connecting the various ruins. The north side of this convergence is home to a pair of forts occupied by two different tribal groups of lizardfolk. The southern fort is made of wood and is occupied by one of the larger nomadic tribes who use it as a place to hatch and defend their young. The northern fort is a heavy stone construction built up on ancient ruins and is home to a very different group of lizardfolk who are rich compared to their nomadic kin and spend most of their time ensconced in their old palace drinking and practicing sorcery, occasionally trading golden trinkets from their ancient stores for food from the nomadic tribes.

Directly west of the massive ruined city and north of the forts detailed above is a single massive tree that is visible from miles around. This tree stands well over 1,200 feet tall with a trunk that is over 200 feet across at the base. This massive tree supports its own ecosystem and two different competing civilizations live within the branches, never actually at war with each other, but competing for the many treetop resources to be found here. The first is a group of lemur-like lizard people who collect nuts and hunt for squirrels and other smaller wildlife. The second are three small villages of Phanaton – small raccoon-like humanoids with skin between their arms and legs, allowing them to glide through the more open parts of the canopy.

There are many more ruins and other small points of interest around this map, but one to point out is the area to the southwest, where the hills slowly shift from typical stony hills pushing through the topsoil to weird arcing stone shapes that climb impossibly tall, casting strange shadows over the area and the small city nestled among them.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/11/07/the-serpent-lands-hex-map-2/

November's Backstage Pass

Here is this month's collection of maps to be released on the blog. This package includes Dreamspinner's Nest again (which appeared in last month's, but ended up being replaced with the village map of Neu Grafvenhusk at the last minute).

Release the Kraken!

And here are the two maps re-released under the patron-exclusive commercial use license this month. These maps are available for you to use in commercial works.

This month's maps are: The Mountain Temple (Nov 2020) & The Old Fighting Pit (Oct 2022).

Thank you again for your support!

Cartography Collection - October 2025

Here is this month's cartography collection. As noted earlier, I didn't include one of the maps that was included in the Backstage Pass this month (Dreamspinner's Nest), which will be released next month instead. In its place, I released the map of Neu Grafvenhust (the third map for the Ossuary Masquerade adventure).

Thanks again for your support and please enjoy!