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 com...
An old shrine of a god of smiths, the place has fallen into ruin through disuse, the old smith-priests long gone from this world. The shrine rang with sacred clangor – anvil hymns and forge prayers echoing with song hammers on iron. The smith-priests were iron veined artisans who sang as they shaped the world.
But time is a rusting blade, and corruption has seeped into the shrine’s bones. Moss coils like smoke through the ruined stone, no fires burn within. One sentinel remains – ...
For patrons, you will find that this map was not included in this month's backstage pass. I drew it while putting together the Hallowe'en adventure I've been working on and it will bump one of the five-room dungeons from this month's backstage pass into next month.
This is the remains of the village of Neu Gräfvenhusk along the banks of the Gråström river. The original village of Gräfvenhusk was a much larger and thriving centre of trade for the local farmers before the swa...
The last standing building of old Gräfvenhusk, this stone chapel is slowly sinking into the swamp that consumed the rest of the town. The whole structure is on a slight angle, and the stonework is gradually succumbing to gravity. If the end of the world were not just around the corner, one could expect that the chapel would collapse entirely in the next decade. Known as the Gråtkyrka (the Weeping Church) to the citizens of Neu Gräfvenhusk, the structure (and the swamp) is generally avoided...
I’m putting together an adventure for a Mörk Borg Hallowe’en… And of course I needed a small regional map in addition to the actual site of the adventure. You’ll have to pardon the pseudo-nordic names I used for the Mörk Borg atmosphere. The adventure itself will be centred upon the sinking chapel known as Gråtkyrka (the Weeping Church), one of the last remnants of the village of Gräfvenhusk. The whole area of the village was cursed by something, and slowly sank into the swamp. Ne...
If you scavenge maps from the incredible resource of the Reddit r/DNDMaps community, you may already have spotted the new banner at the top of the page. The subreddit recently went through a change in management and revision of the rules, and wanted a new front page to go with it. They are using the lovely Deven Rue compass rose cast by Campaign Coins as the logo of the sub, and the new top banner is this map that I drew & painted for them.
Veythran Korril is (or rather, was) the duke’s alchemist. But even the duke knows better than to let them remain too close at hand. Famed for their ability to coax impossible reactions from elements drawn forth from other worlds, Korril spoke to the mixtures and potions as though they were children (and some say they whispered back).
Obsessed with creating a living tincture that could heal any wound, Veythran dug up the genetic and alchemical workings of the Kale empire and began expe...
The centrepiece of this dungeon is unmistakable, and is almost immediately seen upon entering beyond the initial antechamber. Upon walking down the stairs from the entrance, one comes face-to-face with a petrified medusa of titanic scale – over a hundred feet tall from the chamber floor far below the entrance mezzanine to the vaulted ceiling above. The figure is so immense that no one could believe an artisan could have carved it within the confines of the dungeon. Instead, it is almost cer...
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, ...
Atheron Veyl was a reclusive arcanist who dabbled in strange otherworldly drugs and explored worlds and planes that may well have been the direct result of their hallucinations.
The Hollow Spire was once this mad arcanist’s “wizard tower”, collapsed into itself much as Atheron Veyl did themself when astral spiders consumed the wizard from the inside. The spire itself is made of stones either created magically or drawn here from another world. Under the dust of ages, the stones of ...
Here comes this month's backstage pass. I'm starting to move away from the wave of five-room dungeons I've been posting lately, but we've still got three in this month's package (and I think I've got another five sitting in the wings for future months) as well as another section of the Scavengers' Deep megadungeon, and a new hexmap expanding to the south of the Autumn Lands.
This month's votes have been counted, and we've released two more maps as patron-exclusive commercial-use items.
This month the maps being released are Tormond Tower (a cliffside tower), and the Vault of the Lost Queens (originally designed to be a pocketmap format dungeon).
The zip contains both versions of each map (with and without grid) as well as the lic...
Here is this month's patron-exclusive PDF package. Every month, patrons receive a PDF compilation of the maps released that month along with the accompanying text. These will be released along with the backstage pass on DTRPG in six months to a year.
The month is nearly over, so it is time to pick which maps will get re-released under the patron-exclusive commercial use license.
Every month you vote on a selection of maps from the back catalog. The top two choices a re-released under the commercial use license, but exclusively for patrons.
A burial site turned into a hiding place for forbidden knowledge, the lantern vault was consecrated to a god of death, and later defiled by priests turned from orthodoxy to twist their god’s teachings. The magical lantern at the heart of the vault was their greatest tool, a relic that revealed truths invisible to mortal eyes.
Crumbling Mausoleum The entrance to the crypt is a half-collapsed mausoleum under the ancient graveyard above. The ceiling sags and the walls...
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 com...
A subterranean reliquary of vision, the Vault of the All-Seer was built where the veil of time was thinnest. The builders believed that truth was not a gift, but a burden, and that only those willing to risk madness could glimpse it. The walls of the structure are etched with spirals, concentric circles, and motifs of open eyes.
The Scrying Hub At the heart of the vault lies the Scrying Hub, a circular chamber whose floor is inscribed with a ring of glyphs that shimm...
The Ember Reliquary is a ruin of devotion, a shrine to a god whose name has been scorched from every surface and memory. Ages ago, pilgrims descended into its chambers to bask in the warmth of divine flame and to offer sacrifices of oil, incense, and blood. Now the reliquary is a place of ruin and danger, its sacred fires guttering but never extinguished. The air is thick with soot, the walls cracked by heat. The place is never silent, the hiss of embers and the faint groan of stone that has ...
Refracting the light of the two suns in a rainbow of colours, both known and not, the Fractured Prism is a breach into this world from another. The colours it refracts are those unknown to the people of this land – jale, ulfire, dolm, garrow, infra-white, octarine, gloxym, smaudre, shatan, and flange, with shadows of fuligin and htun.
The entrances to the Fractured Prism are broken mirrors that look out over the salt flats. Touching the broken mirrors shifts the traveller immediately ...
An oppressive silence hangs over the Hollow Abyss, broken by the faint, almost imperceptible tremor of silk strands vibrating in the stale air. The walls, floor, and ceiling are draped in layers of webbing; some brittle and grey with age, others fresh and glistening, still tacky to the touch. The scent is a mix of damp stone, old dust, and the faintly sweet, cloying odor of spider venom. Every step risks alerting something that has been watching for far longer than you’ve been here.
An old smuggler’s haven expanded into the coastal rock by Deep One adherents, the tideworn grotto now lies half-submerged and forgotten. The smugglers are long drowned or transformed, but the grotto still pulses with the lingering touches of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. The tides within do not obey the moon; they obey memory, ritual, and the drowned gods.
The map shows the grotto at low tide – most of the grotto is underwater at high tide except for the top of the coral stairs and...
This is the fifteenth and final map in the Index Card Dungeon II set. It sits to the southeast of Map 14 (the Cave of the Candleman), and northwest of Map 13 (The Sorcerer’s Tomb) via the secret passage on that map.
This map is dominated by a single large cave. Even the rooms to the southwest were not cut from the stone, but were built up with stone to divide them from the cavern. The air here is damp and cold, carrying the scent of melted wax. A stream enters the cave from a narrow c...
The last crumbling remnants of the painted murals found on the levels above can still be found if searched for in these last few rooms, but anything else that was originally here that indicated their use is long gone.
The crumbling dungeon ruins give way to a set of uneven caves that climb upwards in a series of tiers from west to east. The southern edges of these caves are heavily damaged and collapsed, and some show signs that the floors were worked flat to be used as an extension of ...
This is the thirteenth map in the Index Card Dungeon II set. It sits below and to the west of Map 11 (Ancient Cults), to the east of Map 12 (Deep Ruins), and south of Map 15. It is squeezed into the spaces under Map 11 & 12, with the 20 foot wide corridor from map 12 entering mid-way on the west side, and the two flights of stairs up to Map 11 mid-way on the east side. A secret passage leads to Map 15 to the north.
The air is colder down here, the stones slick with ages of condensat...
Here is this month's backstage pass - in the zip file you will find ten maps that will be released to the blog this month. Five of the maps this month are annotated five-room dungeons like the ones I posted last month. I'm proud of how they turned out - I'm trying to provide leading descriptions that work as imagination fuel without any stats or long descriptions.
It is that time - when I go through your votes and release two maps from the back catalogue under a patron-exclusive free commercial license. This month I added another 50 maps to the database I pick from every month, and sure enough two of the new additions were chosen.
Here we go with this month's Cartography Collection. These PDFs collect all the maps released this month along with the descriptive text into one document for easy use without having to load up the blog.
This is a patron-exclusive release for now. After six months to a year, this will be released to the public for $5 through my DriveThruRPG storefront.
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 com...
Every month I present a selection of maps from the back catalogue, and patrons vote on which should be re-released under a patron-exclusive commercial use license.
So which maps would you like to see in future publications and adventures?
