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The Village of Winten Ford

Winten Ford was built up around a small mill built by the eponymous ford on a small river. Between the mill and the increased traffic, the old ford became a muddied mess and eventually was replaced by a wood and stone bridge at the same time as the two small towers were built here (the larger on the hilltop overlooking the bridge, the smaller hexagonal tower on the highest point within what became the walls of Winten Ford.) The palisade walls don’t entirely surround the town – a few build...

The Maze of Yivh’Kthaloth

The minds of the things that reach out from the far realms are impossible to understand. Thus it is with Yivh’Kthaloth who reaches out to those that seek guidance and order in the face of chaos and madness. This eternal being craves order in disorder – it impresses those it touches to build structures of contained chaos. Nonsensical structures, mazes, labyrinths, and follies.

This maze is one such structure. Impressed into reality by maddening dreams, a massive maze that is home to ...

Dohrlegond’s Tombs

A twisting descent under “Dohrlegond’s Rock”, a massive stone spire, leads to a small set of caverns and tombs. The descent spirals around a very tall cave with a couple of points where you can see into the central cave. Under the current “management” of the ogre warlord Thar Gorecrusher, a small group of lowly half-orcs & orcs are assigned to watch this area and occasionally climb the stair to look for intruders. These guards generally sit around a small fire at the base of the...

Passages Beneath

Overrun by a gang of black flightless humanoid birds (dire corbies), this structure was cut from the rock by a slave group of norkers under the orders of the Hun’mtor mining consortium (a drow-owned business specializing in the mining and acquisition of specific rare ores). The sigil of the Hun’mtor (in cast iron) are embedded into most of the doors of the structures, but the norkers and drow alike are long gone.

The structure was built around a gallery cave in a secondary passage i...

Return to the Screaming Hall of the Ur-Goblin

This is an oldie dating back to its initial release eight years ago that we're bringing back today.

Crafted as the lair and fortress of Vrunek, and earthbound Ur-Goblin who could be mistaken for a massive gargoyle, the outside of the structure is clearly marked by the worked mass of stone between the two cave entrances. The arrow slits on this central watch “tower” are decorated to seem like distended screaming faces with the slits as very tall vertical mouths. The stone double door...

Backstage Pass - June 2022

Here's the releases that will be coming to the Dodecahedron during the month of June. Well, once the two Kraken releases from May go up on Thursday and Saturday (if you haven't voted for those yet, get on it!)

This backstage pass is one of the "fat" ones, at 140+ megs, because it includes two oversized maps - an enormous maze map and a collection of six hexmaps into one big honkin' monster.

Elleden's Vault

The walls, ceilings, and floors of this underground structure are covered in pale green ceramic tiles – age has not been kind to the mortar involved and the tiles achieve about 70% coverage overall now, although most of the fallen tiles were swept up and discarded instead of littering the floors. Under the tiles and mortar it would appear that the stonework bears no tool marks from picks or other work – as if the structure just formed in the rock with perfect 90 degree walls and so on. 2022-06-01 03:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post

May be a Kraken?

Every month I put up a list of 8-12 maps to vote on for this month's "Release the Kraken" where we re-release maps from the archives under the free commercial use license.

As May is almost over, I guess I had better get this form out into your hands, eh?

Place your votes here:

https://forms.gle/GNsw7x8cUxv59w348...

Greybreaker Fortified Mine

Lead by Druthik Greybreaker, a team of dwarves built, worked, and eventually abandoned the Greybreaker Mine in the hills of Khalefteg to extract a small vein of silver and mithril. The high value of the mithril and the annoyance of the prince of Khalefteg required a certain amount of fortification to keep raiders, bandits, and the prince’s forces at bay as they worked the mine. The deposits proved smaller than expected and the mine was only run for a few years before the Greybreakers moved ...

Twins’ Stairs

The “Gavren Mesa” is a small stone mesa about 50-60 feet above the surrounding badlands. There’s one narrow trail that leads up to it, but the more popular way up is the Twins’ Stair – a twisting cave where both entrances are bracketed by a pair of statues of some forgotten elven twins. The twin on the left has a stronger nose and the twin on the right is depicted as hiding a dagger behind their back.

There are another five statues deep within the cave that seem unrelated to t...

The Guild of Five

Built 60 years ago by five moneylenders in the City of Copper Bowls, the Guild of Five was an informal “guild” to work against the puritanical governance of the city and legitimize their usurious ways. Officially a shrine to Belpheromas, a demon of gold and contracts, the structure helped legitimize their business and provided a single place where they could safeguard their securities and contracts.

But as the years went by, their “fake” subservience to the demon caught them in ...

Pyramid of Zangro Spell-Eater

This small three-tier step pyramid is the resting place of the naga Zangro Spell-Eater and their scions, servants, and “disciples”. The base tier of the structure contains crypts and halls, the central tier is solid except for the staircase leading down from the top tier which is a block with cross-cut corridors through it to access the central staircase. A statue of Zangro Spell-Eater used to sit atop the structure, but only the plinth remains. The ground floor also has a small shrine un...

Howling Passages

These interlinked caves along the rocky shores of the Great Legate Lake produce a strange atonal howl when the winds are blowing in from the waters. The caves themselves twist and intertwine, and further structures have been dug out beneath them that have since partially flooded.

The caves have been used by smugglers on and off for years – using the upper reaches as watch points and the lower entrances to move cargo in and out – a pair of chambers have been constructed linking the c...

Gaerborin Keep

Gaerborin Keep was struck down in the great war by mighty elemental magics and rock-shattering bombardment in an effort to destroy the three Dwarven EarthShips that were stationed there. It was targetted for such heavy assault because it was built and maintained by the Gaerborin half-elf family – an extended family believed to be loyal servants of the elven empire given the title of KaleFolk for their loyalty and long service.

The remains of the inner keep are a collection of scorched...

The Raining Cave

As the world grows dark, Heretic Nezek has moved his banished congregation from the great cathedral city to this cave that looks out over the great bridges on the edge of the dark forest. The main complex of the cave and the first sublevel are illuminated by enchanted torches that illuminate without burning – making the caves look even more claustrophobic as well as giving the illusion of heat while the caves remain damp and unpleasantly cold.

This cave is known as the “raining cave...

Blackstone Bastion

This small black fortress sits off the rocky eastern shore of Shu-Qune. A narrow walkway leads down from the cliffs and then back up to the rocky peninsula where the bastion sits. The main tower / keep of the bastion is 5 stories tall, with most of the towers only having two stories with crenellated battlements atop them that haven’t had actual wooden hoardings atop them since the brief succession attempt by Baron Sel’Qune which lead to his remaining forces and house staff to hole up in t...

Oreney’s Watch

Old crumbling stoneworks indicate that this was once part of an extensive set of structures built up around a bridge over a small tributary of the Alaric. The bridge, some stairs, and a small tower are the only parts of the old structures that remain in decent enough shape to be used – and a small section of the top of the tower has fallen from neglect in recent years.

The tower (and often the ruins as a whole) are known as Oreney’s Watch after the ranger who set watches here that w...

May 2022 Backstage Pass Addendum!

Yeah, so I failed to include the high rez versions of "Not Yours" (hint: It's "Mine") in the Backstage Pass.

This little zip file fixes has all three versions of that map.

Thanks again for your support!

Backstage Pass - May 2022

The May Backstage Pass is here! 10 more maps this month -

* A small fortress
* Another stepped pyramid, because of course...
* Small pentagonal building
* Two more sets of ruins
* Mines, Dungeons, and Caves, oh my!

Last month's backstage pass did NOT include one of the releases from last month. I felt awkward releasing two different versions of The City of Shells at the end of...

Release the Kraken on the Crypts of the Queen of Bones

Every month we go through our back catalogue of maps and you vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. This particular map was never released as a “Patron supported” map at all, as it was part of a session report from a solo game of Four Against Darkness.

This ancient dromos-style tomb is of unknown provenance, predating this civilization and the last. But an undead medusa of equally unknown age has tak...

Release the Kraken on a Summerian House

The first "Release the Kraken" release of the month is this three-story house I drew up in 2020 based on classic Summerian home construction techniques and floorplans. This would be a higher-class home, probably owned by a merchant who sells low-grade copper.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2022/05/01/release-the-kraken-on-the-three-story-sumerian-style-home/

Little Five Points c. 1994

If you’ve been following my non-map posts recently, you’ll know that I’m running a classic styled Wraith: the Oblivion chronicle set in Atlanta in 1994 (the era and place that the game was written in and where they set a lot of their initial material which confronts the horrors of the South’s past in the form of immortal southern aristocrats and the underworld’s reliance on people as property and even as money).

One of the main points of interest in the game (and honestly, in ...

The City of Shells

In one of the D&D campaigns I’m playing in, we started by building the city that the game would be set in together. The result was The City of Shells (or just “Shells”) – a desert city of religious importance to the Empire but that is controlled by a puppet government installed a few generations ago, and just recently replaced entirely with a new Satrap under Imperial law.

Shells was built up over a number of ruins of previous cities that came before it and was originally bu...

Tormond Tower

The old caves in this cliffside were slowly expanded into a number of chambers and shrines and eventually, a tower was built around the raised entrance to the cave by Tormond Calbreck. The first two levels of the tower are built into or connected to the cliff, with the top level being about 10 feet above the top of the cliff.

Stairs up to the tower entrance are guarded by arrow slits and the entrance leads into a short corridor with murder holes from the level above. Stairs lead up arou...

The Halls of Geryon

Somewhere down in these halls they say that Geryon himself, arch-devil of the fifth plane of hell, hunts for victims. While in reality Geryon does not manifest within these halls, a mortal version of his hellish hunt does. On occasion teams of minotaurs and other worshippers of the Wild Beast sound their battle horns and hunt through these halls while the lesser worshippers of Geryon run for the smaller chambers and seal their doors to escape the course of the wild pursuit.

When the wil...

Beneath the Pyramid of the Prince in Silver

The Pyramid of the Prince in Silver (posted at the end of February) has been essentially abandoned for several hundred years except for a small group of undead heretical priests who worked to immanentize the Silver Lord’s return in life and who have never given up hope, even in death. While they keep watch over the main structure itself, they have stopped watching the secret entrance ...

Havenvale

Zzarchov Kowolski writes some of my favourite adventures for “old school” adventuring. He releases a ‘zine every month through his Patreon and one of the ones late last year was Havenvale – a small “campaign starter” location that is centred around a small community that is so aggressively dull that you are pushed out to go adventuring because there’s no gold left and you can’t get married without gold rings, and you can’t be considered an adult member of the community witho...

April Krakens bring Mayhem!

Hey hey, patrons! It is that time again when I ask what map you would like to see re-released under the commercial use license. Twelve candidates have been selected for your perusal.

Here's the Google Form where the voting happens:

https://forms.gle/pS5tv1pecDbDb45BA

The Frogsmead Inn & Tavern

A fairly well-off inn & tavern in Vestfold, the Frogsmead’s name hints at the older cults of the region – namely the Temple of the Frog that remains hidden in the swamps somewhere in the area of the city. Despite the name (which combined with the location will probably throw old school players into paranoid conspiracy spirals), the Frogsmead Inn & Tavern is not associated with these cults – merely named for the location of the city on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp.

Th...

Page o’ Little Ruins

While I was drawing the various ruins maps that were posted last month, occasionally I would get an idea of a piece that was… small. I collected these three smaller pieces together and stuck them onto a single page for release today. Kind of a final clean up on March’s production maps.

We have a small dome-type structure (like a big stone gazebo practically) on the upper left. Probably a shrine at one point, or a memorial to someone important-ish. Below that we have the remnants of ...