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The Old Throne

Little remains of old Wilton Keep, razed in the early years of the great war by the elves. A few crumbling remains of walls and fortifications atop the hill conceal the secret exit from the war room beneath the keep.

All other access ways to the underkeep were destroyed in the fighting, and much of the subcomplex has collapsed. The secret entrance comes in behind the throne in the old war room and was meant as a secret escape tunnel if the keep were to fall. Now partially collapsed stai...

Skull Maze of Ákhmer, the Visage in the Mist

Hidden away in the Kraá Hills, two days from the city of Sárku and from any of the Sákbe roads is the quiet maze-temple of Ákhmer, the Visage in the Mist. Ákhmer is one of the 108 greater aspects of Sárku the Five-Headed Lord of Worms, dedicated to lonely places and whisperer to those contemplating suicide. The maze-temple is purposefully silent and lonely – the priests and warrior attendants move about in near silence, whispering eulogies and catechisms to themselves as they avoid vi...

Backstage Pass - February 2021

Here it is, the belated Backstage Pass of all 9 maps released in February including the promotional paper versions. Please enjoy!

Kraken Happens. March 2021 Edition.

It is time for the Release the Kraken Poll!

For new patrons, this poll determines which two maps from the back-catalogue get re-released under the free commercial use license. Sometimes this means going through and upgrading the map to higher resolution and fixing things up a bit. I've selected ten maps to pick from this month - pick one you would like to see in other publishers' commercial rel...

Getting Back On Track

It's been a rough start to the year chez Dyson. A very unexpected breakup started the new year and I've been having some... issues... keeping up with commissions, communications, and quite frankly with everything as I've been re-arranging my life and trying to get my head on straight again.

Once again this month there won't be a backstage pass to start the month off as I only have half of this month's maps drawn so far and they still haven't been converted to graphics for the blog or di...

A Ruined Fort

Surely the old fort had a name when it was build and garrisoned. The various bandits that have inhabited it in recent years have tried to attach their names to it, but it is just “the fort” to those who remember the old garrison on the hill, now surrounded by enough scrub that you can only occasionally make out the structures through the bare branches of the trees in winter.

The current tenants pretend to be a small group of bandits trying to lay low. They send a few rough-looking t...

Long Dungeon is Long

The caves lead deep under the hillside, and the hills on each side of the caves were once mounds of stone dug out of the caves and left here, slowly gathering dirt and grass over the ages.

Somewhere back in the dark recesses is a temple to the Coalbone Clan dwarves’ dark lord of caves and grief. Within that temple is a pool of black liquid said to be the god’s tears. For generations, dwarves of the clan have been offering gold and gems as sacrifice – dropped into the black pool du...

Loreweaver Monastery

Atop the steep stony embankments of the Red River about a day’s travel from Letath is the Loreweaver Monastery where a group of cloistered servants of Hecate, goddess of magic & the moon. Most spend their days duplicating texts either to enlarge the cloister library or to trade to others for books they do not have. A smaller number work with handicrafts – crafting orbs, wands and other foci. These foci are always slightly magical of their own accord, crafted only at night and alloyed ...

Percival's Oubliette

We don’t know where it came from… we can’t imagine where it goes.

There were no stairs here yesterday, but today the stairs seem ancient – descending into a dungeon old enough that the masonry crumbles when investigated too closely. We tried to ignore the stairs, ignore the hole into the underworld that just appeared in town, ignore the stale smell of old rot that comes up from the tear in our daily lives.

Then the screaming started and we can’t ignore that anym...

Spellreach Tower

The convocation of the Celestial Order, magi of the Azyr, are not numerous nor influential in the city. The local convocation does, however, have fairly deep coffers and a well-maintained chapterhouse where visiting magi are welcomed and a moderate library of texts and scrolls has been accumulated for study.

Their chapterhouse, Spellreach Tower, is built of heavy blue stone imported (or more likely summoned) from distant lands with many buttresses and arching ceilings and a pair of towe...

Forbidden Halls

Under many of the half-ruined structures of the Forbidden City are small dungeons, understructures, and of course the interconnected sewers and underhalls that are the warzone of the ghouls and wererats who hide below the Yuan-ti and mongrelfolk controlled surface. The Forbidden Halls sit under a half-collapsed temple, the stairs to which were blocked by a fallen wall of the temple until a few days ago when that debris was dislodged by a group of scavenging mongrelfolk.

But i...

Single-Story Estate House – Alturiak Manor

On the edge of Corvusuun, just before the city gives way to the scrub, are a number of fairly large walled estates. As with most of the structures away from the centre of the city, these are primarily sprawling single-story flat-roofed affairs and the largest of said have continued to sprawl until they take up most of the walled area of their compounds. This is the case for Alturiak Manor which has absorbed the coach house leaving a small back garden and front yard within the estate walls. 2021-02-09 21:01:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Dungeons of the Iron Star – Level 2

There are indeed many tiers of dungeons, ruins, and deep ritual spaces beneath the Abbey of the Iron Star. Now that infernal forces control the abbey, the understructures are infested with the Fallen – minor demons who have formed into tribes and staked out claims to various portions of the dungeons.

This particular region of the abbey understructures is the domain of the Red Smith – a foul demon that crafts weapons and trinkets out of blood and crystal alloyed with whatever is hand...

Borderlands Caves - Level 2 East

The Borderlands Caves are a complex of natural and creature-“built” caverns and associated dungeons where more “civilized” folk added their own living, working, and worshiping spaces to the caves. This particular section of the Borderlands Caves sits under the east side of level 1 and is accessed from above via areas 5 & 9 on that map (linking to areas 41 and 70, respectively) – as well as having exits to Level 3 East (via area 50) and the Worm Caves to the north (via area 65).<...

Release the Kraken on Quellport and the Isle of Seven Bees

Every month we go through our back catalog of maps andyou vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. Today we are returning to Quellport, a regional map from a few years ago.

A small settlement in the Thendrake Archipelago, Quellport sits on an unusual lagoon in a cluster of islands. Except for the Isle of Seven Bees (the elongated forested island to the upper left of the map), all the smaller islands are generally just referred to as Quellpo...

Release the Kraken on the Sietch of Morning

Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and you vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. I honestly didn’t think about the trailers for the new Dune release coming soon, so I was surprised to see the Sietch of Morning map as the most-voted-for map this month. For this release, I remastered the map and the re-release is at the customary 1200 dpi for my modern releases. Also, I got to tag this post on the ...