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Esothil’s Sanctum

Old ruins of a prior civilization in cut yellow stone, it is believed that this is where the lich-prince Esothil emerged from when his madness consumed him and lead him into a swath of destruction across the Principalities of Black Sphinx Bay.

Standing over the scree and debris of the half-collapsed ruins, a walkway and platforms rises 25 feet above the floor of the sanctum. Piles of rubble from the collapsed sections of wall and cleared areas on the floor indicate that the sanctum was ...

Late October Kraken Poll!

I went to check on the October Kraken poll, and discovered there were no responses yet.... probably because I forgot to send it out!

D'oh.

So!

For those of you new to the Patreon, every month I post a list of older maps from the archives and everyone votes and the two maps that get the most votes get re-released under the free commercial-use license. For some older maps I also touch...

Marpenoth River City

Built over the Yuan-ti ruins of Vrael Othloon at the outlet of the otherwise unremarkable Marpenoth river, Marpenoth River City has exhausted several alternate names since it was built and is now named and known for its physical location and gambling.

The city began as a small monastery-fortress built as a safe base of operations for exploration of the old ruins of Vrael Othloon. As the region became tamed and the ruins ran out of surprises for explorers and sages alike, the settlement ...

Temple of the Seven Children

The temple of the Seven Children celebrates the faith and the faithful of a small pantheon of gods who rose up to slay their parents and protect and guide their followers.

The temple itself is built around a massive central dome. The north end of this temple is dedicated to the five main deities of the pantheon, while the eldest two (The God of Sorrow and the Goddess of Wrath) each have their own alcoves because of their darker aspects.

The temple is rumoured to be built over a gr...

The Shadow Crypts

Today’s map is another experiment after the sharpie dungeon posted earlier this week. This time I’m trying out a heavy black outline and “splatter” effect around it. I also went with a black half-tone pattern for the shadows instead of the usual grey smooth tone.

The shadow crypts are perpetually swathed in darkness – light sources brought within only provide 1/4 of the normal light and especially for flickering sources like torches it appears as if the shadows are constantly ...

Sanctum of the Blind Protean

This dungeon began as a small set of mines cut into the hill where an underground stream was bringing gold to the surface. The mine quickly played out and was repurposed by the cult of Garathon as both a small shrine and sacred crypts.

Then something crawled forth from the main tomb of the Seven Martyrs from Iesta. It seems the teachings of the cult about the nature of the parts of the immortal soul was sorely wrong, and the martyrs crawled forth as a mass of ever-changing flesh. This p...

Heart of Darkling: Bloodmarket Cave

The Darkling River works its way through the underdark beneath the grey hills to depths unknown. This is the eleventh location that I've explored along the Darkling River and the Darkling Lake beyond.

At a confluence of a tributary of the Darkling River and a tunnel through deep gnome territory, Bloodmarket Cave is used by a number of groups to trade with a group of mysterious grey-robed humans that are assumed to be slaves / operatives for an unknown mind flayer colony. They offer blac...

First half of the October Backstage Pass

Here's the first chunk of October's maps. Including the high res of the city map that is so hot on social media right now. :)

Last Home of the Three Heretics of Xaeen

The Qune Heresy was an offshoot of the church of Xaeen led by three grand clerics of the church who were quickly exiled and denounced. It holds that Xaeen ascended to immortality from the Mithril Throne of Qune in the years leading up to the creation of the great Zorisz Empire. The three heretics built their own churches in the hinterlands of Zorisz and for one at least, the heresy was brought back into the fold a thousand years later as the State religion of Shu-Qune.

But the three gra...

Bitterchains Tombs

Those who served Illhan the Binder in life are rewarded with uneasy deaths. The binder has little power over the dead, but refuses to let go of those who have become bound to her. The priesthood entomb her servants in various crypts and tombs under old worship sites or attached to “dungeons” where they hide their cult.

This set of tombs is larger and more ornate than many full cults of the binder. It is home to a dozen or so sacred to her church, and unfortunately even more bound to...

The September Map Pack

Here's all the maps that were released in September. I am indeed catching back up and have 5 of the 10 maps ready for release this month with a 6th almost finished. Once I've got the sixth one done I'll release a partial backstage pass for October (either tonight or tomorrow) just to start feeling that I'm getting ahead again.

Release the Kraken on the Barrow Mounds of the Lich & Famous

Every month we go through our back catalogue of maps and you vote on which two should be re-released in the "Release the Kraken" releases. The second release for September is the first set of “Barrow Mounds of the Lich & Famous”, originally published two years ago.

Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of nine different barrow mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a small tomb right now.

Release the Kraken on the Lair of the Golden Wolf

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. The first such release this month is The Lair of the Golden Wolf, originally published two years ago.

Pushing out of the cliff face like a partially exposed egg, this small dungeon complex was evidently not built here but transported in some manner. Either that or the craftsmen were purposefully annoying in the design as the whol...

Infested Hangar

The complex was abandoned early in the war when it was discovered by enemy bombers and thoroughly trashed. A few of the structures are mostly intact, but with the destruction of the active countermeasures and absence of tenants, the local wildlife has moved in.

And of course, old data has been dug up indicating that the MacGuffin Bombs were being stored in a secret vault behind the complex – one that should still be accessible via Hangar 14b. And with the MacGuffin Bombs in hand, ever...

Blue Marked Caves

Caves and mines (both new and old) present themselves frequently in the ancient mountains on each side of the Kanayugára River. The Blue Marked Caves are in the foothills of the Chayéngar range in an area that has a number of small colonies of the diminutive flying Hláka.

The Hláka ignore these particular caves, perhaps from some older taboo, or just because the caves are far enough below their mountain aeries that whatever goes on here is out of sight and out of mind.

The cav...

Temple of the Communion of Zeviax

Saint Zeviax still walks the hall of this temple. At one time it was a church to a higher power – an ideal that almost everyone could get behind. But the long-term tenancy by Saint Zeviax has taken over and the temple is dedicated to their strange communion and seeming eternal resistance against death.

You see, Saint Zeviax is a martyr who just won’t die.

To make matters weirder, Zeviax is slowly changing as the decades pass and their memory has long suffered for it – was th...

Ichors of the Green Lords

A bright green ichor seeps and flows along the halls of this place. It moves slowly and ripples even when there is no breeze or outside disturbance. The effects of the ichor upon living creatures is unpleasant and best not described here…

Finding the source of the ichor in the caverns beneath makes things no clearer. Two pools of it accumulate down here, but this is not where it ends, this appears to be where it begins. Drops of the green ichor fall upwards from the pools in 12 and 14...

Shunned Gateway of the Ochre Sigils

The massive bars that keep out intruders are orange with rust – somehow appropriate for a place named after the yellow and orange sigils drawn on every wall. The ochre sigils extend out also, almost like they were trying to escape – stragglers cut and painted into the stone face outside.

Once a gateway through which the sorcerer-priests would summon demons and servitors from the Yellow Hells, the structure has fallen into disuse with the end of their religious practices in the Princ...

Simon’s Inn

A pleasant inn offering decent ales and beers, clean guest rooms, and of course a hidden secret in the basement, Simon’s Inn is the classic environment to start an adventure in. The ground floor features not one, but TWO privies outside (near some pleasant-smelling bushes), a full-service kitchen, and enough seating for most occasions and even a few adventuring parties with retainers. Upstairs we have nine guest rooms, one of which has two chambers (one for a servant or man-at-arms, with th...

Foxtail Grotto

A great flying beast has moved into Foxtail Grotto! While it is hard to get much out of the previous tenants (being bandits and all, they aren’t keen on being interrogated or even admitting that they were set up in the old waterfront cave), the beast appears to be some sort of massive two-headed sphinx.

The beast rampaged through the grotto but is too large to comfortably enter the passages cut into the side of the caves by the rebel Coalbone dwarves when they took up residence in the...

Dread Shrine of the Magi in Sapphire

The Magi in Sapphire was a small self-serving order of psychically potent arcanists and anarchists. They waged petty wars against those who wouldn’t share their magics with the order, and yet hoarded their knowledge and secrets from all outsiders. Eventually, they went their separate ways in an incredibly spiteful and explosive manner – those magi not caught in the initial wave of violence hunted each other down for vengeance or spite.

The Magi in Sapphire would be a minor footnote ...

Pentagon Cove

Pentagon cove obviously predates the current tenants – a motley crew of humans and grippli who occasionally plunder coastal shipping from their collection of small boats and organize night raids on coastal towns.

At the entrance to the cove is a watch “tower” cut into the rocky cliff face which is also home to a number of the human raiders who live here in hammocks. Connecting the “tower” to the main sections of the cove is a series of wooden piers that typically have up to a ...

The Goatherd's Shrine

In the gentle hills and scrubland a day’s travel east of the city is an old shrine to a pastoral deity that serves double-duty as storage for the local goatherds and farmers. The shrine is not officially tended by any priests or clerics of the faith – but on special occasions, the locals come dressed in plain brown robes to sanctify their seed, their children, and their harvests.

Always present outside the shrine is an unassuming goatherd and their charges. The goats never wander fa...

Release the Kraken on the Tombs of the Steel Makers

Every month we go through our back catalogue of maps and my patrons vote on which two should be re-released. I screwed up last month and didn't get the poll up, so I grabbed two of the top ranked choices that didn't quite make the cut in previous months.

Up on a steep face, by the northern fire mountain, we found what we had been looking for – a cleft into the mountain that lead not to a natural cave, but to a construction of the ones we call the morlocks.

The narrow cl...

Release the Kraken, school at home edition!

We might not have a September backstage pass ready to launch, but we can get ahead on the Release the Kraken front!

For the new patrons who've joined us this month: Every month I try to post a list of 8-12 maps from the archives of the Dodecahedron. You vote on which one you would like to see re-released under a free commercial use license (for older maps this often also involves cleaning up th...

[Patreon Exclusive] The InstaDyson Collection Update 1

This is the first update to that most demanded Patreon-Exclusive release- The InstaDyson. At heart this is "just" a set of 14 different perfectly tiling hand-drawn hatching and floor patterns like the ones I use in all my hand-drawn dungeon designs so you can "fake" drawings like this for your own games.

There are a few videos of the package in action if you'd like to see it before downloading ...

The Beholder Pit Isometric Map

Why make things easy? Beholders have the ability to truly craft their own environments to take advantage of their abilities. This beholder lair is specifically not extra-difficult to navigate – implying that the beholder has allies who cannot levitate or fly. But the various sections of this lair are mostly separated by long vertical shafts to make moving between zones exceptionally difficult for those who lack the beholder’s means of travel.

The feel of the lair is set at the entra...

August Backstage Pass - Late!

Finally out! This zip file includes all the maps released on the blog this month (and the one coming out on Monday) along with some blue versions of Sanvild's Delve.

Please enjoy!

Release the Kraken on Crowspine Labyrinth!

Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many amazing supporters of the blog over on Patreon vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. With the recent batch of isometric maps I’ve been drawing lately, it seems appropriate that we’re pulling up an older isometric drawing from 2017.

Cut into the cliffs under and around Cliffstable on Kerstal are a number of old dig sites where miners extracted emeralds for several years f...

Whoa, August got away on me!

Thanks for your support through the pandemic and beyond. I started August horribly behind on everything, and have managed to get mostly caught up. I expect that while the theme of August was "Holy crap, I'm WAY behind", the theme for September will be the much more positive "I'm getting caught up finally!" There's still a lot of plates spinning in the air as I type this, and a few things slipped through the cracks along the way.

1. We'll have the backstage pass out later today. Finally....