dysonlogos

Shrine of the Emperor of Bones

Under the salted ruins on Lecheys Plains is the last shrine of the Emperor of Bones, partially flooded and collapsed after centuries of neglect.

With the recent stirrings of the White Prince, sages are reminded daily of the necromantic excesses of the Emperor of Bones. Some believe that the White Prince is either a scion of the long destroyed Emperor or possibly the Emperor himself finally healed and returned to seek vengeance.

Perhaps there are clues in the last shrine of the Emp...

Belated Backstage Pass - November 2019

As promised, here's all of last month's maps in one package. I am slowly getting ahead again, and while December's pass will probably be released at the end of the month, the January pass might actually make it out within a day or two of that - before I start releasing maps on the blog in January. 

The Behkon Inn

Jean-Coleer Behkon started upgrading the family tavern when he took it over from his father 40 years ago. Since then he has added a two-level wing of guest rooms and moved the common sleeping space from the tavern floor proper into a large side room that also acts as overflow space for the tavern itself.

There is no “bar” at the tavern, and while there is a dedicated kitchen, most food is cooked on the tavern side of the fireplace instead of the kitchen itself. Much of the kitchen s...

So, I was hoping to send out some Christmas Cards and other Junk

I'm late. I'm always late. But I realized something this year - I could get a jump on NEXT YEAR, and if everything goes perfectly, I can even get what I want to get done this year by early next year.

So,  do you want random crap from chez Dyson on occasion (and probably custom holiday cards delivered a little late for Christmas because I never get anything done on time)?

Put your info here (using the Postable link provided, not in the comments please), and I'll probably get a...

Sewer Connector Elements

With all the sewer sections I’ve been posting in the last few months, I realized a few more basic “connector connector” maps were in order.

These fill a similar purpose to the passage encounter sections from Descent Into the Depths of the Earth – when you have an encounter in an otherwise straight stretch of sewer between points of interest A and B, you can pull out one of these sections to set up the encounter. They also work well as connectors between the other more complex se...

Release the Kraken on Lady White's Ruins

Every month we re-release a couple of older maps from the archives under a free commercial-use license. Today I'm glad to bring out these ruins from 2015.

I often feel that dungeons should be damp, deserted, half-collapsed things. Thus we have Lady White’s Ruins – an old hillside structure, long ago razed by the marching forest army, and the structures that had been cut into the stone behind the ruins.

Known as Lady White’s Ruins, the old structure and dug-in pass...

State of the Patreon - end of 2019

You've probably noted the lack of backstage passes in November & December. I got way behind dealing with commissions while also trying to take care of my APUs (Aged Parental Units). There have been a lot of recent changes in the health and mobility of my parents, and I've been spending a lot of time helping take care of them which has meant a lot of trips back and forth to their cute little home ...

Release the Kraken on the Isle of Kheyus

Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many patrons over on Patreons vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. Our first release for November is the unusually colourful (for me) Isle of Kheyus.

There are many small independent island cities in the Copper Seas that I have visited in my attempts to navigate out of those quiet a...

General Purpose Workshop & Store

Here we have a floorplan for a typical fantasy city storefront – a store to do your shopping in front, a workshop behind it to produce the goods being sold (with a small strong room for storing finished goods and expensive components when the shop is closed) and residential space for the shop owner(s) upstairs. There’s also a basement (accessed through a trap door in the workshop) where generic stock, overstock, and extra materials are stored.

While this is the standard assumption f...

A Crumbling Island Tomb

Near the centre of Bathayg Lake is an island tomb – a tuft of grass, dirt, and stone slowly being reclaimed by the waters. At some point the small island was built up as a barrow mound – a dromos style tomb entrance leading into several false tombs and burial spaces. The whole thing was covered in dirt that had to be brought to the island in barges or transported (or possibly created) magically.

Speeding the erosion of the island, the dragon Goavu (grand child of the great Bathayg w...

Shepherd's Cave

Currently home to the Stormbrow Sentinels – a “mercenary” company of orcs, bugbears, and a few humans – Shepherd’s Cave has been used by a number of groups over the years. The elders among the locals remember the location when it was used to shelter the children of the village during the great war – when sections of it were cleared, cleaned and expanded.

For a few decades after that it was home to the Dhoma, a pair of hermits who refused to return to the village, refused to ...

Hall of the Patrons

Lost for nearly a decade, the Hall of the Patrons is one of the few remains of the Green Fortress that have been rediscovered after the razing of Eagle Duchy. The hall was where the great treasures given to the Eagle Dukes were kept and displayed, essentially bragging of the patronage the Dukes received for their grand deeds and heroic pursuits.

Accessing what remains of the Hall of the Patrons involves crawling in through the windows of a side chamber that emerges from the ruins of the...

TFT Mini Melee Arena

Since I have a ledger-sized printer, I’ve been experimenting with maps for the Fantasy Trip that fit within the 11 x 17 inch page. This map is drawn using the Legacy Edition 1.5 inch hexes (the same scale as the nice big floppy mouse-pad style maps and the megahex boxes). If I switch to the classic Fantasy Trip 1″ hexes I could manage some significantly larger and more complex maps in the space provided.

Adding a few tiles from the various megahex boxes also allows this to expand in...

Summerthorpe

Summerthorpe is a very small community nestled near the main trade road between two major cities – giving it enough traffic to support it, and enough protection that the worst thing the locals usually have to deal with is a few highwaymen looking for cover after messing with the wrong travellers.

What makes the location notable to most is that unlike most small farming communities, the population of Summerthorpe and the surrounding farms is almost entirely dwarven with nary a blacksmi...

Labhruinn's Tavern

Labhruinn’s Tavern is a cosy little establishment built into the basement of three story stone & wood residential structure on Clinker Street. While the clientelle was mostly boatbuilders and clinkers when Labhruinn’s opened, the growth of the city has gentrified the neighbourhood and now most of the customers own or work for the various merchants and tradesmen who live here.

The tavern has passed along via debt payments, gifts, and the occasional at-value cash transfer through ...

Release the Kraken on An-Nayyir's Pyramid

Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many patrons over on Patreons vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. This month has been a few flashback releases – the Dark Caverns of Turr that I drew in 2010, and now An-Nayyir’s Pyramid which I released in 2013.

2019-11-09 20:58:07 +0000 UTC View Post

Defiled Waters

Most fantasy cities don’t start with infrastructure – things like sewers are added as the city grows and the need for improved infrastructure becomes apparent when people get sick of (and from) sewage in the streets. And obviously, when it comes to a fantasy city at least, when you start digging below street level, you are bound to find something interesting…

Long-forgotten ruins of the past lie beneath the streets of the city. Here we have the nave of one of the original temples ...

Cage Street Sewer Nexus

We continue our explorations of points of interest in the sewers beneath Waterdeep. This series of maps is designed to mesh perfectly with the sewer-based maps that I drew for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

Today we find ourselves at an interesting little nexus of sewers and associated basements of street-level structures.

The most obvious point of interest is the large pool in the centre of the map – here a number of much smaller sewer lines (more pipes than standard sewers) combine ...

Ye Olde Temple & Crypts

The forbidden worship of Hir of the Six Eyes has meant that most of Hir’s temples were “salvaged” from older construction – built over or into the remains of temples and other dungeons belonging to forgotten faiths and cultures.

This particular structure has seen multiple previous uses – and several have their influences still clearly visible. The main level has been almost completely converted to a temple to Hir of the Six Eyes – with the triangular rooms to the upper left ...

Temple of the Seasons

One of the most prominent points of interest when looking over Oakfell Vale from the hills around is the Temple of the Seasons. From a distance what is clearly visible is the massive oak tree in the centre of the heavy hedges, and the stone pillars both free-standing and built into the retaining walls.

This is the kind of temple that well established druidic circles or nature clerics build and maintain. The nave of the temple is 20 feet down from the entrance, and features a number of s...

Oakfell Vale Maps

Oakfell Vale is an adventure site for a forthcoming module for Neoclassical Geek Revival – the setting is a corrupted valley in deep and near trackless woods. Woods are always an issue to represent in a manner that allows for easy use and reading, while also being, obviously, trees.

The waters of the Vale are tainted – on the map this is shown by the the use of blue for the safe water streams, and uncoloured waters indicate those that have been tainted at the spring, the falls, or w...

Locathah Rising – Umberlee’s Maw Map

Wizards of the Coast released Locathah Rising as a fundraiser for Extra Life 2019. Written by Christopher Lindsay, he ran the adventure during a great live stream event earlier this fall.

After coming up with the basis for the adventure, I was tagged in to craft the map – the full guidance was “caves within an unnatural coral reef that grew up around a collection of shipwrecks.”

The full 39-page adventure is available from DMsGuild. All monies that Wizards of the Coast recei...

Ruined Cities of Red-Litten Yoth

Beneath the massive blue-lit cavern of K’n-yan (which may be as much as a hundred miles across, without counting the many side caverns and labyrinthine structures) are the ancient red-lit caverns of Yoth. These caverns were the home of the serpent folk once they fled the surface lands. They built massive cities within the caverns, moving their whole civilization and technology base to these deep red caves.

That was untold ages ago. All that remains of the serpent folk of Yoth are the ...

Sewer Elements

One last run into the sewers of Waterdeep for the month before we move on to other ground (but there will be more Waterdeep sewer maps next month). Today’s map is a set of four “points of interest” to use when there’s an encounter in the Waterdhavian sewer system.

These are all intersections between sewer lines, where smaller lines feed into main lines.

The first is a fairly simple example of such, but with nice wide tunnels allowing for raised platforms along the main lin...

Kraken Poll for October Releases

I did the release posts for September this month (because I am always running late), but my goal is to do the Kraken releases for October on the last two Saturdays of October.

For the new patrons - every month I try to make a list of 6-12 maps from the blog from which we select two that will be re-released under a commercial use license. So here is that list!

Pick your kraken targets!

Release the Kraken on the Temple Crypts of the Wraith Priests

Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many patrons over on Patreon vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. For older maps I also work on upgrading the quality of the scan where possible. Today’s map was originally released in April of this year and stands out from the collection because of the hex-based instead of grid or gridless de...

The Stone Troll's Lantern - a tavern in the sewers

Once again this month we are under the streets of Waterdeep, exploring the sewers and, in this case, a business connected thereto.

There are no lack of “basement taverns” in Waterdeep – residential and commercial buildings where the basement has been converted into a public house with its own entrance. But the Stone Troll’s Lantern takes this one level further.

This tavern stinks. Instead of just a single basement, it extends down a few floors under the low rent housing ab...

Belated Backstage!

Running late on the Backstage Pass this month, and with my workload through the rest of October and November, there's a good chance that I'll be uploading maps as I draw them during November instead of a batch upload at the beginning of the month - which means that if there is a November backstage pass, it will probably be at the end of the month as a recap instead of the beginning.

West Sewers Complex

Back beneath the streets of Waterdeep, we continue to explore the sewers around the hideout from Dragon Heist.

This section of sewers has a maintenance access in the lower right side – a hatch opens to a ladder and then stairs down to a set of rooms with some tools and a small workbench. All doors down here are locked and sewer workers are given the keys as needed.

Of more interest are the structures in the upper left – a street-level access leads down to a small “undergroun...

Release the Kraken on the Psychedelic Cellar of the Stone Giants

Every month we go through our back catalog of maps and the many patrons over on Patreons vote on which two should be re-released under the free commercial use license. For older maps I also work on upgrading the quality of the scan where possible. Today’s map was originally released in April of this year.

2019-10-05 18:49:17 +0000 UTC View Post