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We must travel deeper via the third eye!

There are depths beyond this world to which we must travel. We must open the third eye and follow what lays beyond. The true challenge is finding out how to open it. The eye is closed and no matter what we whisper into the ear, it does not open for us.

It is the expansion of the mind we explore for the clues to open the third eye. The mushroom folk who live there claim to have the secret. But they will not give it to us willingly. They misdirect and obfuscate. They speak of states of mind we a...

Prince's Harbour - Map 3

Instead of continuing along the southern edge of Prince’s Harbour, this month I decided it was time to draw the heart of the town itself. This really shows off how the town is a low-density unwalled affair. While located at the edge of the Flindlands, the actual wilderness around the town is more hazardous because of wild animals than any kind of organized hostile forces. This is the kind of place where there is more to fear from a rabid bear, or the slow encroachment of a chaos cult within th...

Stony Hill

A simple map today – I was experimenting with grid design and and layers of elevation, and more fiddling with steep cliff-like elevation changes, and this circular stony hill was the result. It should work well for a obvious place to set up camp when travelling, or more likely, where travelling PCs discover that others have already set up camp along the route.

There’s a spot where a small campfire has been kept on a few occasions, in the lee of the taller portion of the hill, and the rocks...

Old Cruik Hollow

The limestone caves of Old Cruik Hollow are at the head of a box canyon and show the signs of decades of use by various groups over the ages. Stairs have been cut into the floor of the cave on the left leading into the upper caves. Sections of the caves have been closed off with wooden walls and doorways – and a small tomb was cut into the looping cave and then more recently converted into a storage space.

These days the upper caves are home to a small group of bandits, exiles and outlaws fr...

Backstage Pass - December 2018

Hey! It's the December backstage pass, with the two maps from November that didn't get finished in time for last month's backstage pass.

Enjoy, my friends!

Athenaeum of the Lost - Upper Level

Connected to the lower level via three different staircases, the upper level of the Athenaeum of the Lost contains fewer books than the ground level, but has a number of interesting locations.

One of the first things noticeable about the Athenaeum when approaching it from the broken bridge on the main level is the upper galleries and open staircase leading there. Above the main entrance is a long gallery along the wall of the underground crevasse with five windows looking down over the bridge....

Release the Kraken on White Crag Fortress

No more than a generation ago did Hender, Warlord of the Two Realms, build the white fortress at the end of Merman’s Bluff. A small and fiercely held chunk of white granite looking over the dark and choppy seas where once the local fisherfolk made deals with the merpeople of the Octopus Kingdom.

The fortress has never fallen, but has changed hands with the winds of politics and the changing fortunes of those who have tried to hold it. The current “castellan” of the fortress is a netherma...

Athenaeum of the Lost – Lower Level

Linked to the greater dungeon only by a broken stone bridge across an underground crevasse, this remote underground library is maintained and guarded by the resident retired scholar-priest who keeps the place locked down, guarded with a small collection of animated objects, and who in turn subsists on a diet of conjured food and water.

The main chamber of the structure is the library itself, a two-tiered chamber with nearly 50 bookshelves on this level and additional stacks on the upper tier. ...

The Blessed Monastery

Up in the Fox Hills is a small monastic order. They make mead and honey, study liturgical texts, and commune with their god of the harvest. The monastery grounds include a number of stout stone structures dominated by a large church that remains closed to outsiders.

While the Blessed Monastery seems fairly open and inviting, with large parts of the wall being archways without doorways (represented as the long sections of the wall that are “dotted” instead of solid), the monks and priests h...

November Kraken - Tower Edition!

It is time to select the maps to be released under the commercial license this month. I've selected a collection of towers and tower-like structures for this month's choices, reminding me once again that one of these days I need to run a campaign that is entirely tower-based.

https://goo.gl/forms/6UJTphnHcVsnMPyr2

Eff Your Dungeon

Crass Commercialization Time! With extra emphasis on the crass!

Sometimes you just need a dungeon that tells every other dungeon how you feel about them. Or a substitute level in a larger adventure when the original level was just a massive pain in the ass (I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU, “the Nightmare Maze of Jigresh”).

Or perhaps you have learned that your DM is about to run you through the Tomb of Horrors, again, with extra horrors and less treasure.

2018-11-19 20:13:54 +0000 UTC View Post

Bastion of the Prince of Clubs

Surrounded by the cyclopean ruins of the Temple of the Abyss, the Prince of Clubs retreats to his green and black granite bastion to while away the ages between the godwars he is forced to fight. A champion of the forces of change & chaos, his own existence seems stolid and phlegmatic – a weapon to be drawn in battle and then carefully returned to the Bastion.

This map of the Prince’s Bastion covers the above-ground structures – a squat dome and towers built of enormous 7 to 12 foot ...

The Many Chambers of Izzel's Folly

A dense complex of odd chambers and nonsensical halls, Izzel’s Folly is home to at least one foul fiend normally only found in the third glaucous hell and is in turn overrun with foul little humanoids that seem to spontaneously erupt through from their particular hell to accompany (and feed) the fiend.

Izzel originally built this as part of a larger structure in their research into summoning forth the many alchemical salts of the yellow hells – but at some point everything went wrong. The ...

Prince's Harbour - Map 2

This month’s map of Prince’s Harbour is set at the outlet of the Gnoll’s Ear River into the Prince’s Harbour itself off the Flindhome River. Land along the Gnoll’s Ear is rough and rocky, making it poor farmland in most cases except in small stretches where significant soil has built up.

The Gnoll’s Ear has a bad reputation, a rough current, and a lot of rocks, so few homes are built along it proper – instead most people build homes nearby, tucked into the forest or along the roa...

Greth's Island Keep

Perched out in a small lake in the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams is a small stony island keep only a hundred or so feet from shore. Surrounded by the heavy swamp forests, the island and keep are only visible when you fly overhead or manage to get to the shore of the nameless lake.

Built with a combination of magic and bullywug slave labour, the small keep on the nameless lake was meant to be Greth’s place of refuge as he studied the effects of the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams. But as with most who ...

Tomb of the Kirin-Born Prince

The tomb of the Kirin-Born Prince is one of the older known tombs of the Etturan Dynasty – and one of the few who’s location was not lost with the burning of the Tarek Archives. Many expeditions to seek out the later “shaft-tombs” often use this tomb as a sort of base camp, much to the chagrin of the Etran Cenobites.

A small order of religious monks has sprung up around several of the rediscovered Etturan tombs and attempt to maintain or rehabilitate the structures to worship and seek ...

November Backstage Pass

Attached is the majority of this month's backstage pass. Because I was working heavily on a pair of commissions in October, we have 8 of this month's maps in the Backstage Pass file. Which means I'll hopefully have the December pass up early with any other maps that might make it out this month.

Thanks for your support!

Wyvernseeker Rock

Above the waterfall on the Azer river is an outcropping of pink granite with a small flat plateau atop it. J’cob Wyvernseeker earned his title here as his travelling companions from Elk Harbor watched him climb the rock and be picked up by a wyvern that he then flew across the sea to the west.

Some say he was just killed up there by a passing wyvern, and the stories of his travelling companions were just fanciful tales to get them an extra drink or two at the tavern.

Regardless, the la...

Creepy Kraken Time!

To celebrate Halloween, we are releasing to thematically-appropriate maps from the last year under our royalty-free commercial use license.

Explore the dungeons under the dark standing stones of Prior's Hill, and find out what secrets the old Haunted House of BlackHall hides.

2018-10-31 19:29:48 +0000 UTC View Post

The Sapphire Vault

Home to foul goblinoids now, the Sapphire Vault appears to have been part of some larger structure at one point – the construction of which is significantly beyond the skills of the current inhabitants. Access to the vault is via one of two small caves on the cliff-face – the smaller cave being about 12 feet above the larger and used primarily as a look-out for invaders, looters, and adventurers.

Once past the rough entrance of the cave, the walls of the vault are covered in bright blue ti...

Sanhelter Keep

A small keep within spitting distance of the Kearwood Grove - a sanctified grove of the druids of the Somernigan Woods - Sanhelter Keep is essentially a ranger base for keeping an eye on whomever or whatever moves in or our of the woods.

At some point the lords of Sanhelter stopped watching for poachers in the Somernigan, leaving that to the druids (and turning a blind eye to anything the druids may be doing that the Lords of Amargos would not approve of).

2018-10-25 20:10:54 +0000 UTC View Post

Guild Temple of the Ancient Masters

Much of the daily life in Archsford, the City of Glass, is managed by the Council of The Ancient Masters – a collective guildhall representing all the major guilds and many of the minor guilds in the city (Glassblowers, Masons, Cartwrights, Stevedores, Coopers, Merchants, Mourners, Physicians, Scribes, Charcoal-Burners, and a few others).

From the Guildhall, they organize the city watch and defenses, as well as festivals, trade agreements with other cities, tax collection, and many things th...

Well of the Wyrm (redux)

Sorry about the double-post, thanks to my own lack of attention and the new posting format at Patreon, I managed to post this as a non-paid post initially.

The lair of Qiroi, scaled wyrm of the Red Fjords, is far from secret. The rocks for a mile around are burned free of all plantlife, the waters tainted, the skies quiet. The entrance to the old dungeons beneath the ruins of Caenleigh Hold are clearly marked with his spoor and shed scales. And within the dungeons you can hear the ser...

The Cursed Galleries

Supposedly once home to a demented prince of alien demons, the walls of the cursed galleries are decorated in mad texts painted in bold black on every available inch. These texts speak of other worlds, demonic powers, and foul creatures from “beyond the veil”.

The galleries are beneath the Benmiria Academy of the Arcane, and are not only locked, but boarded shut. Those who try to study the walls often awaken somewhere else with no memories of the intervening time – somehow controlled or ...

Catacombs Beneath the Holy City

The Holy City has a slight necropolis issue. For most of the history of the city, old mines and caverns beneath the hills of the city have been used as crypts and tombs. Some areas were expanded by churches specifically to inter the deceased, others just adapted as the small silver mines that helped found the city were worn out.

The reason it has become a problem is there can be no proper sewer system built beneath the city as long as the churches and temples regard the catacombs as sacred rel...