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Prince's Harbour - Map 1

Prince’s Harbour is a small bay along the Flindhome River long ago wrestled from control of the local humanoids and now slowly being converted into agricultural land. The community of Prince’s Harbour is self-reliant and independent – a collection of small “outpost” farmers, woodsmen, miners and so on built up around the small community of Prince’s Harbour itself.

This map focuses on a small forested area to the southwest of the community proper and is considered to most to be the ...

Redrock Cays

A set of small stony islands jut out of the waters near the the northern reach of Alders Bay. They contain a number of small ruins, likely linked to the ruins of the castles and forts that have slowly been overwhelmed by the encroaching swamps on the northwest shore of the bay.

Difficult to land on, the islands are surrounded by ship-killing shoals and much of the land is atop tall red cliffs. Most make landfall on the sandy extension that nearly forms an isthmus between the two eastern island...

Circle Crypts of the Ophidian Emperor

Somewhere in these crypts, there is still the undead remnants an adventurer-archaeologist searching for the obvious secret door into the central circle.

The crypts of the Ophidian Emperor were built around a double-circle motif, designed to feel like a snake curling around the tombs and crypts. To further accent the motif, the circular halls are set about three feet lower than the other chambers and crypts. The various chambers are tombs, crypts, and “treasure rooms” stacked with fake grav...

Hevlod Manor

Viktor Hevlod is a person who wears many hats - he is the assistant to the guildmaster of the mason's guild; master of the yellow dagger within the assassin's guild; inner council member of the order of the blue star (who perform a lot of charity work in the city); and he manages to find enough time to actually practice his stonework in all that.

But really, being a high ranking member of both the Assassin's Guild and the Order of the Blue Star (who's charity work is mostly a cover for their o...

October Backstage Pass

It is October, and I come to you with many thanks for your awesome support that makes the continued production and release of free maps possible.

So here's the October selection of maps. This month is a bit different for me because it includes a few maps that were designed entirely digitally - although my experience with them has me sold on future work being a mix of traditional ink and paper work that I will then fiddle with digitally (adding shadows, shading, etc - the things that get messed...

Release the Kraken on Briar Keep

The September votes on releasing the Kraken brought up a pair of maps from 2014 that go together – originally released as Greater Briar Keep and the Briar Keep Detail maps, I cleaned them up a bit, assembled them into a single letter-sized entity, and have them here as a lovely 1200 dpi map. 

Briar Keep is a border fortress and small settlement that marks the northern boundary of the Satrapy where the Northlands begin. Built only a few generations ago, the keep is in excellent shape and...

Skeleton of the Gilded Cage

A ghost ship haunts the waters out around the Charred Reef. She’s so old that all that remains is her superstructure, and the golden “cage” she carried on her deck. She appears out of the fog along Charred Reef on nights when there is no more than single ship or boat to sight her, slides along silently on the top of the water, and her disappearance back into the night always presages a violent storm.

Within the gilded cage is a potent banshee, the long dead elven sorceress who was within...

The Kobold Docks

Along the western jetties and piers of the city are the Kobold Docks, a moderately large wooden pier where boats can be purchased or rented from Jotel Vuzen, a “sahuagin out of water” if you will. Jotel acts as the agent for a few shipwrights and Xughon Belpar, a pirate who acquires his trade goods in an entirely illegal manner.

Generally Jotel has d3+1 smaller boats at the pier, and 1d3-2 larger craft in the harbour. He also often has a few smaller stolen goods in his tent on the pier tha...

The Dark Caverns of Turr

A warren of small chambers, passages, and natural caves, the Dark Caverns of Turr were once a set of dwarven mines of the famously unstable Darkshoe clan. But then one day the Darkshoe dwarves picked up and left, locking most of the doors behind them. In the years since, creatures have crawled up from the darker caves below and others have moved in from the surface, and the caverns now contain a veritable Gygaxian collection of creatures that try to live together.

There are three entrances int...

The Archmage's Chambers

Once you are past the wards and sigils that guard the entranceway and have triggered the teleporter, you finally are brought to the archmage’s private sanctum.

The Archmage’s Chambers are hidden away deep underground, below the “comfortable” levels of the underdark to an area where the stone walls seem to press in with relentless gravity and heat. Once a small node broken open by opposing forces of elemental earth and air, the cracked tunnels were then shaped, smoothed and reinforced m...

The Travellers Caves

“Caves in the hills? Ach, there may be a place – we call em the travellers caves. Twisty, up and down, easy to get confused in. An’ they go deep, way deeper then any sensible person would go. So yeah, if you really think there’s beasties in caves ’round here, that’s where I reckon they’d be hiding.”

The Travellers Caves are a small complex of winding multi-tiered caves and chambers which bear the evidence of several previous tenants over the years – from animal scat ...

September Kraken Time!

The poll is up for the September Kraken! Twelve maps have been offered up and your votes will determine which get re-released under the free commercial license.

https://goo.gl/forms/xhAiBbFhtYSCQ5rt2

Barrow Mounds of the Lich & Famous III

One of the most classic tropes of fantasy RPGs in my experience is delving into the tombs of the dead (on purpose or by accident) where their grave-goods prove to be helpful and often the accounts of their deaths somewhat… premature.

Today we have nine more crypts, barrows, and tombs for exploration and plundering, ranging from simple single-roomed barrows to small complexes. Combined with the offerings in the previous two “Barrow Mounds” offerings, this brings us to a total of 24 mounds...

The Bronze Vault

The Bronze Vault is a small, multi-level complex cut into the Jappa Slopes and connected to one of the small cavers that dot the hillsides. Once connected to a small watchtower that was built too close to the edge, getting into the complex typically means climbing to the ruins as the door between the cave and the complex is locked, barred, and now rusted shut.

In-game, the complex fills the role of any classic “dungeon in the wilderness” setting – a place where civilization once held swa...

The Bottomless Tombs

While a number of the old shaft tombs of the Etturan Dynasty have been found and explored, there is one that remains a well-kept secret amongst sages, masters of dark arts, and the few adventurers who have been there. Possibly the original shaft tomb of the dynasty, or perhaps a strange discovery that became the inspiration for the ones to come – the Bottomless Tombs seem to have earned their name.

The central part of these tombs is a 15 foot x 15 foot shaft that seems to go down forever. De...

Astral Sanatorium of the Mad Mi-Go Brain Cluster

Few (sane) adventurers are aware of the frightening alien intelligences that live on the other planets. Even those that doe are generally unaware that some of these creatures have access to planar travel as well as interplanetary travel. The maddening brain-stealing fungi from Yuggoth are the perfect example of something no adventurer expects to run into on the Astral.

So, what better place to experiment on captive brains?

This free-floating structure is controlled by a massive collectio...

Prince Delan's Shaft Tomb

It was the way of the Etturan Dynasty to show the might and connection to the earth of the rulers to dig out underground complexes to serve as tombs. Some tombs were fairly simple affairs, dug down as far as they could manage before the ruler’s death. Others were more massive undertakings – complexes of tombs, crypts, temples and shrines dug into the native stone of the land.

Prince Delan’s Tomb is one of the Etturan Dynasty’s “lost tombs” – roughly 40 tombs who’s locations wer...

Backstage Pass - September 2018

I'm slammed under a huge commission through September and October, but I made sure I was ready for September at least and put together this collection of maps to go up on the blog.

Let's see if I can manage to keep up with everything and get October's together before October 1st, right?

Release the Kraken on Mad Fenrick's Manor

A few miles from the nearest outposts of civilization, just over those hills to the west of here, are the old estates of the Trent family. Sitting almost smugly on a hill in the midst of overgrown hedge mazes and fallow fields is the manor of “Mad” Fenrick Trent. Sure the first parts of the structure were initially built by his grandfather, and the last Trents to live in it were his great-grandchildren, but Mad Fenrick is the Trent who put the most work into the half-fortified squat monstros...

The Caves of Chaos!

I’ve been posting the individual Caves of Chaos redrawn in my style – so this was pretty much inevitable. Here they are all collected into a single massive map. This was done at 1200 dpi at ledger size (11 x 17 inches) so you can print it out, fold it in half, and slip it into your module (probably between the cover and the module proper).

Because of image file size constraints on Patreon, the versions in this post are 300dpi. You'll need to go to the blog for the 1200dpi versions.

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More Caves! More Chaos!

Last post I put up six of the various caves of the legendary Caves of Chaos, a cavern-infested box canyon overrun by vile humanoids northeast of the Keep on the Borderlands. But Five is the true number of chaos (ignore the fools who claim it is 8), so here are five more caves of chaos, including the dread Shrine of Evil Chaos!

Bugbears and the Shunned Cave (Caves G & H)

The residents of these caves are significantly stronger individually than those of the earlier cav...

Six Caves of Chaos

(read on, there are multiple maps in this post - or head straight to the blog post where they can be downloaded)

Venture with me to 1979 and my first encounters with kobolds and other darstardly goblinoids. For today we are investigating six caves (some interlinked) in the dreaded Caves of Chaos.

Kobold Caves (A)

The Kobolds keep themselves in a small set of cav...

More Barrow Mounds of the Lich & Famous

Burial mounds are a staple of fantasy games and stories. Today’s offering is a collection of six more burial mounds for those occasions when you really need to loot a a small tomb or small tomb complex right now.

This set of tomb maps go from simple single-chambered mounds to multi-chambered mounds and finally to a pair of mounds that incorporate multiple crypts and passages such as “Shadow Dragon’s Tomb” on the lower right.

2018-08-23 20:30:42 +0000 UTC View Post

Tombs of the Steel Makers

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 cleft lead to a trapped chamber that struck us with an invisible force from all sides, snuffing our torches and forcing us to rely on the light granted by Zuul, opener of the ways, to progress. The main passage within was round in cross section, but with a flat floor. Metal door...

What's Krakening in August?

I'm not putting up a "Release the Kraken" poll this month. Over the last few polls, Mad Fenrick's Manor has been getting a lot of traction, and took the actual second slot last month - but I ended up releasing the first and third place selections because it just doesn't feel right to release Mad Fenrick's Manor without also releasing Mad Fenrick's Basement.

So this month the two releases will be both Mad Fenrick's Manor and Mad Fenrick's Basement. They should be coming out in the last 10 ...

The Wreck at Banana Bay

Word came back from some fishermen that there was a cog beached at Banana Bay – one of the few decent approaches to Esborough Island. So we loaded up a small expedition to check it out – it is usually pretty hard to get any of the locals to head to Esborough because of all the “haunted” ruins about the place, but their willingness to loot / rescue the ship was enough to motivate them and thus finally gave us the chance to explore the place a bit also.

But the boat was in even worse sha...

the Goblins at Herlihy Farm

Old Herlihy Farm has been abandoned for a few years. It was a few weeks since anyone had seen France Herlihy at the marketplace before anyone went out to the secluded farmhouse to find she had expired in her sleep. With no Herlihys left in town, the livestock was split up between a few local farmers, and no one paid the site any more attention as it slowly collapsed.

But now the Gutbound goblin gang has moved in. They are on the run from the most fierce of all things, a goblin paladin trained ...

The Isle of Clover

Near the centre of Whispering Turtles Lake are a number of small rocky islands capped with trees. The second largest of these has been home to the small settlement of Clover since the lakeside community of Burhuie was sacked during the great war and most of the survivors escaped into the lake in a mix of rowboats and fishing craft.

Until then, the fisher folk of Burhuie avoided the Isle of Clover because of the accursed elven ruins there. Today those ruins have been repaired and massive runes ...

Further Delves for the Black Ichor

Those cursed by the black ichor find themselves unable to avoid it – as if drawn to it. For those seeking to break this curse there are esoteric sages who will recommend remedies of drops of the sun’s ocean consumed on the warmest day of winter, or of travelling to the Empire of Locusts and consuming the head of their king and so on – but there are several who will finally point them to the mountain home of Onninhil Reconciler, an ancient hag who guards a passage to the underworld where th...

Black Ichor of the Iron Obelisk

The Iron Obelisk weeps in near silence – the pools of ichor growing around it, fed by its melancholy nature. The ichors seep down and flow where underground waters should, tainting the darkness with the ennui and melancholy of the pillar of iron. Slow grinding noises are heard nearby, as if the world is changing itself – pulling away as far is it can from the source of this ichor. The wound where the Iron Obelisk sits has grown forming a cave nearly 200 feet across where the world tries to i...