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Release the Kraken on the Sunken Maw

It is the end of the month and time to head back into the older maps and dig up a few to re-release under the free commercial license, all thanks to the awesome patrons who support my cartographic wanderings via Patreon. Here we are bringing back “The Sunken Maw” – a vertically-challenging dungeon drawn back in 2014. The versions in today's post have been upgraded to 1200 dpi and an optional grid has been added.

Far too many of my dungeons are easy to access. So why have they lain unplun...

Wyvern Temple

We trekked through the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams and into The Jungle Beyond to find the old temple ruins. It turns out there’s a good reason to stay clear of that whole part of the Jungle Beyond. Wyverns. A whole damned family of them roosting on the temple ruins. They claw marks cover the whole structure, the stones scratched, gouged and torn down not by the erosion of weather, but of generations of these foul dragon-like beasts.

The Wyvern Temple is a multi-tiered structure, each ...

Release the Kraken on Tever's Fort

Back by popular demand, Tever's Fort has been re-released on the blog under the free commercial use license. 

It is the end of the month and time to head back into the older maps and dig up a few to re-release under the free commercial license, all thanks to the awesome patrons who support my cartographic wanderings via Patreon. Here we are bringing back Tever’s Fort – an urban map I originally released in October of last year.

The fortifications of Tever’s Fort were erected q...

Golem-Crypt of Ul-Vir the Mad

Somewhere beneath the Machineries, Ul-Vir built a crypt where he keeps his failed golem and automaton designs.

Somewhere within these crypts is of course the MacGuffin that will reanimate the old warforged paladin the party is trying to work with.

Each of the statues (the stars in a circle) is another weird golem or automaton experiment by Ul-Vir. Most mount weird weaponry, additional sensory apparatus, extra arms, extra legs, tails, crossbows, and a variety of semi-functional oddities.<...

The Troll Hole

On the western edge of the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams, the stony roots of the Highspear Mountains are exposed right down to the waterline of the swamp. Most fear to travel on this side of the swamp because of tales of trolls that seem to crawl right out of the mountains. This Troll Hole is home to a few such loathsome creatures – a small stone chimney that reaches down at least a hundred feet to damp caverns below. Water still dribbles down the chimney, a constant rivulet that the trolls drink ...

The Swamp Shark

They tell you that there aren’t sharks in a swamp. That the water is too shallow, too brackish. They forget that not all sharks swim.

The Swamp of Forgotten Dreams is home to a burrowing beast (a massive bulette) of incredible scale that crawls not only through the swamp looking for food, but through the forgotten dreams themselves. It is one of the gateways to the dreams – climb into its back and it may burrow into the dream you are looking for...

2018-03-16 21:08:28 +0000 UTC View Post

The Strike

They call it "The Strike", the place where a massive longsword of a magical material sits embedded in the stone, surrounded by a small crater. Over the years a small church and a few buildings have been built up around the strike, and a temple dug underground where the faint glow of the magical material can be seen. Some come down here to establish their vows as paladins, others to take in the essence of the blade to supposedly increase their martial prowess.

2018-03-13 17:55:48 +0000 UTC View Post

The Toronin Ruins (2 maps)

 With the town of Toronin razed to the ground, the ruins of the small fortress are all that remain to indicate where the town was these days.

The mossy ruins have a few streams that wander through them to a small pond in front of what was some sort of memorial wall. The massive 30-foot block of stone is badly damaged, but it is clear that it once had carvings on it, including what appears to be the back end of a lionine beast and a helmeted form bearing a great spear.

While most of ...

Release the Head Krakens!

 Last month got away on me a bit, so today I’m posting the two maps that are being released as part of the “Release the Kraken” thing that we do every month. Because of the awesome support on Patreon for my work, we take two maps every month and re-release them under our free commercial license.

Last month’s selections are Thunderhead and Headquarters – both very recent non-commercial releases. 

Thank you again for your support that made re-releasing these commerciall...

The Catacombs of Olik Gullar

Since the Day of the Green Sun three weeks ago, the catacombs of Olik Gullar have been teeming with the undead. A sanctified necropolis, Olik Gullar contains untold numbers of the dead from the city above. The catacombs have been locked down now, but some worry that it is only a matter of time before the restless dead claw their way through to the cobbled streets of the city proper…

This map is a “proof of concept” of what I wanted a few earlier catacomb & sewer maps to look like. I ...

Heart of Darkling - the Hags

We have travelled down the Darkling River to finally arrive at the Darkling Lake – an underground lake of immense size that was once home to a thriving society of aboleth slaves and a few ancillary groups until a new aboleth arrived and slaughtered them and their master.

This small cove stands out from the other random coves along the lakeside because of the three bronze statues of long-haired women who reach out in supplication to travellers along the water. Each reaches out with one hand, ...

March Kraken!

It is time to set up for this month's Kraken Releases! Last month I let it go late and ended up giving you a "fairly limited" selection of maps to vote on. Both of those maps will go up over the next seven days or so as last month's "Release the Kraken" maps.

This month I have an earlier and larger selection of maps to go through and vote on.

Head on over to the polling station set up here: https://goo.gl/forms/6t...

Backstage Pass - March 2018

The latest backstage pass is here with nine new maps that will be going up on the blog over the month of March!

Just grab the zip file and enjoy!

Thank You!

Thank you for your support here on Patreon. 

As we roll into yet another month you are the inspiration that keeps me mapping. You make the continued creation of content and the constant improvements in my skills and output possible.

Further, this constant improvement has lead to me picking up a few major commissions last summer and this spring that I can't talk about yet (because the products haven't been announced), but that I can squarely blame on YOU for keeping me working.

My Private Jakalla - Map 1T

Another month of exploring the undercity along the riverbank, just south of the Palace of the Realm, and we again find ourselves in basement ruins that were not entirely filled in during the Ditlana but were sealed off and built over as sewers were built to take their place.

The most remarkable element of this part of the map is a great hall that is now cut into three parts that is in turn connected to what appears to be a partial duplicate of a temple understructure just south of here (in map...

The Basilisk's Caves

Travelling along the edge of the Dry Badlands of Korush en route to the City of Copper Bowls, you find half of the corpse of a young man clutching a small dragonhide sack containing the emperor’s emblem – a courier. The trail of blood leads from the body back into the Basilisk’s Caves…

Many know of the Basilisk’s Caves because of the tale of the ancient archmage Brasorin Zijes who’s petrified form was recovered from the badlands some eighteen hundred years after his petrification. ...

Late February Kraken

HOW ON EARTH IS IT FEBRUARY 25th ALREADY?

Whoa, allcaps off.

February is almost over and we haven't picked our Krakens yet. So here's a trick poll. Which maps should we release this month?

(I'm writing up the March Kraken poll right now, so this won't happen next month)

https://goo.gl/forms/zsBK7mK42poJ7hUD2

Lost City of the Naga Queens

Occasionally when delving through archaic tomes about the prehuman denizens of the world, one comes across references to the Lost City of the Naga Queens somewhere around the Donon Basin. The city is supposedly home to arcane technologies that the Naga Queens once used to attempt to wrest domination of this world from the elven empire.

Turns out the Nagas never lost it - the defensive energy screen is still in effect, held in place by the pylons their servants maintain to keep the city safe. T...

Giant Hole in the Ground

“No, seriously folks, wasn’t there a giant emerald castle RIGHT HERE last time we were out this way?”

A sure sign that player characters have been somewhere is the smoke, bodies, and sheer scale of destruction left behind.

In this case, we once had a massive fortress on the edge of a ravine. Now we have a big damned (smoking) hole with a few bits of the fortress dungeons and research chambers left and one set of cracks leading all the way out to the floor ...

BlackHall Haunt

About 40 minutes upriver from Kreland’s Ford is the old Blackhall. Sitting on a small hill, now nearly overgrown with brush and trees, the squat stone house has been abandoned for at least a decade, and is of course said to be haunted by the ghost of the previous owner who was slain in his sleep by creatures unknown.

Blackhall is obviously not a standard house – it is made of dark stone with very thick walls and narrow windows. Only a single story tall, the squat dark structure is heavy wi...

The Skittering Caves

The Skittering Caves? Did the sage really suggest the skittering caves? The only way from here to there is through the Skittering Caves? You know I’m arachnophobic, right? Yeah, we’re going to take a break out here and prep every fire spell known to man and god alike.

The Skittering Caves are absolutely, incontrovertibly, 100% not based on the encounter between Sam and Frodo against Ungoliant’s daughter, Shelob. Honest.

I had a lot of fun putting this one together, with a lot of va...

Stirge Rock

In the heart of the swamp, Stirge Rock is a small fortification and settlement named after the best known of the local wildlife.

An outcropping of rock that has pushed up above the swampland (or at least not been completely drowned in it), Stirge Rock has always had a problem with the damned bloodsucking beasts it shares a name with. The folk of Stirge Rock are quite capable and hardy from generations of living in this hostile swamp environment.

Originally established a few generations a...

Duke Dorian's "Cottage"

Duke Dorian (although we always called him Duke Eyebrows because… well… it looks like he has a pair of dire caterpillars arguing over which one gets to eat his eyeballs)…

Let me start over.

Duke Dorian isn’t really a “duke”, more of a “guy who has a small private mercenary force, a lot of skill with a blade, and enough underground contacts to buy a real title if he wanted one”. He handles most business at his “cottage” – a squat and well defended stone structure bac...

Heart of Darkling - the Augite Shore

Welcome back, travellers, to the Heart of Darkling – a series of free maps tied together by the underground Darkling River and the deep blackness of the Darkling Lake.

The Darkling River finally spills into the Darkling Lake in a region known as the Augite Shore. Augite is a black igneous stone with a glassy luster and the propensity to shear at nearly 90 degree angles, making it a remarkable stone for building with. To those coming down the river here, there is a sudden change in pressure a...

February Backstage Pass

One of these days I'll get the hang of timeliness.

Here's this months map selection, first one will probably go up on the blog tomorrow / this morning.

Release the Kraken on the Great Hall of Gruthren the Excessive!

Interestingly, the top choices for this month's "Release the Kraken" were a perfect tie between Ten Crown River Caves (which I reposted on Monday) and today's Great Hall of Gruthren the Excessive.

Gruthren the Excessive (also known as Gruthren Lord of All That Shines and is Burried, Gruthren the Obsessed, Gruthren Master of All Things Great and Small, Gruthren The Builder, Gruthren the Immense and Gruthren Of Too Many Titles) had this great hall constructed on level 3 of a local dunge...

My Private Jakalla - Map 1S

As we continue exploring the undercity along the riverbanks, the structures take on a much different feeling. Remnants up here are really that – the remains that didn’t get filled in, but just built over. Things get wetter as river water seeps into these basements and ruins, and of course, sections were sealed off in the process of building the sewers during the last Ditlana.

The largest section of this map is a series of interconnected flooded basements. Pressed down into the riverbanks a...

Release the Kraken on the Ten Crown River Caves

It's the end of the month, and time to release some Krakens!

The first map being re-released under the free commercial license this month is the Ten Crown River Caves.

The mysterious Ten Crown River Caves are a set of five entrances cut into the limestone walls of the Ten Crown River by another watercourse that no longer travels this way. Four of the openings are into a single cavern that runs adjacent to the river (typically referred to as a “gallery” cave). Somewhere deep insi...

Zorus Island, Overrun!

Merchants have spread the word that Zorus Island has been overrun with zombies.

Sensible people are avoiding it along with the merchants now, but clever people have pointed out that it is far too close to the mainland to leave it alone if indeed the tales of zombie contagion are true.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/01/26/zorus-island-overrun/

The swamp settlement of Will-o-the-Wisp

The only major human settlement in the Swamp of Forgotten Dreams, Will-o-the-Wisp sits on the edge of the swamp on the shore of Dreaming Bay. The settlement has gone through several names, but one tavern name ended up sticking to the whole settlement because it was the primary watering hole for many travelling through the town. Now the whole settlement uses the name and, tragically, the namesake tavern burned to the ground years ago.

Will-o-the-Wisp is primarily a human city, but a noticeable ...